Video Game History

Artykuł jest poświęcony polemice z duńskim badaczem gier Jesperem Juulem w kontekście zjawiska porażki w grach cyfrowych. Analizując dwie różne wersje francuskiej gry Infernal Runner (stworzone w 1985 roku zarówno przez Yves'a Kortę i Michela Koella, jak i Erica Chahiego), autor próbuje poddać analizie zupełnie odmienne wizje świata przedstawione w różnych odmianach gry. Jedna (Chahiego) kładzie nacisk bardziej na motywy ludyczne, posługując się modelem porażki tymczasowej obliczonej na ustawiczne dążenie ku zwycięstwu. Druga natomiast (Korty i Koella) przesycona jest nihilizmem utrzymanym w tonie pism filozoficznych Alberta Camus, reprezentując motyw porażki permanentnej. W konsekwencji strategie odbiorcze obu wersji tej samej gry różnią się diametralnie.

Extensive literature underlines the importance to critically examine the phenomenon of game classification. In computer games magazines of the 1980 decade, the combination of "action", "arcade," or "real-time" with "strategy" is quite common. Here and there, the expression "real-time strategy" is used. But real-time strategy games as we will come to know them in the 1990s are not very similar to games labelled "real-time strategy" in the 1980s: we are simply not witnessing the description of the same gameplay or experience. Micro-histories of gameplay can underline different forms of continuities and reveal new perspectives on strategy gaming.

This article highlights some of the challenges one has to face when promoting  video games in multiple countries. Those issues were divided in three basic groups: language challenges, cultural differences and legal aspects. Each group is thoroughly described in a separate paragraph, and given examples where needed.

Despite numerous publications about the history of digital games in the United States and Japan, there are few studies which aim to explore the past European trends in game design. For example, the French gaming industry remains unknown to the vast majority of game researchers. However, from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s a certain tendency emerged in this industry: political and social issues became overtly discussed within digital games. To examine such a tendency, the author follows the ‘emancipatory’ paradigm in digital game research (to cite Jaakko Suominen), instead of the ‘enthusiast’ Trans-Pacific-oriented ones. The objects of the analysis are several adventure games developed in France between 1982 and 1993 whose popularity during this period made them influential for the development of the French gaming industry. The author indicates three factors that contributed to the rapid growth of adventure games. These are the advancement of the personal computer market, the modest but existing support from French national institutions, and the article published by Guy Delcourt in the August 1984 issue of Tilt gaming magazine, which gave critical insight into previous development practices and suggested drawing inspiration from current events. The author distinguishes five thematic genres: Froggy Software’s avant-garde digital games, postcolonial and feminist games, investigative games, science fiction, and horror. Each of these provided numerous references to political affairs, economic stagnation and postcolonial critique of the past, which were severe issues in France during the 1980s and 1990s. Despite strong genre diversity, French adventure games shared similar pessimistic outlooks on the emerging “liquid modernity” (Zygmunt Bauman), during which France had to cope with more unstable work conditions, globalization, and immigration from the Maghreb countries. Because the French gaming industry in this period concentrated on local gamers and referred to their national culture, the author encourages game historians to turn their attention not only to Trans-Pacific games, but also to those manufactured outside Japan and the United States.

Negli ultimi cinquant’anni il videogame ha ridefinito il concetto di intrattenimento nella nostra società e il suo mercato è diventato uno dei più creativi e importanti del mondo, ma per molti aspetti è un mondo ancora sommerso.
Questo libro cerca di rispondere alle domande essenziali su cosa definisce un videogame, perché giochiamo e chi sono i videogiocatori, per condurre l’esplorazione verso fronti ulteriori.
Attraverso molteplici prospettive e approcci teorici, gli autori offrono una guida al videogame come nuovo medium della cultura pop contemporanea, mentre il racconto delle evoluzioni tecnologiche e del mercato mostra al lettore, neofita o videogiocatore, il dietro le quinte di un’industria innovativa.

https://www.editorialreus.es/libros/los-e-sports-como-deporte/9788429020526/
Extracto del libro "Los e-Sports como ¿deporte? Análisis jurídico y técnico-deportivo de su naturaleza y los requisitos legales exigidos", de Javier Rodríguez Ten. Prólogo, primeras páginas del libro, índice.... Los videojuegos son, además de entretenimiento, un enorme negocio. En algunos casos se habla de deportes electrónicos o e-Sports, habiéndose llegado a proponer su reconocimiento como deporte, con unas connotaciones y beneficios publicitarios inigualables. Ello ha generado un debate técnico-deportivo (desde las Ciencias del deporte) y jurídico que discurre compartimentado y con planteamientos y respuestas diferentes. Esta monografía analiza minuciosamente, desde ambos puntos de vista, los requisitos que debe reunir una actividad para poder ser reconocida como modalidad deportiva.

