Artifact Catalog Tool

Welcome to the Obernaft Artifact Catalog Tool — your evolving gateway to cataloging, exploring, and understanding the ever-expansive world of digital gaming history, game mechanics, and cultural milestones. Whether you’re an esports analyst, a development strategist, or someone simply enamored with the evolution of multiplayer systems, this tool was built for curious minds, thoughtful explorers, and serious strategy-hounds alike.

At Obernaft, founded by Tyvian Velthorne in the creative core of Los Angeles, California, our mission is to translate complexity into clarity. That guiding principle also echoes through this tool. Built by players-turned-researchers and designers who grew up pressing D-pads and memorizing input strings, the Artifact Catalog Tool isn’t just a database — it’s a curated system for discovery.

What This Tool is For

This tool exists to help you sift, organize, and connect artifacts across the expanding world of gaming media, meta, and mechanics. Whether it’s the legacy input system of a 1990s fighter, the role of LAN-party communities in esports evolution, or observing modular controller changes over time — you can track, tag, and trace those elements here using searchable entries and structured metadata.

Think of it as a library meets patch log — with the flexibility to filter, compare, and catalog game mechanics, esports transitions, or even cultural moments that changed multiplayer forever. This is where history, systems thinking, and gameplay influence meet.

Who This is For

You don’t need to be a scholar to use the Artifact Catalog Tool — but it’s built for that depth. Analysts, passionate players, game designers, competitive historians, and instructional designers will find its features immediately useful. Key applications include:

Metadata Mapping: Learn how genres remix mechanics over time through tagging, sorting, and temporal linkages.
Control Schema Comparison: Compare controller setups across platform generations or racing-input adjustments in speed mechanics.
Industry Impact Tracking: Track buzz shifts or organizational changes in esports as marked by major event records or roster architecture.

If you speak fluent cool-down timers or get nostalgic for splash screens, this catalog language is yours to explore.

A Glimpse Into the Mechanics

Each artifact — from a fragment of an in-game HUD to a full meta evolution of a fighting game — receives a page in the catalog. Entries can include:

Core mechanics (action loops, feedback systems)
Notable updates (patch + balance history)
Game meta context (ranking tiers, tournament grading)
Controller interaction notes
Historical value (platform relevance, firsts, and lasts)

You can contribute to the catalog once you’re a verified user, propose edits or additions, or even tag entries for deeper layered connections. Whether you’re mapping out inventory menus or attributing boomstick physics to a game’s legacy, the catalog gives you scaffolding for deep thought.

Why It Matters

The Artifact Catalog Tool is more than a filing cabinet. It’s an evolving web of insight — designed to bridge the gap between experience and understanding. Games shape how people think, communicate, and collaborate. Their systems often outlive titles, reemerging in sequels, mods, and esports rulebooks. By cataloging with care and clarity, we preserve more than mechanics. We preserve meaning.

Tyvian Velthorne envisioned Obernaft as a space for critical play and informed evolution. The Artifact Catalog Tool carries that intention forward — becoming, growing, and adapting with every piece added. Learn more about Tyvian’s guiding philosophy.

What You Can Do Next

If you’re ready to begin exploring or contributing, here’s how you can get started:

Search Existing Artifacts: Filter through curated entries using metadata filters like platform, mechanic type, release window, and modification layers.
Submit Your Entries: Have something that belongs in the archive? Start the verification process to contribute authenticated listings.
Propose Edits: Think an entry needs context or an update? Submit contextual proposals to help keep the data—and the discussion—relevant.
Support Thoughtful Threads: Use citation tagging to link your research, theories, or comparative designs to the broader historical network we’re building.

This is more than data collection — it’s digital archeology for the joysticked generation — and you’re holding the flashlight.

Contact and Hours

Need a walkthrough, want to suggest a new tag system, or looking to discuss metaframe models? Reach out. We’re always open to thoughtful suggestions, collaborative ideas, and respectful debates.

Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 805-425-6488
Open Monday to Friday, 9 AM–5 PM PST

Located at 2300 Diane Street, Los Angeles, California 90017, Obernaft sees this tool as a shared legacy. If you’re part of the world that plays, builds, or studies the mechanics that define gaming culture — we invite you to take part.

Catalog carefully. Think deeply. Build the future one artifact at a time.