Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives

253 Pages·2012·2.43 MB·English

by  Melanie Swalwell

Fans and Videogames
In order to better understand and theorize video games and game play­
ing, it is necessary to study the activities of gamers themselves. Gamers
are not only active creators in generating meaning; they are creators of
media texts they share with other fans (including games, mods, walk­
throughs, machinima, etc); and they have played a central role in curating
and preserving games through their collective work on emulation, the
creation of online archives and the forensic archaeology of code. This
volume brings together essays that explore game fandom from diverse
perspectives to reveal the complex processes at work in game fandom
and its practices. Contributors aim to historicize game fandom, recog­
nize fan contributions to game history, and critically assess the role of
fans in ensuring that game culture endures through the development of
archives.
Melanie Swalwell is an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow in
Screen and Media at Flinders University, Australia. She is coeditor of the
anthology, The Pleasures of Computer Games (2008). Melanie is cur­
rently completing a monograph Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings
of Vernacular Digitality for the MIT Game Histories series.
Helen Stuckey is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Flinders University,
Australia. Her research explores the curation and collection of video­
games. A game curator and historian, she was the inaugural Game
Curator at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Angela Ndalianis is Professor in Screen Studies at the University of
Melbourne, Australia, where she also directs the Transformative Techno­
logies Research Unit. Her publications include Neo-Baroque Aesthetics
and Contemporary Entertainment (2004), Science Fiction Experiences
(2010), The Horror Sensorium (2012) and The Contemporary Comic
Book Superhero (2008).
Routledge Advances in Game Studies
1 Video Games and Social Competence
Rachel Kowert
2 Sexuality in Role-Playing Games
Ashley ML Brown
3 Gender, Age, and Digital Games in the Domestic Context
Alison Harvey
4 The Dark Side of Game Play
Controversial Issues in Playful Environments
Edited by Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth,
and Ashley ML Brown
5 Understanding Counterplay in Video Games
Alan F. Meades
6 Video Game Policy
Production, Distribution, and Consumption
Edited by Steven Conway and Jennifer deWinter
7 Digital Games as History
How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to
Historical Practice
Adam Chapman
8 New Perspectives on the Social Aspects of Digital Gaming
Multiplayer 2
Edited by Rachel Kowert and Thorsten Quandt
9 Fans and Videogames
Histories, Fandom, Archives
Edited by Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey and
Angela Ndalianis
Fans and Videogames
Histories, Fandom, Archives
Edited by Melanie Swalwell,
Helen Stuckey and
Angela Ndalianis
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
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including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978­1­138­67967­2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978­1­315­56348­0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
MElANIE SwAlwEll, HElEN STUCkEY AND
ANGElA NDAlIANIS
SECTIoN I
Historicizing Game Fandom
2 Early Games Production, Gamer Subjectivation and the
Containment of the Ludic Imagination 19
GRAEME kIRkPATRICk
3 Transitioning to the Digital: Run5 Magazine
as Archive and Account of SSG’s Dialogue with
Wargamers in the 1980s 38
HElEN STUCkEY
4 Keeping the Spectrum Alive: Platform Fandom
in a Time of Transition 57
JAROSlAV ŠVElCH
5 Pirates, Platforms and Players: Theorising
Post-Consumer Fan Histories through the
Sega Dreamcast 75
SkOT DEEMING AND DAVID MURPHY
vi Contents
Section ii
Fan contributions to Game History
6 EVE Online’s War correspondents: Player
Journalism as History 93
Nick Webber
7 neS Homebrew and the Margins of the
Retro-gaming industry 111
JohN VaNderhoef
8 Museums of Failure: Fans as curators of “Bad”,
Unreleased, and “Flopped” Videogames 128
Víctor NaVarro-remesal
9 World –1: Glitching, codemining and Procedural
Level creation in Super Mario Bros. 146
James NeWmaN
Section iii
the Archive
10 Repacking My Library 165
JeNNifer deWiNter aNd carly a. kocurek
11 Sega Saturn Fan Sites and the Vernacular curation
of Videogame History 180
beNJamiN Nicoll
12 Unusable Archives: everyday Play and the
everyplay Archives 197
James maNNiNg
13 Moving on from the original experience:
Philosophies of Preservation and Dis/play
in Game History 213
melaNie sWalWell
List of Contributors 235
Index 239
List of Figures
2.1 Advert for Imagine software.
Source: CVG 17, March 1983: 64. 23
2.2 Adverts for Beyond and Ocean software developers
looking to recruit new programmers and to buy games
programs from smaller developers, CU 14 November