This book is about the three identities of the videogame, the gamer, and Game Studies. I write that there are no definitive truths but rather discourses and constructions; ideas, actions, beliefs, and practices related to videogames are discourses that merge and shape our perception of videogames as an area of study of its own right. These discursive responses meet and clash creating what we call truths, which are temporary and negotiable.

This perspective is inspired by Foucauldian ideas and present few questions about videogame-related identities in and outside of academe. Does Game Studies have a conceptual core? What makes game studies difficult to be disciplined in academe? What do we learn from the scholarly and popular discourses on videogames that would help understand the identity questions related to games?

I go on to describe what makes the videogame identity according to game studies: aesthetics, fictions, meaning-making, performance, transformation, etc. and what makes it difficult for game studies being an open market of ideas and an academic "un-discipline". This leads me to the gamer's identity: an aficionado first, and a connoisseur of fictional worlds.

Nowadays, that videogames are an Art, a cultural production and conjunction of several Art forms, is just considered fact by many authors. But, what I try to achieve through this article, which is directly linked to my research project (my doctoral thesis and the publications that will follow it), is that we could, and we should take that relationship more seriously at the time of analysing them, and also, when we face the task of creating a new videogame project from scratch. Videogames should have more publications related to them that can go deeper than mere commercial analysis we would make about any kind of product. We can find studies related to videogames, and also publications about them, but our society still lacks the capacity of studying them as we would, for example, study other Art disciplines, such as Sculpture, Architecture, Drawing… Our programs use to limit videogames to Design or Computer Engineering careers. These studies are mostly aimed at private faculties or enterprises mostly, but they have not yet been integrated into their own Videogame studies at their own, or public degrees at all. What I am trying to achieve with my research work, is to develop new forms of research, and methodologies for studying and analysing videogames, by taking a close look at their key relationships with another forms of art, and the technologies that made these relationships available, as well as their improvements and influences coming from other Art disciplines over the years. As this is a work in progress, what I will explain in this article, is what I have achieved to date. The aim of my research work is to expand my thesis, and, through the years, to write different publications related to these issues.

Questo libro ha due obiettivi correlati: individuare, dagli anni Settanta fino ai giorni nostri, alcuni aspetti della serialità narrativa all’interno dei videogiochi destinati alle piattaforme casalinghe, e parallelamente individuare quei videogiochi in cui la narrazione tocca tematiche delicate chiamando moralmente in causa l’utente. Sebbene i videogiochi suddivisi in episodi e rilasciati a intervalli variabili di tempo sui mercati digitali rappresentino un fenomeno relativamente recente, alcuni esponenti fin dagli anni Settanta hanno evidenziato la presenza implicita di alcuni aspetti formali della serialità narrativa consolidati su altri settori d’intrattenimento. Tali aspetti, grazie alla costante evoluzione ludica e narrativa del medium videoludico, si sono sempre più esplicitati fino ad arrivare ai giorni nostri, in cui alcune compagnie sviluppatrici hanno ottenuto successo grazie allo sviluppo e alla distribuzione serializzata. Questo percorso storico evidenzia inoltre una progressiva complessità delle trame presenti in vari videogiochi, dove le narrazioni si articolano sulla base delle scelte degli utenti. Tali scelte, spesso corrispondenti a momenti di grande intensità drammatica e importanza per lo sviluppo del racconto, chiamano spesso in causa i giocatori da un punto di vista morale grazie a sofisticate strategie di design.La presenza di videogiochi esplicitamente e implicitamente seriali sul mercato che cercano di incutere riflessioni di rilievo durante la fruizione sottoscrive un concetto sempre più disforico legato all’intrattenimento videoludico ormai non più ancorato al solo obiettivo di divertire.

My doctoral thesis on video games and Fine Arts. You can read the rest of my doctoral thesis through here: http://digibug.ugr.es/handle/10481/49414#.Wp_aFHyCFle

It is in Spanish though, accessible where the .pdf file is hosted (down in that webpage, where it says "Visualizar/abrir".

This paper addresses the lack of solid historical information concerning early computer game sales and preferences. Two consistent data series from the magazines Softalk and Computer Gaming World (CGW) are analyzed to give an overview of the best selling and best rated games by players for the period of 1980-1984. A “genre palette ” is inferred from the sources, giving a snapshot of how contemporaries framed and interpreted the offer in computer games. A comparison of the series reveals the CGW readership constitutes a distinct “hardcore ” play community amongst general computer game players. It is also observed that genre preferences vary in time: arcade games peak in 1982 and then recede in favor of computer-native genres. A brief comparison with Atari 2600 best sellers reveal the inadequacy of the computer game genre palette to describe home console games. The historical and constructed nature of genres as “horizons of expectations ” is discussed.

