Preserving Games

Archiving the Creation Processes of the Video Game Industry

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Tag: creative limitations

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 […]

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 […]

What Story? Reporting a MUD-Dev Thread from April – May 2000

23 January, 2009 (14:49) | News and Commentary | By: walker

From August 22, 1996 to the early October of 2004 the MUD-Dev mailing list housed a slew of earnest and lengthy discussions — technical, philosophical, design and otherwise — concerning the development and play of multi-user dungeons (MUDs).  MUDs were developed before graphics-capable computers, originating and remaining entirely text-based. Players type commands, role-play or just […]