Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon

Description

Essays discuss the terminology, etymology, and history of key terms, offering a foundation for critical historical studies of games. Even as the field of game studies has flourished, critical historical studies of games have lagged behind other areas of research. Histories have generally been fact-by-fact chronicles; fundamental terms of game design and development, technology, and play have rarely been examined in the context of their historical, etymological, and conceptual underpinnings. This volume attempts to “debug” the flawed historiography of video games. It offers original essays on key concepts in game studies, arranged as in a lexicon—from “Amusement Arcade” to “Embodiment” and “Game Art” to “Simulation” and “World Building.” Written by scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, including game development, curatorship, media archaeology, cultural studies, and technology studies, the essays offer a series of distinctive critical “takes” on historical topics. The majority of essays look at game history from the outside in; some take deep dives into the histories of play and simulation to provide context for the development of electronic and digital games; others take on such technological components of games as code and audio. Not all essays are history or historical etymology—there is an analysis of game design, and a discussion of intellectual property—but they nonetheless raise questions for historians to consider. Taken together, the essays offer a foundation for the emerging study of game history. Contributors: Marcelo Aranda, Brooke Belisle, Caetlin Benson-Allott, Stephanie Boluk, Jennifer deWinter, J. P. Dyson, Kate Edwards, Mary Flanagan, Jacob Gaboury, William Gibbons, Raiford Guins, Erkki Huhtamo, Don Ihde, Jon Ippolito, Katherine Isbister, Mikael Jakobsson, Steven E. Jones, Jesper Juul, Eric Kaltman, Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Carly A. Kocurek, Peter Krapp, Patrick LeMieux, Henry Lowood, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Ken S. McAllister, Nick Monfort, David Myers, James Newman, Jenna Ng, Michael Nitsche, Laine Nooney, Hector Postigo, Jas Purewal, Reneé H. Reynolds, Judd Ethan Ruggill, Marie-Laure Ryan, Katie Salen Tekinbaş, Anastasia Salter, Mark Sample, Bobby Schweizer, John Sharp, Miguel Sicart, Rebecca Elisabeth Skinner, Melanie Swalwell, David Thomas, Samuel Tobin, Emma Witkowski, Mark J.P. Wolf Contents Series Foreword Introduction: Why We Are Debugging 1 Achievements 2 Adventure 3 Amusement Arcade 4 Artificial Intelligence 5 Character 6 Classic Gaming 7 Code 8 Console 9 Control 10 Controller 11 Cooperative Play 12 Culturization 13 Demo 14 Difficulty 15 Educational Games 16 Embodiment 17 Emulation 18 Fun 19 Game Art 20 Game Audio 21 Game Balance 22 Game Camera 23 Game Culture 24 Game Development 25 Game Engine 26 Game Glitch 27 Games as a Medium 28 Genre 29 Identities 30 Immersion 31 Independent Games 32 Intellectual Property 33 Kriegsspeiel 34 Machinima 35 Mechanics 36 Menu 37 Metagame 38 Modification 39 Narrative 40 Platform 41 Playing 42 Perspective 43 Procedurality 44 Role-Play 45 Save 46 Simulation 47 Toys 48 Walkthrough 49 World building Contributors Index