Chapter 5 begins the second part of the book, “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).” Whereas the first part focused on the sensational address and direct stimulation of the horror viewer, gamer, and browser, the second half focuses on monsters. This chapter argues for understanding monsters as figures that embody and limit anxieties, and which therefore offer reassuring locations onto which those anxieties can be placed. This argument places the monster-centric “philosophy of horror” of Noel Carroll in dialogue with the explicitly unembodied theory of abjection of Julia Kristeva to understand the importance of this embodiment and limitation to traditional horror: horror is a vehicle for working through anxieties that otherwise are not, or cannot, be articulated. The chapter first establishes the extent to which monstrosity is an essentially formal category—decided by stylistic presentation as much as by biological make-up. It then performs close readings of three recent works that engage with this tradition of monstrous forms to minimize visualization and embodiment and, therefore, the monster function: It Follows (2014), the Paranormal Activity series of films (2007–2015), and the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010).

Johnson examines “bullet hell” or “danmaku” games, and unpicks their relationships to Eastern and Western gaming cultures, and competitive and non-competitive gamers. He first traces the genre’s history and its subsequent spread from Japan into the West, before focusing on the extraordinarily high levels of reflex and eyesight required to play them at the highest level. The chapter then examines several interrelated issues: the epistemological uncertainty surrounding the concept of world records in a community without any centralized database of information; the newly globalized culture of high scores; and why less-skilled players choose to play games with such an extreme reflex requirement. It concludes by summarizing the present state of the genre and the place of danmaku in the broader world of gaming.

Se la storiografia del videogioco sta transitando dai circoli di appassionati e collezionisti all'accademia, perdendo forse il fascino da camera delle meraviglie, ma acquistando rigore scientifico e attendibilità storica, le molte storie locali di questo medium sono ancora per lo più inesplorate. Le ricostruzioni storiografiche più complete e aggiornate2 rendono conto, in larga parte, dell'industria e del mercato statunitensi, e producono inevitabilmente una segmentazione cronologica che a quel contesto economico e industriale fa riferimento. Gli anni Ottanta, in particolare, sono spesso narrati a partire da grandi rotture e cambi di paradigma: il crollo del mercato delle console nel 1982-1983 3, l'avvento dell'elettronica di consumo giapponese, con Nintendo in testa4, la diffusione dei personal computer dopo il lancio di Macintosh nel 1984 e Amiga nel 1985 5. Tuttavia, volendo ricostruire una storia della produzione e del consumo di videogiochi in Italia, queste cesure rivelano la propria arbitrarietà, divenendo di fatto poco più che «date feticcio»6 essenzialmente prive di profondità storiografica. Se infatti, «during the 1970s Italy had been the continent's leading producer of video games»7 e aziende come la Zaccaria, di Calderara di Reno (Bologna), avevano operato una riuscita conversione dalla produzione di flipper e altre macchine elettromeccaniche a quella di videogiochi cabinati, da installare in bar e sale giochi, con il decennio successivo l'allineamento alle pratiche commerciali statunitensi diviene notevolmente meno pronunciato. Nel 1984, la produzione di videogiochi da bar della Zaccaria, che, in quello stesso anno, un articolo pubblicato su «Computer Games» aveva definito «l'avventura di tre fratelli bolognesi che il mercato americano guarda con una punta d'invidia»8, si arresta. Schiacciate dalla concorrenza americana e giapponese aziende come la Zaccaria saranno costrette a interrompere la commercializzazione di videogiochi, per dedicarsi unicamente ai flipper. La produzione industriale di videogiochi coin-op9 non aveva mantenuto le promesse adombrate nell'articolo di «Computer Games», ma la tensione tra consumo pubblico, nelle sale giochi e nei bar, e privato, tramite console dedicate e computer, che stava investendo il medium in quegli anni era all'opera anche nell'ecosistema mediale italiano. Molti degli intervistati di questa ricerca affermano di aver vissuto questo passaggio già nella prima metà degli anni Ottanta. Bonaventura Di Bello, game designer e giornalista attivo lungo tutto il decennio, ad esempio afferma: «Ho iniziato giocando con i videogiochi da sala giochi, il videogioco da bar [alla fine degli anni Settanta]; dopo di che mi sono imbattuto nell'informatica personale. In questo processo mi sono riavvicinato ai giochi dal punto di vista degli home computer». Anche Antonio Farina, direttore di produzione negli anni Ottanta di Idea, una delle prime software house italiane, rende conto di questo dualismo: «Ho iniziato a interessarmi ai videogiochi con i primi giochi arcade. Stiamo parlando di Space Invaders quando ero ancora al liceo [nei tardi anni Settanta].