1984 p. 105 and CVG 32 June 1984 p. 151, respectively. 27
2.3 Advert deterring people from using CVG to exchange
illegal copies of game software (CVG 72 October
1987: 144). 32
3.1 Ian Trout and Roger keating of SSG playing a
traditional hex based manual wargame. Courtesy
Roger keating. 40
3.2 Run5, Issue 1, January 1986, cover. Courtesy
Roger keating. 41
4.1 Cover of the 3+4/1994 double issue of ZX Magazine,
which demonstrates one way of extending the
Spectrum. A colour dot­matrix printer commonly
used with IBM PC compatibles has just printed out
loading screen images from classic Spectrum games.
A 5.25­inch floppy contains the Spectrum driver for
the printer, published by Proxima. Reprinted courtesy
of PROXIMA – Software. 68
5.1 Beats of Rage (2006) screenshot. Roel and Jeroen van
Mastbergen. 83
5.2 Crisis Evil 2 (2008) screenshot. Game by Nevergoingback. 84
7.1 A comparison shot between an original NES game
cartridge from 1988 on the left and a homebrew
cartridge from 2010 on the right illustrates the degree
to which the homebrew community goes to recreate
the industrial designs of the past. (Author’s photo) 117
8.1 Screenshot of YouTube show: The Angry Video Game
Nerd. James Rolfe, Cinemassacre Productions. 135
viii List of Figures
8.2 www.unseen64.net is an archive for beta and cancelled
video games, created in 2001 by a group of Italian
gamers. Courtesy monokoma. 138
8.3 Screenshot of leaked Sonic X-treme engine test,
running on emulator Cassini. Source: https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_X­treme#/media/
File:Sonic_X­treme_ engine_test_screenshot.png 139
8.4 Front page of Planet Virtual Boy (http:www.planetvb.
com). Christian Radke. 141
9.1 Entering the ‘warp Zone’ in world 1–2 by glitching
through the wall causes a data corruption that
procedurally generates the Minus world level.
Source: Super Mario Bros. (world 1−2). Nintendo
(Nintendo Entertainment System), 1985. 157
12.1 A chicken contemplates her next move. Apple iPad Air
2 screengrab of Crossy Road – Endless Arcade Hopper
version 1.3.8 updated February 12, 2016. Trademarks
and images from the game Crossy Road appear
courtesy of Hipster whale Pty ltd, all rights reserved. 198
13.1 Space Invaders videogame installed in the “Applied
Design” (2013) exhibition, Museum of Modern Art.
Image courtesy of the author. 223
13.2 Daniel Bowen playing The Way of the Exploding Fist,
in the exhibition “Hits of the 80s: Aussie games that
rocked the world”, at Games lab, Australian Centre
for the Moving Image, 2006–7. Daniel Bowen. 224
13.3 Sketch by Andrew Bradfield for the helicopter sprite
design used in Laser Hawk (1986), a game by Andrew
Bradfield and Harvey kong Tin for the Atari
800 computer. 228
Acknowledgements
This anthology recognises the importance of fans to game history. Our
journey to this intersection has been guided by some amazing and gener­
ous fans. Happily, we have often ended up their collaborators, and they
ours. In particular, we recognise the far­sighted and important histo­
rical and preservation work of: Michael Davidson, Aaron wheeler and
the Sega Survivors, Mayhem, Rob Caporetto, Caroline Choong, Nick
Marentes, kevin Phillips, Alan laughton and the Microbee Software
Preservation Project, Martjin Van der Helt, Dorothy Millard, Alan Bell,
CH, and many others.
It is now less rare for cultural institutions to have some digital games
amongst their holdings than when we first began working in this space.
Two people who were early advocates of game history, collecting and
preservation have also been constant supporters over many years.
Andreas lange’s early recognition of the role of game fan preserva­
tionists first inspired our interest in the constellation of issues around
video games, fans and history since the early 2000s. Henry lowood has
steadily raised the visibility of digital game history and preservation, and
we’ve benefited enormously from his leadership, wisdom and collegial­
ity, over more than a decade.
This anthology was compiled under the auspices of the “Play It Again”
project which received support under the Australian Research Council’s
linkage Projects funding Scheme (project number lP120100218).
we acknowledge the significant role that our Partner Organizations
have played – the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Ngā Taonga
Sound & Vision, the Computerspiele Museum, and Victoria University
of wellington. At ACMI, we particularly thank Gael McIndoe for being
an early champion of the Play It Again project, and museum profession­
als Nick Richardson, lynda Bernard, linda Connelly and Digital Ar­
chivist Caroline Choong for their work bringing it to fruition. At Ngā
Taonga Sound & Vision, we recognise the important role that Shane
Farrow has played. As a complex, multidisciplinary project, we acknow­
ledge with especial gratitude the input and expertise of fellow investi­
gators Denise de Vries, Susan Corbett, Ian welch and Stuart Marshall.
we also thank colleagues and the public alike for their contributions to