Posts by Val Waldron

Are you wishing you could be playing board games in person with your friends? You're not the only one. Being able to sit around a table with friends is a great way to socialize with fellow gamers, and would normally be a popular activity in the CVGA. Playing board games in person is definitely preferred, but circumstances like quarantine, geography or other factors can make this difficult. And thanks to technology, it's not the only way to enjoy them. The Online Games page on our research guide lists several online platforms that can be used to play board games online with friends. Today, we're going to review one of those platforms, Boardgame Arena.

Looking for a video game-related class to take in the coming semesters? This post includes classes that are listed at present. For more information regarding our available services during this time, please see our blog post called CVGA Services During the COVID-19 Lockdown. This will likely be our modus operandi throughout the Spring and Summer. Our physical collection may be inaccessible at present, but we encourage you to visit the Online Games page on our research guide for ideas on how to play classic games online for free, how to play board games online with your friends, and more.

The Computer & Video Game Archive physical collection is closed, as is the Duderstadt Center. Our staff won't be answering our phone or returning calls while the building is closed, but feel free to reach out to us via email at video.games@umich.edu with questions or requests for remote consultations related to video game studies. We're happy to help. The gamer community is a tight-knit group, and we're thinking about you during this time of social distancing. We hope you stay safe, and hope you're able to visit us once we're able to reopen. For now, we hope you'll engage with us on social media and let us know how you're doing.

The mission of the University of Michigan Library’s Computer and Video Game Archive (CVGA) is to preserve and provide access to games for current and future study and research. In a world where digital games are becoming more prevalent than physical games, preserving these digital games can be a challenge. The CVGA recently received special funding from the library to purchase a large number (approx. 180) of games from Limited Run Games, a "publisher of limited run physical games for PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch," that focuses on "bringing games that were previously only available in a digital format to a physical medium."

At the beginning of every year, we like to look back at which games were most popular over the course of the previous year. Some games, like the FIFA series and Super Smash Bros., remain relatively constant in popularity over the years, while others are surprise hits. Here are our most popular games for 2019, all of which were played at least 50 times over the course of the year.

The end of the semester is already approaching, as are holiday breaks. Here is what our hours of operation will look like over the next month or so. We'll be closed Wednesday - Friday over Thanksgiving week. For the first two weeks of December, we plan to be open with our normal hours, with our last day open for the semester on Friday, December 13th. Then we'll plan to reopen on the first day of Winter classes: Wednesday, January 8th.

It's that time again to register for Winter classes. Do you find yourself wondering how to work your love of video games into your course selections? Here are some courses that might help you do just that.

It's been a busy year in the CVGA so far, and we thought it was time to look at which games are peaking everyone's interest in 2019 so far. FIFA is being played about 3 times as often as anything else, with Assassin's Creed and Spider-Man next in the running. Then we have some of our usual contenders, with the Mario Kart series dominating much of the list. By comparison, we also show our Top Ten List of All Time. FIFA was most popular in years 2013-15, but the Black Ops series still overtakes it in the list. We also see Mariokart, Super Smash Bros. and League of Legends in the overall rankings.

Our Atari 7800 stopped working after one of the tabs on the cartridge port broke off, resulting in games that wouldn’t sit properly in the system and were therefore unplayable. We only have one Atari 7800 system, so we were eager to try whatever we could to repair it. So when our student worker Justin found the specs online to 3D-print the replacement part we needed, we were eager to give it a try.

The Spring semester has kicked off and orientation season is in full swing, so we thought it would be a good time to showcase our collection of games here at the CVGA. Here are a few visualizations for our collection of more than 8,000 video games, board games, game soundtracks, and more.