After opening the EA Story exhibit in May (and launching a massive internal website), I spent a few weeks recharging in the desert before digging into part two of the project — bringing order to chaos in a room stuffed with an estimated 20,000 video tapes (and assorted other media).
In this room, you can find VHS and BetaCam tapes, CDs, film, and a variety of other obscure and obsolete media formats, all from forty years of making and publishing video games at Electronic Arts. The bulk of the collection features content from the late 1980s through the mid 2000s.
What’s on all of these tapes? Gameplay footage. Company meetings and presentations. Special marketing events. Wing Commander. Shockwave. Medal of Honor. Need for Speed. Dead Space. Madden, FIFA, and the rest of the EA SPORTS lineup. And tons of other game franchises and brands. Yes, even Shaq Fu!
My mission: organize and catalogue the madness and then figure out what needs to be digitized and further preserved.
If you don’t hear from me, you’ll know where to send the search hounds.