This essay describes two different phenomena: action games, understood as a genre of games in which the player’s sensori-motor skills prevail over his cognitive activity, and a general theory of action-taking in context of the game-playing practice. Through a short history of the main genres and sub-genres traditionally identified with “Action games”, and the conclusion that such a categorization pertains to a mode of action rather than a given genre, the properties of action games are identified as involving a standardized repertoire of actions, emphasis on sensori-motor skills, and short-term action sequences.

Videogames were once made with a vast range of tools and technologies, but in recent years a small number of commercially available 'game engines' have reached an unprecedented level of dominance in the global videogame industry. In particular, the Unity game engine has penetrated all scales of videogame development, from the large studio to the hobbyist bedroom, such that over half of all new videogames are reportedly being made with Unity. This book provides an urgently needed critical analysis of Unity as ‘cultural software’ that facilitates particular production workflows, design methodologies, and software literacies. Building on long-standing methods in media and cultural studies, and drawing on interviews with a range of videogame developers, Benjamin Nicoll and Brendan Keogh argue that Unity deploys a discourse of democratization to draw users into its ‘circuits of cultural software’. For scholars of media production, software culture, and platform studies, this book provides a framework and language to better articulate the increasingly dominant role of software tools in cultural production. For videogame developers, educators, and students, it provides critical and historical grounding for a tool that is widely used yet rarely analysed from a cultural angle.

En los 90 se escriben las primeras historias del videojuego. Allí se estabilizan una serie de determinismos que reducen la producción discursiva del videojuego a un mero efecto de un estado tecnológico y, en menor medida, socioeconómico. Esas historias operaron como condición de producción de la mayor parte de abordajes historiográficos posteriores de los game studies. La predominancia de las explicaciones deterministas produjo una vacancia: no hay casi periodizaciones que atiendan a las formas del videojuego. En este trabajo se propone una periodización compuesta de cuatro momentos caracterizados por grandes desplazamientos y transformaciones discursivas que inicia con surgimiento mediático en los 70, continúa con el establecimiento de un sistema de géneros en los 80, sigue con la afirmación del realismo tridimensional y fotorrealista como dominante estilística, y llega hasta el presente con los constantes reenvíos al pasado y las nuevas modalidades de desludización.

Following the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851, the V&A created a space for applied arts centered on industry and design, a space that serves as a conscious foil to traditional fine arts museums. Curators Marie Foulston and Kristian Volsing carried the spirit of this mission forward into the twenty-first century with their exhibition Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt. The show revealed the innovative practices video game designers have developed over the past fifteen years, while simultaneously asserting the radical potential of the medium by focusing on politically motivated activist games. In addition to examining the sociopolitical impact of a pastime that diverts nearly a quarter of the world's population, the curators devoted specific attention to issues of design and craft. The exhibition was divided into four sections: New Designers, Disruptors, Players_Online, and Players_Offline. With its dim lighting, dark gray walls and permeable mesh dividers, fluorescent text, and video projections on LCD screens, the show's inventive design immersed viewers and guided them through a space that felt like a virtual world.

Videogame history is not just a history of one successful technology replacing the next. It is also a history of platforms and communities that never quite made it; that struggled to make their voices heard; that aggravated against the conventions of the day; and that never enjoyed the commercial success or recognition of their major counterparts.

In Minor Platforms in Videogame History, Benjamin Nicoll argues that 'minor' videogame histories are anything but insignificant. Through an analysis of transitional, decolonial, imaginary, residual, and minor videogame platforms, Nicoll highlights moments of difference and discontinuity in videogame history. From the domestication of vector graphics in the early years of videogame consoles to the 'cloning' of Japanese computer games in South Korea in the 1980s, this book explores case studies that challenge taken-for-granted approaches to videogames, platforms, and their histories.

Abstract—For over three decades, the public has been led to believe that one video game’s popularity nearly crippled a nation’s supply of coinage. As intriguing, amazing, and unbelievable as this story might seem, the facts simply do not add up. In the end, the only defining word for the “100 Yen Myth” is exactly that, unbelievable.

