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// Video Games //

// Video Games //. BBS, MUD, MOO WEEK 5. Children with the LOGO turtle robot and control panel. F rom the frontispiece to Mindstorms , Seymour Papert , 1980. [See (1997), p. 6]. Andrew Lippman et al., “Aspen Movie Map”, 1978. [See (1997), p. 6].

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// Video Games //

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  1. // Video Games // BBS, MUD, MOO WEEK 5

  2. Children with the LOGO turtle robot and control panel. From the frontispiece to Mindstorms, Seymour Papert, 1980. [See (1997), p. 6].

  3. Andrew Lippman et al., “Aspen Movie Map”, 1978. [See (1997), p. 6].

  4. Microsoft, Encarta ‘96, Windows ’95. CD-ROM.

  5. “The combination of text, video, and navigable space suggested that a computer-based microworld [like Papert’s LOGO] need not be mathematical but could also be shaped as a dynamic fictional universe with characters and events.” (1997), p. 6. “One of the lessons we can learn from the history of film is that additive formulations like ‘photo-play’ or the contemporary catchall ‘multimedia’ are a sign that the medium is in an early stage of development and is still depending on formats derived from earlier technologies instead of exploiting its own expressive power. Today the derivative mind-set is apparent in the conception of cyberspace as a place to view ‘pages’ of print ‘clips’ of moving video and CD-ROMs as offering ‘extended books’.” (1997), p. 67. Microsoft, Encarta ‘96, Windows ’95. CD-ROM. Andrew Lippman et al., “Aspen Movie Map”, 1978. Video Disc and Touch Screen Display.

  6. Joseph Weizenbaum, ELIZA, 1966.

  7. “Although we may talk of the information highway and of a billboards in cyberspace, in fact the computer is not fundamentally a wire or a pathway but an engine. It was designed not to carry static information but to embody complex, contingent behaviors. To be a computer scientist is to think in terms of algorithms and heuristics, that is, to be constantly identifying the exact or general rules of the behavior that describes a process, from running a payroll to flying an airplane.” (1997), p. 72, see also 68-71. “Weizenbaum stands as the earliest, and still perhaps the premier literary artist in the computer medium because he so successfully applied procedural thinking [i.e. in terms of models of behavior in the form of heuristics] to the behavior of a psychotherapist in a clinical interview. […] Eliza is not a neutral procedural model but a comic interpretation.” (1997), p. 72. Joseph Weizenbaum, ELIZA, 1966.

  8. Tim Anderson et al., Zork, Infocom, 1979.

  9. “Zork was set up to provide the player with opportunities for making decisions and to dramatically enact the results of those decisions. […] In the early versions there was no way to save a game in midplay, and thereofore a mistake meant repeating the entire correct procedure from the begining. In a way, the computer was programming the player.” (1997), p. 77. “The Zork dungeon rooms form a branching structure, but the magical objects [e.g. the glowing sword] behave according to their own set of rules. And the interactor is given a repertoire of possible behaviors that encourage a feeling of inventive collaboration [i.e. participation]. The Zork programmers found a procedural technology for creating enchantment.” (1997), p. 78. Tim Anderson et al., Zork, Infocom, 1979.

  10. Michael L. Maudlin, Julia, 1992.

  11. “The lesson of Zorkis that the first step in making an enticing narrative world is to script the interactor. By using the literary and gaming conventions to constrain the players’ behaviors to a dramatically appropriate but limited set of commands, the designers could focus their inventive powers on making the virtual world as responsive as possible to every possible combination of these commands.” (1997), p. 79, see also p. 219. “In some ways Julia is a female impersonator like the other female personae operated by male MUDers, and her character shows some of the exaggeration of a drag character. […] The MUD provides a social framework in which her formulaic responces make sense. Indeed, her exagerated gender behavior is itself a good distractor: it maks people focus on a possible male-as-female impersonator rather than on the machine-as-human impersonation ...what most brings Julia to life on the MUD is the fact that her interlocutors are also in character. ” (1997), p. 217-218. Michael L. Maudlin, Julia, 1992.

  12. Rand and Roby Miller, Myst, Cyan, 1995. CD-ROM.

  13. OliaLialina, My Boyfriend Came Back From the War, 1996. Web-based.

  14. “The computer’s spatial quality is created by the interactive [i.e. rule bound and responsive] process of navigation. […] the text-based dungeons of Zork, the sequenced stills of the enchanter’s isle of Myst... The continuous three-dimensional world of the new videogames dreamscape [e.g. Doom, idSoftware, 1993]—all are realized for the interactor by the process of navigation [i.e. navigation as rule-bound opportunity and enactment], which is unique to the digital environment.” (1997), p. 80. OliaLialina, My Boyfriend Came Back From the War, 1996. Web-based. Rand and Roby Miller, Myst, Cyan, 1995. CD-ROM.

