Host: Sophie Bémelmans (University of Lausanne)
Adrian Demleitner (Bern Academy of the Arts)
Programming and Becoming – Tracing video game programming practices in 1980 and -90ies’ Switzerland
Since the field’s initial inquiries (Aarseth 1997; Arsenault, Côté, and Larochelle 2015) little advance has been made in studying the structural aspects of video games – an amalgamation of computing and the creative expression of people, resulting in a unique medium. Programming was essential for the advent of video games in their early days, and closer to the technicalities of computing than in modern-day video game development (Kittler 1993). This proposal centres on the early adoption of programming for creative expression in the context of video game development.
The 1980ies marked the arrival of the home-computer. It was a time when computing systems became affordable and got marketed to private consumers. Early models, such as the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, or the Atari ST quickly became popular in Europe and opened the door for digitality to enter the home (Haddon 1988; Williams 1976). This period also marks a first step towards the democratization of digital creation (Blankenheim 2023; Navarro-Remesal and Pérez Latorre 2022). All of these systems came with various features to write code and software programs, possibly offering novel approaches for creative expression.
This proposal traces the honing of video game programming practices by reporting on two ongoing case studies: Robox (1986, Commodore 64) and Aldebaran (1992, Acorn Archimedes). Both video games were developed by young amateurs in Switzerland, who spent considerable amounts of their leisure-time doing so. This report centres on findings regarding the process of programming knowledge acquisition, possible motivations driving the development process, and argues how writing code can be an act of engaging with one’s lifeworld. This inquiry triangulates these findings through interviews with the developers, investigating source material of their programming knowledge, and lastly a critical reading of the games’ source code.
Written in Commodore BASIC, respectively ARM Assembly, Robox and Aldebaran were developed during a time when comparatively more code had to be developed to cover basic structural video game functionality. Whereas today programming frameworks and libraries aid in video game development, aspects like language parser or efficiently drawing triangles on screen demanded more engagement from the programmers in 1980ies and -90ies. While language parsers were essential for text-adventures, the optimized drawing of triangles was important for video games that used 3D graphics.
The initial bold statement about the structure of video games will guide this inquiry as a hypothesis. If programming really offered novel forms of expression enabled through computing, answers could be found when writing code was a necessity for video game development, and when it still had to deal with the specificities and pitfalls of hardware (Höltgen 2014; Höltgen 2020).
References
Aarseth, Espen J. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Arsenault, Dominic, Pierre-Marc Côté, and Audrey Larochelle. 2015. “The Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games.”
Blankenheim, Björn. 2023. Die Kunst des Computer Game Design: Zur Produktionsästhetik von Computerspielen (1982-1996) im Spiegel der historischen Kunstliteratur. 1st ed. Vol. 47. Design. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448342.
Haddon, Leslie. 1988. “The Home Computer: The Making of a Consumer Electronic.” Science as Culture 1 (2): 7–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505438809526198.
Höltgen, Stefan, ed. 2014. Shift-Restore-Escape: Retrocomputing Und Computerarchäologie. Deutsche Erstausgabe, 1. Auflage. Retrotopia, Band 1. Winnenden: CSW-Verlag.
———. 2020. “OPEN HISTORY,” March. https://doi.org/10.18452/21165.
Kittler, Friedrich A. 1993. Draculas Vermächtnis: technische Schriften. 1. Aufl. Reclam-Bibliothek 1476. Leipzig: Reclam.
Navarro-Remesal, Víctor, and Óliver Pérez Latorre, eds. 2022. Perspectives on the European Videogame. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Williams, Richard. 1976. “Early Computers in Europe.” In Proceedings of the June 7-10, 1976, National Computer Conference and Exposition, 21–29. AFIPS ’76. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/1499799.1499804.
David Murphy (Staffordshire University)
Platforms, Portable Consumer Electronics, and the Making of Sony’s PSP
Extended abstracts will be added by the time of the event.
Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman (University of California, Irvine)
From Toys to Technology: Mattel, Intellivision, and the Domestication of Videogames
Extended abstracts will be added by the time of the event.