Early citation version "Homo Ludens", rok 2013 http://ptbg.org.pl/HomoLudens/ Niniejszy plik zawiera tekst przyjęty do publikacji w piśmie "Homo Ludens" (po recenzjach i pracy redakcyjnej), w wersji do wczesnego cytowania. W ostatecznej postaci tekst udostępniony zostanie po zakończeniu składu. W przypadku powoływania się na tekst prosimy zaznaczyć, że wykorzystywana była wersja do wczesnego cytowania. Może to być istotne m.in. ze względu na numerację stron, która w procesie składu zostanie zmieniona. Zachęcamy także do sprawdzenia, czy ostateczna wersja tekstu nie ukazała się już na stronie internetowej "Homo Ludens" This is an early citation version of a text accepted for publication in the journal "Homo Ludens" (after peer reviews and editorial work). In its final form, the document will be available after digital typesetting is finished.

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how the pattern of play technologies follows the patterns of play types in developmental psychology. This research provides an overview of dominant theories in developmental psychology and offers evidence of its parallel in play modalities adopted by electronic game audiences. The fundamental benefit of such framing is the potential to offer a future facing understanding of the next generation of play technologies within a variety of environments. Here the researchers have chosen to demonstrate this evolution through the history of arcade game play. However, the researchers conclude with a brief demonstration of how similar developmental stages have been demonstrate in the evolution of portable game systems and home console game interfaces.
This approach describes game design and player preference not as evolutionary, but as developmental. It demonstrates game design and player preference through a developmental framework, which mirrors the maturation of an individual. Players mature into new play modalities in much the way humans mature into play stages.

By any benchmark-economic, mind-share, cultural impact, etc.-video games are now a ubiquitous and important element of modern culture. Aft er decades in the social and commercial wilderness, games are taken as seriously as anything "fun" can be in an industrial society. Yet this very sense of frivolity is a major reason why few people understand the medium, and why research is oft en more focused on what evils lurk below the surface than on a fundamental understanding of what is going on above it. Accordingly, this chapter will serve as a primer to anyone looking for basic background knowledge about games, gamers, and the expanding online world they inhabit. Th e fi rst half off ers a historical perspective, tracing the industry's origins and the social diff usion of games, while the second half off ers a closer look at several trends and important diff erences across the medium, and concludes with a brief note on research traditions. We focus on the so-called "casual" explosion, the continuing importance of console-based games, the boom of virtual worlds, the migration of children into online spaces, and fi nally, the oddly named "serious games" movement. We off er this second set of perspectives because games are oft en mistakenly assumed to be as uniform as other media. But unlike books, fi lm, magazines, or television, the formats, uses, and types of video games are dizzyingly complex and varied. Similarly, our understanding of the cognitive processes and social spaces surrounding games tends to lag behind the more nuanced and larger body of literature studying more established media. We know a great deal about television's eff ects, culture, and how people use it, but we oft en have a hard time understanding why a solo Bejeweled player is on an entirely diff erent planet than a raiding team in World of Warcraft . But to begin, it's best to take the long view and see where video games came from.

The article examines three tools used for hobbyist game development in 1990s Japan: the Dezaemon series of user-customizable shoot 'em up games, the RPG Tsukūru (RPG Maker) series of tools for creating Japanese-style role-playing games and the NScripter scripting engine for visual novels. In doing so, it aims to highlight the diversity, but also to bring out the commonalities, of game 'produs-age': producing video games by using dedicated software. The focus on a non-western historical context is an attempt to challenge assumptions about the locales and platforms of game produsage prevalent in English-language scholarship. The article concludes with a two-axis typology of game produsage, based on the degree of expressive freedom their functionality enables and the limitations they impose on users' distributing their games.

Though they have often been marginal, female video game characters have been present, even playable, from the early days of the industry. From Metroid’s Samus Aran (1986) to Lara Croft (1996) to Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), this entry tracks the history of women heroes in video games, with a focus on titles where the player character is female. Broadly speaking, the representation of women in video games tends to reflect the gender politics and assumptions of the gaming industry as a whole. Early games regularly hypersexualize their female protagonists, for the benefit of an assumed male, heterosexual audience. From the 2000s, as identity politics go mainstream and the gaming industry itself becomes bigger and more diversified, we see a rise in customization: the player is able to choose their gender, race, body type, and—on rarer occasions—sexuality. And in more recent years, with the rise of the indie games industry, complex and powerful women are more frequently represented, both on screen and off, as capable of carrying a successful franchise. Despite the increasingly nuanced and visible depiction of women heroes in video games, however, there is still much to be done in terms of the frequency, intersectionality, and paratextual framing of these portrayals.