  15. “The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5”, December 6th, 1998.

  16. “The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5”, December 6th, 1998. “Like the daylong recitations of the bardic tradition or the three-volume Victorian novel, the limitless expanse of gigabytes presents itself to the storyteller as a vast tabula rasa crying out to be filled with all the matter of life. […] One early indication of the suitability of epic-scale narrative to digital environments is the active fan culture surrounding popular television drama series. [...] The Internet serves that purpose [i.e. of allowing detailed backlogs and commentary], making a more capacious home for serial drama than the broadcast environment.” (1997), p. 85.

  17. Will Wright, SimCity, Maxis, 1989. Mac OS 1-9.

  18. “Simulations like these take advantage of the authority bestowed by the computer environment to seem more encyclopedically inclusive than they really are. As it turns out, the political assumptions behind SimCity are hidden from the player.” (1997), p. 89. “In an interactive medium the interpretive framework is embedded in the rules by which the system works and in the way in which the participation is shaped. But the encyclopedic capacity of the computer can distract us from asking why things work the way they do and why we are being asked to play one role rather than another. […] We will have to learn to notice the patterns displayed over multiple plays of simulation in the same way that we now notice the worldview behind a single-plot story.” (1997), p. 90. Will Wright, SimCity, Maxis, 1989. Mac OS 1-9.

  19. Theodor H. Nelson, Xanadu, 1972. From he article, Theodor H. Nelson, “As We Will Think," 1972.

  20. “This earliest vision of hypertext [i.e. Bush’s Memex] reflects the classic American quest—a charting of the wilderness, an imposition of order over chaos, and the mastery of vast resources for concrete, practical purposes. In Bush’s view, the infinite web of human knowledge is a solvable maze, open to rational organization.” (1997), p. 91. Vannevar Bush, Memex, from “As We May Think,” 1945. “By contrast, Ted Nelson, who coined the term hypertext in the 1960s… delight in the intricacies of hypertext, the twisting web rather than the clear-cut trail, are perhaps seeing it as an emblem of the inexhaustibility of the human mind: en endless proliferation of thought looping through vast humming networks whether of neurons or electrons.” (1997), p. 91. Theodor H. Nelson, “As We Will Think," 1972.

  21. John Conway, The Game of Life, 1970. From Martin Gardner’s “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American.

  22. John Conway, The Game of Life, 1970. “Computer simulations like this are tools for thinking about the larger puzzels of our existence, such as how anything as soulless as a protein can give rise to something as complex as consciousness. T.S. Eliot used the term objective correlate to describe the way in which clusters of events in literary works can capture emotional experience. The computer allows us to create objective correlates for thinking about the many systems we participate in, observe, and imagine.” (1997), p. 93.

  23. Cats and Dogz: Your Computer Petz, P.F. Magic, 1995. Windows ‘95.

  24. Buttons, who has grown from a puppy to a larger dog since I installed him, has such an a real presence for me that I sometimes feel guilty when I do not open the program and play with him. I find myself proud of his affectionate personality, which is the result of the constant petting and good treatment I have given him. I know that the possibilities of his life are open and that if I had punished him with his spray bottle too often or in an arbitrary manner, Button’s personality would be hostile and withdrawn.” (1997), p. 245. “…the computer scientist Marvin Minsky is fond of proclaiming that human brains, in fact, human beings altogether, are simply ‘meat machines’. ...Digital dogs and cats ivert the notion of a meat machine by turning an automaton into a pet. ...We are compeled to search for the boundary, to find out what is left within us when we take away what we think of as ‘meat’ or ‘machine’. With the creation of these playful, quirky exploratory characters, then, the narrative imagination is begining to awaken to this task.” (1997), pp. 246-47. Cats and Dogz: Your Computer Petz, P.F. Magic, 1995. Windows ‘95.

  25. “The system originated in the early 1960s at the Urbana campus of the University of Control Data Corporation, PLATO IV terminal, 1972.

