Mark Flitman papers

Collection

Identifier: FLITMAN

Staff Only

Mark Flitman papers

Scope and Contents

This collection includes scanned documents, digital images, disc images, and audiovisual recordings of material collected during the career of game producer Mark Flitman. The collection includes internal business and development documents, guidelines and research for licensed properties, production assets, personal correspondences, and related memorabilia and newsclippings.

The materials in this collection have been arranged based on the companies Mark Flitman worked at during his career, then divided by individual project. A selection of sensitive documents have been separated from the rest of the collection and restricted. Personal information has also been redacted throughout the collection where necessary.

Dates

Majority of material found within 1990–2012

Conditions Governing Access

Development builds of games and selected sensitive documents are restricted. Closed access to these items may be provided to individual researchers at the discretion of the Video Game History Foundation library staff. Restricted items are noted in their individual records.

For the sake of access, digital images of press CDs that were meant for public consumption have been uploaded to the Internet Archive. Links to Internet Archive mirrors are available in the individual records of those items.

Conditions Governing Use

The Video Game History Foundation has been given permission by the donor to reproduce material in this collection, but the VGHF does not control the intellectual property rights for these materials. Non-restricted items in this collection may be reproduced by researchers for publication (both print and digital) with attribution to Mark Flitman and the Video Game History Foundation. Restricted items may not be reproduced.

Extent

55.9 Gigabytes

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Mark Flitman is a retired game producer who worked at game publisher primarily in the Chicago area from the 90s–2000s, including Konami, Acclaim, Mindscape, Midway, and Atari. In his career, Flitman often worked on product strategy for game publishers and managed the production of licensed game titles, in particular video games based on Marvel and DC comics properties and The Simpsons. Flitman was also a producer for Midway's line of extreme sports game adaptations, such as NFL Blitz and MLB Slugfest.

Arrangement

The materials in this collection have been arranged based on the companies Mark Flitman worked at during his career, then divided by individual project. In cases where materials could not be easily categorized, the documents were left together based on their original order in Flitman's collection (e.g., "Assorted game concepts").

A select number of sensitive documents from across the collection involving employment information or personal correspondence have been placed in a separate category ("Personal").

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

Mark Flitman's collection includes CDs and DVDs with various game development materials, which are browseable on the library's digital platform. Digital files that cannot be displayed on the library's platform (eg., program executables, or unconventional or proprietary media formats) have been omitted from public browsing. The original disc images are maintained in non-publicly accessible storage. Access to the original disc images may be granted to researchers upon request at the discretion of the Video Game History Foundation library staff.

We have provided manifests disclosing the full contents of these discs, along with checksums. Due to technical limitations, manifests are not currently provided for audio CDs or discs with unusual file systems.

Appraisal

The majority of material in this collection was appraised by the Video Game History Foundation staff at the time of digitization. Additional items provided by Mark Flitman were appraised while the collection was being processed. A number of materials related to Mark Flitman's personal life (or unrelated to his work producing video games and electronic games) were omitted from this collection, although the raw files have been maintained if the materials were already digitized. Due to privacy concerns, email files were also initially omitted from this collection but may re-assessed at a later time.

Several CDs provided by Mark Flitman were burned in duplicate or triplicate. In these cases, if the discs were identical, only one copy was accessioned, although the raw disc images have been maintained.

Personally identifying information has been redacted from some documents. Some videorecordings have also been partially truncated to remove home movies and other footage related to Mark Flitman's personal life.

Existence and Location of Originals

Mark Flitman has retained ownership of the original materials in this collection but has allowed the Video Game History Foundation to reproduce digital copies.

Physical Description

The majority of these materials were scanned and digitized by the Video Game History Foundation, along with several additional documents and images scanned by Mark Flitman. Audiovisual recordings were digitized by a vendor in the Chicago, IL area. Apart from visual artifacts from the digitization projects, these scans accurately reflect the condition of the original objects.

A limited number of items were scanned incorrectly. These errors are noted in the records for the individual items.