Week 8: Studio: recover an artifact of your own choosing

The open studio — you pick a qualifying lost or abandoned game and begin your own recovery attempt

26 April 2027

From here, the semester shifts from worked examples to your own artifact. You choose one qualifying lost or abandoned game — PC, console, or browser/Flash, per week 1’s definition — and open a recovery attempt using whichever methods from weeks 2–7 fit it: emulation, archival research, file-format reading, save-file analysis.

There’s a short check-in this week rather than a full brief, because the point is to pick something real and hit its first obstacle while a tutor is in the room. A well-documented failed recovery is a legitimate outcome by the end of the semester — it is not a legitimate outcome to arrive at week 11 having not tried.

Outline#

• choosing an artifact that actually qualifies under week 1’s definition
• scoping a recovery attempt to what’s achievable in the remaining weeks
• picking your first method, and your first obstacle
• what “stuck” looks like, and when to change approach rather than push through