Host: Arno Görgen (Bern Academy of the Arts)
Luciana Lima and Tehri Marttila (Interactive Technologies Institute, Lisbon)
From the Arcade Room to Portuguese Homes: An Analysis of the Early Computer Games Made in Portugal (1983-1992)
This contribution presents a preliminary mapping of computer games created in Portugal between 1983 and 1992. The period delimited here is related to the rise and decline of the best-selling computer in Portugal in the 1980s – the ZX Spectrum. These results are part of a study that analyze the emergence of gaming culture in Portugal and the evolution of female participation in this culture[1]. We have been mapping the evolution of female participation in the digital games sector in Portugal since 2019. We have collected data through different research sources, namely newspapers, magazines, and advertising from the 1980s to 2000s, in-depth interviews, biographies, autoethnographies and other personal documents of women and men who have participated in local gaming culture in the pre-internet phase. We are interested in the convergence of knowledge and research practices that can address the different layers of power that exclude women from the digital games sector (Lima, 2023; Lima et al., 2024).
In 2022, we analyzed the early press narratives about computer games during the establishment of democracy in Portugal (1980s). Initially, we focused on the narratives created by two computer publications about the role of electronic games in the broader social context and how gender and age issues were presented in these narratives. The patterns resulting from this analysis suggested a consistent pattern of male technocratic privilege that manifested itself in framings ranging from girls’ and women’s lack of interest in technology to microcomputer advertisements in which men were in a position of dominance over the machine (Lima, Pinto, and Gouveia, 2022). Then, in 2023, we examined the pirate infrastructure established in the 1980s, highlighting the importance of this infrastructure for the emergence of the local gaming fan community. We presented the different forms that electronic game piracy took throughout its development in Portugal. We also highlighted the importance of software piracy for the technical development of the first digital game specialists in Portugal when access to knowledge in this area was limited (Lima, Pinto, Marttila, and Gouveia, 2023).
In her study on the archaeologies of gender in video game histories, Laine Nooney (2013) suggests that instead of asking “Where are the women in gaming history?”, we should ask “Why are they there the way they are?”. Instead of desperately searching for the existence of women in the various contexts of gaming culture or focusing our attention on their absence, we should look at a set of objects and events that have played a decisive role in how gaming culture has been established, debated, controlled, and incorporated into wider cultural practices. Digital games encompass images, narratives and aesthetics that can provide a window into the dominant conceptions of gender and race when they were/are created. Therefore, it is essential to analyze the first games developed in a technical and entertainment environment when they were a local, limited, and disparate phenomenon (Kirkpatrick, 2021).
We are currently analyzing the computer games created by Portuguese people in the years known as the boom of game development to ZX Spectrum computers in Portugal (Leão, 2022). Thus, as Kirkpatrick (2021) proposes, we will focus on the roots of “proto-games”, analyzing the first Portuguese computer games created before the globalised interconnectedness of the leisure software ecosystem.
Our analysis corpus totals 83 computer games preserved by the Planeta Sinclair retrogaming community. Planeta Sinclair was born in early 2016. It pioneered the preservation of recreational and educational software in Portugal, focusing on Portuguese productions made on ZX Spectrum computers. Through an exhaustive work of identification, emulation, storage, and file organization, the Planeta Sinclair editors make the entire collection of preserved games available on their blog[2].
The Planeta Sinclair team provided us with valuable information and images, namely the names of the game’s developers (which allowed us to identify the author’s gender), the covers and gameplay screenshots, which were essential for performing a content analysis (Bardin, 2020 [1977]). When the gameplay was available on the Internet, we also included it in our analysis. Some computer games we analyzed were not commercialized, and others were created at the demand of Portuguese publishers that sold original and pirated software. As Robin Bootes (2024) did with the analysis of British magazines, the choice of computer games that make up our sample “seeks to add synchronic and diachronic value to the research”. In this way, not only video games considered “successful” received attention (for example, the games Alien Evolution and Kraal that British publishers Gremlin Graphics and Hewson Consultants marketed), “but also the lesser-known” (Bootes 2024, 219).