Published by the MIT Press in the "Platform Studies" series, this is a book about the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that is not celebratory or self-congratulatory. Most other accounts declare the Super NES the undisputed victor of the “16-bit console wars” of 1989–1995. In this book, Dominic Arsenault reminds us that although the SNES was a strong platform filled with high-quality games, it was also the product of a short-sighted corporate vision focused on maintaining Nintendo’s market share and business model. This led the firm to fall from a dominant position during its golden age (dubbed by Arsenault the “ReNESsance”) with the NES to the margins of the industry with the Nintendo 64 and GameCube consoles. Arsenault argues that Nintendo’s conservative business strategies and resistance to innovation during the SNES years explain its market defeat by Sony’s PlayStation.

Extending the notion of “platform” to include the marketing forces that shape and constrain creative work, Arsenault draws not only on game studies and histories but on game magazines, boxes, manuals, and advertisements to identify the technological discourses and business models that formed Nintendo's "Super Power". He also describes the cultural changes in video games during the 1990s that slowly eroded the love of gamer enthusiasts ("Spoony Bards") for the SNES as the Nintendo generation matured. Finally, he chronicles the many technological changes that occurred through the SNES's lifetime, including full-motion video, CD-ROM storage, and the shift to 3D graphics. Because of the SNES platform’s "Silverware" architecture, Arsenault explains, Nintendo resisted these changes and continued to focus on traditional gameplay genres.

Much of the research and literature about the still young history of video games has been conducted following a cult of celebrity mostly concerned with highlighting American and Japanese perspectives. Considering that technological innovation is a multi-centred complex process —not the linear progression depicted in many writings— this article focuses on the specific context of the early eighties in Spain, in a decisive moment wherein personal computers began to reach markets, even though information on how to program them was confusing and difficult to access. While both, programming and gameplay are sometimes described as solitary or antisocial activities, this paper explores the landscape of Spanish computer games in the early eighties through a case study of the Spanish computer game “Bugaboo (The Flea)” programmed by Francisco Portalo and Francisco Suárez, ironically, released before in the UK (in 1983) rather than Spain. By following the traces that this game was leaving behind (even before it was programmed), I will show the performative potential that this game had, first of all, as a way of tinkering and learning among enthusiasts and practitioners onto how to master micro computers and, afterwards, becoming a digital commodity as well as a bargaining chip in the negotiations to distribute Amstrad micro computers in Spain.

By the end of the 1980s, Nintendo was broadly synonymous with video games, and Nintendo’s default mascot, Mario, was the prototypical video game character—essentially the face of console gaming at a time in which video games were surging in popularity following the industry’s near-collapse. For industry insiders such as SEGA of Japan’s president Hayao Nakayama, toppling the plumber’s white-gloved grip on the gaming industry would require an entirely different character. While initial plans did not call for a blue hedgehog with a plucky attitude, a few design meetings (and some basic knowledge of zoology) provided SEGA with one of the most well-known video gaming mascots of all time: Sonic the Hedgehog.

Lien de ma chaîne YouTube :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbVubs_4mYkf09LJUHcMLIA

Mémoire de recherche de Master. L'étude porte sur l'évolution de la représentation de la figure chevaleresque dans le jeu vidéo, avec une mise en comparaison avec d'autres médias audiovisuels. La période couverte va globalement des années 1980 à 2019.

There can be few other words in the English language that inspire such scepticism as “interactivity.” However, this article starts from a qualitatively different perspective reasserting interactivity as a useful concept with specific respect to video games. This article addresses the question: What is interactivity for? The analysis of interactivity, when seen as a means to an end, must consider the forms of that end. Put simply: what is gained through modes of interactivity is content in a vast variety of forms. The authors move onto an analysis of interactivity in terms of the following definition: interactivity is a conceptualising facility that mediates between environments and content and users enabling generation. A key development in the analysis of interactivity is the examination of the significance of environment in relation to content including the use of virtual environments within the interactive scope of video games. This environmental characteristic was examined in a series of investigations into cybernetics by Gordon Pask in the 1970s and 1980s. This was an early attempt to devise a human/computer system that was both mutual in its relations and supportive of creativity. We assert that it is time for Pask’s work to be recognised as of fundamental importance for the examination of interactivity and the constitution of dynamic, creative environments including video games. Pask offers a description of a “Cyberarchitecture” for the sharing and making of content. This formulation is complementary to Espen Aarseth’s concept of cybertext. The authors explore examples in video games through the lens of Cyberarchitecture with particular reference to Pask and Curran’s framework of concept sharing, concept making, privacy and balance. The article concludes with a call for further application of this framework to video games and beyond. 