  26. “The system originated in the early 1960s at the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois. …PLATO [Programmed Logic for Automated Instruction] was on eof the first time-sharing systems to be operated publically. ...PLATO contributed significantly to advancements that spawned... PLATO Nots for online message boards, Personal Notes for e-mail, Talkomatic for chat rooms, Term-Tlak for instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and even emoticons.” (2014), p. 212. “Like Spacewar!, these games were open source and ever-improving with new iterations, which helped to inspire continued play. In the early 1970s and early 1980s, PLATO had superior graphics to other systems, 512x512 random access monochrome displays. Also, much like consol systems today, everyone accessing the mainframe system had the same hardware capabilities, so response time was impressive for the age.” (2014), p. 212. Control Data Corporation, PLATO IV terminal, 1972.

  27. Community Memory BBS Teletype Terminal, Leopold’s Records, Berkeley, CA, 1973.

  28. “Participants [in the Community Memory BBS] exchanged messages about music, the Vietnam War, art, literature, economics, current events, and local cuisine. ‘We wanted to use the computer to create a sort of information flea market,’ said Lipkin, still residing in Berkeley in 2001. “We were thinking in terms of cork bulletin boards, community-generated newspapers, things like that. We took this mainframe the size of six refrigerators and put it to use.” (2014), p. 213. “These cyberspace pioneers [Randy Suess and Ward Christensen] used microcomputers and some creative programming to build CBBS (computer bulletin board system), turning the home computers into communication devices. It didn’t take long for the idea to spread through the personal-computing community. Within a few years, a flood of Apples, IBMs, and Commodores were going online.” (2014), p. 214. Community Memory BBS Teletype Terminal, Leopold’s Records, Berkeley, CA, 1973.

  29. IBM 5150, 1981. VisiCalc, Software Arts, 1979-1983. 3M, 5.25’’ floppy, around 1981. Hayes Smartmodem 2400, 1981.

  30. Apple Corp., Apple ][, 1977. J.D. Eisenberg and Bruce Tognazzini, “Friendly vs. Unfriendly”, 1982. From the Apple ][e tutorial software Apple Presents… Apple. Steve Wozniak, Breakout, 1977. Apple ][ versions of 1975 Atari arcade.

  31. Michael Orkin, with the early multi-user dungeon (MUD) The Island of Kesmai, 1985. From the Computer Chronicles, KCSM-TV, (SanMateo, CA), 1988. The Pit, Midas Touch Software, 1990.

  32. Tim Sweeny, ZZT title screen, Epic Games, 1991. Tim Sweeny, ”The Town of ZZT”, Epic Games, 1991.

  33. Tim Sweeny, ”The Town of ZZT”, Epic Games, 1991. Tim Sweeny, “The Forest”, from ZZT, Epic Games, 1991.

  34. Tim Sweeny, ZZT GUI Edit Menu, Epic Games, 1991. Tim Sweeny, ZZT Editor, Epic Games, 1991.

  35. Tim Sweeny, “Edit Character”, ZZT, Epic Games, 1991. Tim Sweeny, “Select Color” and “Select Character”, ZZT, Epic Games, 1991.

  36. Christopher Allen, ZZT Ultra, 2016. “Software Library: ZZT”, The Internet Archives, 2016.

  37. “I find myself anticipating a new kind of story teller, one who is half hacker, half bard. The spirit of the hacker is one of the great creative wellsprings of our time, causing the inanimate circuits to sing with ever more individualized and quirky voices; the spirit of the bard is eternal and irreplaceable, telling us what we are doing here and what we mean to each other.” “I see glimmers of a medium that is capacious and broadly expressive, a medium capable of capturing both the hairbreadth movements of concisousness and the colossal crosscurrents of global society.” (1997), p. 9. Community Memory BBS Teletype Terminal, Leopold’s Records, Berkeley, CA, 1973. Christopher Allen, ZZT Ultra, 2016.

  38. “Just as BBSs and MUDs benefited from the enthusiasm of their members, so do development companies today, who regularly enlist player communities in game production and encourage user-generated content. Player driven game innovations and the contributions of ‘modder’ who expand the game through the production of plug-ins and ad-ons (mods), produce a significant amount of unpaid labor.” “We are seeing the emergence of of an independent, open-source, grassroots video game development community, resembling the hobbyist communities of the 1970s and 1980s that spawned these experiments [with BBSs], much of which is utilizing the visual and immersive capabilities of synthetic environments to address social, political, and cultural values.” (2012), p. 220. Community Memory BBS Teletype Terminal, Leopold’s Records, Berkeley, CA, 1973. Christopher Allen, ZZT Ultra, 2016.

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