First, we classified the sample according to the year the game was created, the genre of the game (e.g., text adventure, arcade game: shoot-em-up, maze, etc.), the themes covered (e.g., sci-fi, Portuguese history and culture, and pornography) and, finally, the language used (e.g., Portuguese or English). We cross-referenced this data with interviews conducted by the Planeta Sinclair team with some of the games’s authors. Given the large amount of information available and the limited number of the research team (only two researchers), the content analysis still needs to be completed. However, we can make some preliminary considerations.
Except for two females, the computer games were developed by males. The youngest of them was thirteen years old. Most of the games were created by one person, but there were teams of up to three people. We found an avowedly “do-it-yourself” (DIY) graphic orientation, based on an arcade, board and card games aesthetic. However, this data does not say that the first game developers were involved in other electronic leisure activities. A more in-depth analysis of this group’s spaces and forms of leisure can help us better understand whether computer games were a continuation of the taste for arcade games. In some interviews with Portuguese amateur programmers that we have already analyzed, the consumption of comics and films was mentioned, which suggests that other non-electronic leisure territories should be considered in our analysis.
From 1984 onwards, access to adventure game editors (such as The Quill Adventure System and Graphic Adventure Creator) was fundamental to creating twenty-two text adventure games. According to André Leão (2022 133), “because they were very intuitive, adventure game engines allowed Portuguese amateur programmers, with little knowledge of Assembly language and no instruction manual (due to the intense software piracy), to venture into this genre of games.” From 1986 onwards, more text adventures were created by these programmers. Although some games were not sold in stores, their authors sent their work to the local press (mainly to the computer supplements of the Portuguese newspapers), hoping that someone would publish their games and put them on the market. Most of these games (17) were written in Portuguese, suggesting no intention of promoting them internationally.
Finally, this is the first effort of a content analysis that crosses different sources of information. This research will continue by considering the recommendations of Pfister and Görgen (2024), who propose examining why and for whom games were developed, how they were received, and, above all, what messages were transmitted.
[1] Game Art and Gender Equity Project. More information at https://www.instagram.com/gameart_genderequity/
[2] https://planetasinclair.blogspot.com/
References
Bardin, Laurence. Análise de Conteúdo [L’Analyse de Contenu, 1977]. Lisboa: Edições 70, 2020.
Bootes, Robin. “Adolescent masculinity and the geek aesthetic: a study of gaming magazine imagery 1982 to 1993”. In Videogame Sciences and Arts. VJ 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, ed. Vale Costa, L., et al. Vol 1984, 2024. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51452-4_16
Kirkpatrick, Graeme. “Welcoming all gods and embracing all places”: Computer games as constitutively transcendent of the local’. In Game History and the Local, Palgrave Games in Context, ed. Melanie Swalwell. Cham: Springer International Publishing (2021):199 –219. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66422-0_11
Leão, André Luna. Os programadores portugueses [Portuguese Programmers]. Museu LOAD ZX Spectrum. Município de Cantanhede, Portugal, 2022. ISBN 978-972-8653- 62-0
Lima, Luciana. Pensar o género a partir dos jogos digitais: uma análise sobre as assimetrias de género na indústria portuguesa de jogos digitais [Thinking about gender through digital games: an analysis of gender asymmetries in the Portuguese digital games industry]. Porto: BAND Editora, 2023. https://booksarenotdead.com/
Lima, Luciana, Pinto, Camila, Marttila, Terhi, and Gouveia, Patrícia. “Home computing and digital gaming piracy in the 1980s in Portugal”. Paper presented at the Digital Games Research Association Conference (DiGRA), Sevilla, Spain, 2023.
Lima, Luciana, Pinto, Camila, and Gouveia, Patrícia. “Genesis of a gaming culture: a historical analysis based on the computer press in Portugal”. Paper presented at the Digital Games Research Association Conference (DiGRA), Kraków, Poland, 2022.
