Preserving Games

Archiving the Creation Processes of the Video Game Industry

Skip to: Content | Sidebar | Footer

Category: Literature Review

Book Review: Racing the Beam

12 February, 2010 (12:01) | Literature Review | By: walker

Montfort, N., & Bogost, I. (2009). Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Platform Studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Just want to give a brief rundown on a really great read I’ve come across. MIT has started a “Platform Studies” series of books where the idea is to examine a platform and its technologies […]

Making the Water Move: Techno-Historic Limits in the Game Aesthetics of Myst and Doom

24 January, 2010 (14:22) | Literature Review | By: walker

Hutchison, A. (2008). Making the Water Move: Techno-Historic Limits in the Game Aesthetics of Myst and Doom. Game Studies, 8(1). Retrieved from http://gamestudies.org/0801/articles/hutch   This 2008 Games Studies article examines the effect technology (or the “techno-historic” context of a game work) has on game aesthetics. The author defines the “game aesthetics” as “the combination of the […]

Guarding Intellectual Property

27 October, 2009 (11:50) | Literature Review | By: admin

Roberts, Paul F., “Havok Finds Haven for Game Codes,” eWeek 22, no. 40 (2005): C1-C11. In my previous post about incremental innovation, I noted that intellectual property becomes particularly important within a stagnant industry.  Rather than continue to develop new technologies for each game, studios often rely on one or two of the most consistently […]

Incremental Innovation

27 October, 2009 (10:46) | Literature Review | By: admin

Tschang, F. Ted, “Balancing the Tensions Between Rationalization and Creativity in the Video Games Industry,” Organization Science 18, no. 6 (2007): 989-1005. In this 2007 article, F. Ted Tschang argues that increased financial success within an industry often results in an increased hesitancy toward creativity, using the U.S. video game industry as an example.  As he notes, […]

Hardware gimmick or cultural innovation?

22 October, 2009 (21:40) | Literature Review | By: walker

Y. Aoyama and H. Izushi, “Hardware gimmick or cultural innovation? Technological, cultural, and social foundations of the Japanese video game industry,” Research Policy 32, no. 3 (2003): 423–444. This 2002 article (written 2001) looks at the success of the Japanese video game industry and attempts to illuminate the unique factors behind its success. Japan’s video […]

What Went Wrong? A Survey of Problems in Game Development

19 October, 2009 (20:48) | Literature Review | By: walker

Fábio Petrillo et al., “What went wrong? A survey of problems in game development,” Computers in Entertainment 7, no. 1 (2, 2009): 1-22. This February 2009 article from the Computer in Entertainment magazine of ACM takes a look at the game industry and compares its difficulties to the larger software industry. Specifically the authors analyze […]

Are Videogames Art?

6 April, 2009 (13:41) | Literature Review | By: TimA

John Lancaster recently published an essay in “The London Review of Books” titled “Is it Art?”.  The essay considers the position of videogames in global culture and asks the question: should videogames, which have surpassed music and video sales in the United Kingdom, be considered a form of art?  This is a huge and difficult […]