Keywords: Interactivity, Cybernetics, Cyberarchitecture, Concept Sharing, Concept Making, Privacy, Balance

In this chapter I look over the many different futuristic economies that games have portrayed, the structures and architectures that emerged from them and what they show us about the potential of the computer game – as opposed to the film, the novel, and so forth – not just to present visions of the future but to make those visions playable and open to exploration. This will start with an overview of some of the most visible megastructures in contemporary games, with a particular focus on the specific representations of future societies and economies they represent. We then move on to explore the importance of these being specifically in-game constructions, and how games are serving as the site for experimenting with possible techno-economic futures, and specifically playable futures. In doing so I will argue that games are a particularly rich medium for examining science fiction economies and the physical structures they produce, and that in the future we should expect to see these imaginaries becoming more popular, more varied and more notable.

Forfatteren af dette speciale har foretaget en kvalitativ undersøgelse, hvor 9 spillere af gamle spil, også kaldet retrogamere, er blevet interviewet om deres motivationer for at spille gamle spil, hvordan de spiller dem og hvor laenge. Ved at indtage et faenomenologisk ståsted, ønsker dette speciale at undersøge, hvordan disse gamle spil manifesterer sig i respondenternes livsverdener og hvad dette indebaerer for deres opfattelse og brug af disse gamle spil. Denne undersøgelse er blevet betragtet som frugtbar, da den kan problematisere og videreudvikle den nuvaerende akademiske diskurs omkring retrogaming, der reducerer alle nutidige interaktioner med gamle spil til en aktivitet, der er motiveret af nostalgi. Ved at analysere de indsamlede interviewdata, argumenteres der i dette speciale for, at der eksisterer flere motivationer til at spille gamle spil, udover nostalgi.

From gaming consoles to smartphones, video games are everywhere today, including those set in historical times and particularly in the ancient world. With successful series such as “Assassin’s Creed” or “Civilization” selling millions of copies, video games rival even television and cinema in their role in shaping younger audiences’ perceptions of the past. In this medium of games of different genres, classical antiquity has always loomed large and titles like “Rome: Total War” or “Age of Empires” have become household names. Yet classical scholarship, though embracing other popular media as areas of research, has so far largely ignored video games as a vehicle of Classical Receptions. This collection of essays aims to change that. Dedicated to the study of receptions, remediations, and representations of Classical Antiquity across all electronic gaming platforms and genres, it presents both classicists and a general audience with cutting-edge research in Classics and Classical Receptions, Game Studies and ArchaeoGaming. In doing so, it adopts different perspectives and combines papers from scholars, gamers, game developers and historical consultants to deliver the first state of the art impression of both the wide array of ‘ancient’ video games, as well as the challenges and rewards of this new and exciting field.

Video games are increasingly becoming an important media today, despite the light connota-tion of its initial categorization. Today they are an industry that produces billions of dollars and employs engineers and artists alike in an art form spanning interactive games, to virtual socie-ties where millions of people dwell. However, like all human products, our same fears, flaws and xenophobia show in the games, with the reflection of hatred, racism and stereotypes that are our everyday experience. Also, because of the influence of other media, like television, with misrepresentations of blacks, Latinos and other races, or the objectification of women are pre-sent in video games. The significant thing found researching for this assignment is that most of those who use these games are themselves part of minorities or races that are not exactly white Americans. Abuse of the frustrations and desires of the user, handling codes and the system an-swers of gamers to maintain the player engagement, has more resemblance to the use of illegal drugs than with art, but however, the complexity of the design, stories and global assessment, have led to other considerations by experts. Competing in the games could be considered as having more of escapism that the reality of engaging, but all human beings are expected in their tribes to compete and demonstrate their value as a member while complying with social norms or expectations. Same as satisfying or surrender to corporate or group interests. Here are some thoughts for the purpose of this study.

The goal of this article is to provide a conceptual framework to better understand digital games in learning and creative contexts through the dimensions of play, design, and participation. This framework can be used as a guiding tool for the selection, implementation, and evaluation of game- based approaches in formal and informal educational settings, as well as a blueprint for making sense of playful learning and creativity in virtual worlds and technology-mediated environments. In essence, this article seeks to answer the question “What are digital games and how can we make sense of them for learning and creativity?” The proposed visual model and conceptual framework, here defined as Playful Constructivism, is grounded on the learning theories of Situated Cognition, Social Constructivism, and Constructionism, and draws from play and game studies, design-based learning, and affinity spaces research. This framework is not intended as the “ultimate” conceptualization of game-based learning, but rather as an agile tool that can guide scholars, practitioners, and students through the affordances, challenges, and opportunities of implementing and using digital games in learning and creative contexts.