Lima, Luciana et al. “(In) visible women: multidisciplinary creation and collaborative research in transmedia art and gaming in Portugal”. Paper submitted at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA). Brisbane, Australia, 21– 29 June 2024.
Nooney, Laine. “A pedestal, a table, a love letter: Archaeologies of gender in videogame history,” Game Studies, Vol. 13.2, 2013. https://gamestudies.org/1302/articles/nooney
Pfister, Eugen und Görgen, Arno. “Historische Quellenkritik und Digitale Spiele”. Spiel-Kultur-Wissenschaft. Abgerufen am 28. April 2024, von https://doi.org/10.58079/w712
Swalwell, Melanie. Game history and the local. Series Palgrave Games in Context, 2021.
Larissa Wild and David Krummenacher (Zurich University of the Arts, University of Lausanne)
National Games : Looking beyond national borders
Various nations imbue the concept of nationality with a multiplicity of interpretations across different media and institutional frameworks. In Switzerland, for example, the term ‘Swissness’ is used for source indication of products and services as a mark of quality all over the world. In recent years, scholars of game history – which was previously dominated by the North American (O’Donnell 2012), Japanese (Koizumi 2016) and British (Kirkpatrick 2015) narrative – have started to look at local and national game histories (Javet & Rochat 2017; Švelch 2018; Swalwell 2021; Navarro-Remesal & Pérez-Latorre 2021), working on unveiling their countries’ game heritage. It stands to reason that to analyze national and local games, these need to be first defined as such. However, identifying national criteria with which to categorize games as national or not, is not as obvious as it might instinctively appear. Discourse surrounding the origin and nationality of games is often centered (both implicitly and explicitly) around the country in which the games were produced. This framework, however, neglects many different factors which point towards a more nuanced reality and might not necessarily reflect all intended purposes of a games definition as national in the first place.
In exchange with international researchers (Tereza Fousek Krobová, Stanisław Krawczyk & Agata Waszkiewicz) from other game history projects, we realized that we all struggled with defining which games belong into our respective national catalogs. As we did not find publications that attempt to explore this topic in depth, we decided to work together and create an initial collection of criteria that can be used in different definitions of national games. Through literature research and the collection of game examples which showcase distinct difficulties in determining said games’ nationality, we compiled a list of categories which we think are imperative to consider when defining a game as « national », besides its country of origin:
Developer, Studio & Publisher
When defining a game’s nationality, it might be instinctive to solely look at its game studio’s location. However, once we examine it more closely, we see that it isn’t as straightforward: What if a studio has multiple offices in different countries or a game was created in international collaboration? What if a developer made and released a game in a country which is not their home country? These are just two questions which underline that this is far more complex than one might assume at first. Thus, we should look beyond country borders and also consider the developers’ nationalities and diverse backgrounds, the location of the game’s publisher, as well as cases where a studio has branch offices in other countries, has been acquired by a company from another country, has outsourced all or part of the labor to another studio in another country, has collaborated with studios from different countries to create a game and also from which sources a studio secures (public) funding or grants, as well as the jurisdiction to which a studio directs its tax contributions.
Setting & Location
A game’s setting and in-game location might be the second most frequent and significant factor that determines whether a game can be defined as national. National games may reference historical events, local history, local culture in a more abstract way or take place in local settings. Many games with local settings which are created by local teams end up serving as a « showcase » for a particular culture and frequently perpetuate cultural myths or lend credence to national prejudices. It’s crucial to remember that a game’s local setting does not automatically mean that a game should be considered a national game. On the other hand, games which are not created by teams of the same national heritage, can still have a « local » setting.
