Academic literature on the topic 'Video game history'

Public historians have recently directed significant attention toward video games as a media form for engaging diverse audiences with participatory historical representations and arguments. Yet despite the availability of easy-to-use game creation tools, historians have been slow to adopt game development. I developed a video game, Ab Uno Sanguine, based on my PhD research to assess the practicality of game design as a venue for public history practice. This article reflects on my experiences in historical game development along the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) process of game production. This paper connects game studies, historical game studies, and digital public history scholarship to demonstrate how historians can become historian-developers to disseminate their research without a large budget or a professional game design team.

Kristen Nyitray began her immersion in video games with an Atari 2600 and ColecoVision console and checking out games from her local public library. Later in life, she had the opportunity to start building a video game studies collection in her professional career as an archivist and special collections librarian. While that project has since ended, you get the benefit of her expansive knowledge of video game sources in “Game On to Game After: Sources for Video Game History.” There is much in this column to help librarians wanting to support research in this important entertainment form. Ready player one?—Editor

ABSTRACT Background Video game seizures have been reported in photosensitive and non‐photosensitive patients with epilepsy. The game Super Mario World, has led to many cases of first seizures. We examined whether this game was indeed more provocative than other programs and whether playing the game added to this effect. Methods We prospectively investigated 352 patients in four European cities, using a standard protocol including testing of a variety of visual stimuli. We correlated historical data on provocative factors in daily life with electroencephalographic laboratory findings. Results The video game, Super Mario World proved more epileptogenic than standard TV programs and as provocative as programs with flashing lights and patterns. Most striking was the fact that video game‐viewing and‐playing on the 50 and 100 Hz TV was significantly more provocative than viewing the standard program ( P < 0.001, P < 0.05 respectively). Playing the video game Mario World on a 50 Hz TV, appeared to be significantly more provocative than playing this game on the 100 Hz TV ( P < 0.001). Of 163 patients with a history of TV‐, VG‐ or CG‐seizures, 85% of them showed epileptiform discharges in response to photic stimulation, 44% to patterns, 59% to 50 Hz TV and 29% to 100 Hz TV. Conclusions Children and adolescents with a history of video game seizures are, in the vast majority, photosensitive and should be investigated with standardised photic stimulation. Games and programs with bright background or flashing images are specifically provocative. Playing a video game on a 100 Hz TV is less provocative [published with videosequences].

Canons—of music, video games, or people—can provide a shared pool of resources for scholars, practitioners, and fans; but the formation of canons can also lead to an obscuring or devaluing of materials and people outside of a canon. The four authors in this colloquy interrogate issues of canons relating to video game music and sound from a variety of perspectives. Each author considers an aspect of canonization and argues for a wider purview. In “Rewritable Memory: Concerts, Canons, and Game Music History,” William Gibbons examines the ways in which concerts of video game music may create canons and reinforce particular historical narratives. In “On Canons as Music and Muse,” Julianne Grasso views the music originally presented in a video game as itself a type of canon and argues that official and fan arrangements of original game music may provide windows into lived experiences of play. In “The Difficult, Uncomfortable, and Imperative Conversations Needed in Game Music and Sound Studies,” Hyeonjin Park highlights issues of diversity and representation in the field of video game music and sound studies, with respect to the people and music that make up the subjects of the field, the people who produce scholarship in the field, and the people who engage with game music and sound. In “Canon Anxiety?” Karen Cook pulls together various issues of academic canons to question the scope, focus, and diversity of the growing field in which the Journal of Sound and Music in Games exists.

The article analyzes the linguistic structures of video games, their formation in a historical perspective and explication of the current semiosphere of video game cybertexts. The history of the formation of the graphic code system of video games is reconstructed. The significance of the technical factor (computing capabilities of hardware game devices) in shaping the diversity of the spectrum of video game icons is highlighted. Parallels in the visual semiotics and aesthetics of cinematic animation and video games are noted. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the procedural cluster of video game semiotics.

Abstract In 2006, The Strong National Museum of Play began an initiative to collect, preserve, and interpret the history of video games. That effort led to the founding of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games and World Video Game Hall of Fame. The museum’s collection today numbers more than 60,000 video game-related artifacts and hundreds of thousands of archival materials from key creators and companies in the industry. This article discusses the genesis of the museum’s efforts in its play mission, tracks the trajectories of The Strong’s video game initiatives over the years, and discusses some of the challenges faced by museums and other institutions working with video games.

Today, historical video games going beyond the boundaries of the purely entertainment framework of screen media are increasingly influencing the formation of the public history infosphere. The aim of the study is a comprehensive analysis of historical video games as a tool for constructing mass historical consciousness and the implementation of ideologized strategies for the politics of memory. Methodologically, the work is based on the concepts of “public history infosphere” and “politics of memory”, as well as the historical method and classification approach. In addition, elements of comparative analysis, the method of narrative research of cultural artifacts and the optics of I. Bogost’s procedural rhetoric are used.
 The study determines the specificity and nature of broadcasting historical plots in the context of procedural actualization of video game narratives. Starting from the interactive-procedural nature of video games, the original possibilities and objective constraints in the reproduction of “stories about the past” are revealed. It is demonstrated that the programmatic and subjective-user modalities of a video game existence endow it with rhizome and nomadic characteristics. Video game architectonics has an intention to deconstruct the “metaphysics of presence” and the main repressive instances characteristic of traditional historical narrative. At the same time, based on the concept of simulations by G. Frasca, three main formats of historical video game reconstructions are revealed: factual (plot and setting), logical-dynamic and hybrid. The article identifies the most common ways of distorting, mythologizing and politicizing history in video games. Special attention is paid to the explication of the ideologized concept of “anti-Sovietism” in video game plots, as a form of quasi-historical criticism of the Soviet regime and the continuation of the rhetoric of the “Cold War”.
 The results of the study can be used in the expert assessment of the space of public history, in the identification of relevant media tools and meaningful concepts that form its semantic framework. In addition, certain conclusions are essential for the effective correction of memory policy strategies implemented in screen digital media.

Gamers are a growing population and video game culture remains unfamiliar to the majority of counselors. Little scholarship exits that would aid counselors in gaining awareness and knowledge about gamers and video game culture. Such information has implications for counselors to better meet the needs of gamers, their partners, and families seeking counseling. The authors discuss elements of gaming culture including a brief history, population characteristics, terminology, healthy and unhealthy gaming, and implications for counselors.