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The first case study compares contemporary indie game scene and the shareware game scene of the 1990’s. This two moments in video game history share interesting institutional resemblance: (1) willingness to bypass intermediaries, (2) strong connection to the homebrew movement and (3) innovation in distribution of low budget games. Sometimes the analogies are straightforward (e.g. shareware packs bundled with game magazines and contemporary digital game bundles). Sometimes both scenes seem to function almost as reverse images of each other but the formal similarities are striking. For example, the crowdfunding model used by contemporary indies as well as the notion of “early access” (you give us the money, we eventually give you the game) seem to be the exact opposite of “episodic” shareware model (we give you the game, you eventually give us the money).

However, to call contemporary indie scene a “second wave” of shareware would be too far fetched, as there are striking differences. Firstly, tracking the histories of developers and genres that originated from the shareware movement leads to a paradoxical conclusion that the shareware scene is more of a precursor to the contemporary “AAA” games then indie games, as it was mostly absorbed by the mainstream. Secondly, some of the most prominent design characteristics of indie games were surprisingly not present in the shareware space. For example, appealing to retro aesthetics was not prevalent in the shareware scene. Last but not least, it is not obvious why the popularity of shareware withered. Will this be the fate of contemporary indie scene too?

While the world of casual gaming currently revolves largely around smart phones and social networks the marked start of this phenomenon is often perceived to have been signaled with Nintendo’s introduction of its motion controlled Wii console.  Indeed, this new casual direction is considered to have emerged quite suddenly with the system’s sharp movement away from typical industry conventions and expected player demographics.

However, by looking more specifically at the marketing and product design direction taken in Japan for some of Nintendo’s preceding systems this sense of abruptness becomes less pronounced, and a more natural progression towards family focused interactions and social play becomes apparent.  Such an analysis reveals that the feeling sudden conversion is more so due to the rapid change which occurred in the Western marketing, an alteration which was forced due to a long followed and largely static brand personality being incompatible with the new Wii system.

In this rapid conversion to a casual focus the Western marketing can be seen to have borrowed heavily from the frameworks already established in Japan in its own creation and cultivation of a casual market.  Due to this core influence it is revealing to look at the impetus behind Nintendo’s focus towards the casual within Japan.  Through observing the surrounding social situation, it becomes possible to perceive that this direction towards simple fun and social interactions was influenced by, and acted as a reaction to, the sense of societal malaise which arose within Japan in the 1990s due to a variety of events and influences.  As a result, it is possible to perceive that Nintendo, in its search to appeal to its Japanese customers and satiate their needs in regards these feelings of anxiety, moved in a design direction that resulted in what is now referred to as the casual.

The following draws from the marketing surrounding a range of Nintendo’s systems in both Japan and the West and recent history of Japan to illustrate how the origins and the impetus behind the casual turn can be seen to be shaped more by Japanese sensibilities than is often acknowledged.

This paper reveals an affective and nostalgic foundational component of the “Japanese Role-Playing-Game (JRPG)” video game genre through an investigation of its history and use as seen on gaming blogs, forums, and videos. As a result of new technology, like the Microsoft Xbox Console, hitting the market in the early 2000s, the term JRPG started becoming popular as consoles and computers gained the capacity to play games that were previously exclusive to either one or the other. Prior to that, the dominant producer of video game consoles was Japan. As Western-made RPGs, which were generally made for computers, became increasingly more available for console play as a result of console-computer convergence, the term “JRPG” became a way for gamers to distinguish games that “felt” similar to RPGs made for Japan-made consoles in the 80s and 90s. Now the “Japan” aspect of the genre’s name is a way of negotiating identity and memory in a rapidly changing technological landscape, rather than being used specifically to identify a game’s country of origin. This genre, which runs counter to typical genre organizational schemes based on either game-play mechanics or narrative themes, further illuminates how memory and nostalgia can affect how players categorize their gaming worlds.

This paper proposes to examine in particular the use of games in the teaching of History, featuring both analog when digital games. To this end, we start from a theoretical and conceptual approach to the games in education and culture. Second, we treat the learning involving the relationship between play and learning in the classroom. For this purpose were used theoretical fields of history, philosophy and pedagogy. The work aims to recognize the role of the Brazilian Institutional Program Started teaching (PIBID) in teacher education from experiments conducted in a public secondary school of the area east of Porto Alegre. This study was conducted from work with Age of Empires II game to a class of elementary school, being embodied as an educational workshop of the Brazilian Institutional Program of Introduction to Teaching (PIBID). The work attempts to lecture topics such as the importance of play for young people, new technologies and its impact on school life, the creation of educational games, applying the methodology of game-based projects, among other matters related to these. The case study aimed to generate debate on the issues concerning the new teaching methodologies.