Target Audience & Marketing
A game’s target audience is often not discussed or only parenthetically mentioned in regard to a game’s nationality. When addressed, however, the predominant discourse revolves around the fact that game studios often aim at selling their games in the international market, rather than their local market in the country in which they are produced. This is due to most studios’ need for commercial success on the global market to ensure the studios’ survival (Van der Merwe 2021). Studios therefore often opt to market their game to a potentially global audience as it plays a crucial role in the success of their game release. However, games designed specifically for local audiences present an interesting contrast. So-called « hyperlocal games » are games made by a local developer or studio for a local audience which often features inside jokes, environments and iconography that only resonate with players who share the depicted cultural background (Švelch 2018). Further, some games are explicitly marketed based on the national – be it identity or geographical – reach: America’s Army (2002) is a multiplayer first-person shooter game developed by the United States Army and is used to inform and recruit members of the American public and therefore targets U.S. nationals.
Language & Localization
Among the literature focused explicitly on the national character of the games, there is little attention placed on the issues of language and localization. However, that is not to say that the topic of localization (in regards to design changes as well as language choices) has not been thoroughly investigated in game studies. As mentioned before, a game’s success – and with that the game studio’s survival – often depends on a games commercial and this international success, which often leads to games being localized in English, even if it’s not the developers’ native tongue. So, it is not a surprising conclusion, that the choice of a national non-English localization for a game usually correlates with the game’s themes and the importance of their identity placed by the developers (understood as a studio or specific people). National topics, jokes, songs and customs might literally get lost in translation or at the very least lose part of their accuracy if they are translated into another language or localized for another culture.
Mechanics & Aesthetics
Games, as the unique medium to carry story, mechanics, art and interactivity in one, we should consider to also look for and to try and identify ‘national’ mechanics and visual styles. However, in the evoked literature, there is just as little focus placed on the mechanics as focus of the game’s perceived nationality. After an examination of both the scholarly work and the range of games, we propose that it would be more productive to look at more broadly understood gameplay design and aesthetics. In this sense, Elena Policov et al. (2009) made a remark about a « typical Western design », without, however, elaborating on it further, while Lars Konzack proposes that certain gloominess could be a trademark of Scandinavian games (2015). Also, national mechanics and aesthetics might not remain national in general as we live in an interconnected world, where people take influence from each other. Mikhail Fiadotau writes in regard to Japanese games that the constant flow of ideas does not stop at a border, in particular non-Japanese RPGs and visual novels seek to produce a « Japaneseness » by following aesthetic conventions and tropes that are recognized by players as « Japanese » and vice versa. (2021, 37-39).
While it is not our intent to provide one binding definition or framework of what makes a national game, we think that it is beneficial to look beyond country borders when defining a game’s nationality and to consider different approaches and views on what the concept of nationality in games means. We will provide an overview of preliminary findings of our work in progress joint article and give an outlook on what further questions might arise.
References
Fiadotau, Mikhail. « Isolated Connectedness: Applying the Concept of Transinsularity to Japan’s Game History. » Replaying Japan 3 (2021): 33-41.
Jankowski, Filip. « Beyond the French Touch: The Contestataire Moment in French Adventure Digital Games (1984–1990). » Game Studies 21, no. 1 (2021).
Javet, D., and Rochat, Y. « Jeux vidéo suisses: État des lieux (2012–2017). » Culture EnJeu, no. 54 (2017): 6–7. Accessed April 25, 2024. https://wp.unil.chgamelab/2017/04/jeux-videosuisses-etat-des-lieux-2012-2017/.
Kirkpatrick, Graeme. The formation of gaming culture: UK gaming magazines, 1981-1995. Springer, 2015.
Koizumi, Mariko. « Japanese video game industry: history of its growth and current state. » Transnational Contexts of Development History, Sociality, and Society of Play: Video Games in East Asia (2016): 13-64.
Navarro-Remesal, Víctor, and Óliver Pérez-Latorre, eds. Perspectives on the European Videogame. Amsterdam University Press, 2022.
O’Donnell, Casey. « The North American game industry. » The video game industry: Formation, present state, and future (2012): 99-115.
Švelch, Jaroslav. Gaming the iron curtain: How teenagers and amateurs in communist Czechoslovakia claimed the medium of computer games. MIT press, 2018.
Swalwell, Melanie. Homebrew gaming and the beginnings of vernacular digitality. MIT Press, 2021.