Creators of video game histories
Who are the persons in the US who write history of (digital) gaming?
Who is the audience / who are the users of the game histories?
The historical study of video games, collectively, is a recent phenomena, with the United States producing the majority of the culture and histories. The relative modernity of this field of study, nonetheless, does allow for professionals from varying backgrounds to participate. Due to the innate interdisciplinary nature of the field, new programs have emerged which focus on the various aspects of the history of video games, therein helping to create an industry made up of a mix of journalists, fiction authors, researchers of other historical disciplines, and more. With such a diverse talent pool invested in this endeavor, however, readers of new histories will invariably have to interact with and decipher between material that varies in authenticity, entertainment, and scholarship.
A quick survey of American video game histories would return discipline leaders such as Steven Kent, Blake Harris, and Raiford Guins. Although this list is far from exhaustive, it does represent at least three different types of individuals (Science Fiction author, screenwriter, and Professor of Cinema and Media Studies) who are writing the history of American video game culture. I have mentioned/reviewed these historians in previous posts, but, in short, each wrote different histories for differing audiences, ranging from entertaining docudrama to all-encompassing traditional history to even the study of the study of video games.
is a fun romp into video game history. Although the history covered in this book is extremely skewed toward American video game history and culture, its retelling is clearly meant more for entertainment rather than education. A lot of the book, for example, consisted of dialogue between key actors in the industry during various times, which provides great color, yet is also nearly impossible to fact check. Blake has written a surface level history that has, and will continue to, entertain and sell well, but it is far from an academic, scholarly work.
Alongside this week’s discussion on vide game culture’s “firsts”, Steven Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World
, details many of these in American video game history. His list does include groundbreaking firsts previously mentioned, like Russell's SpaceWar! on the PDP-1 and Bushnell/Alcon’s Pong. Although Kent is a Science Fiction author and journalist, his book reads like an academic textbook. The fact checked assertions, backed up by copious references, are phenomenal. Kent may not be a classically-trained historian, but he has indeed produced a text of historical significance that will appeal to those studying the history of American video game culture.
If relevant examples were to be organized by academic merit and pedigree, Guins’ Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (MIT Press)
would belong at the top of the list. Guins - a trained scholar and professor in Cinema and Media Studies at the Media School at Indiana University - discusses how historians should and currently do treat objects of video game culture as artifacts, or objects of historical importance. Any historian looking to study the history of video game culture should look no further than this text. Of course, as this work falls on the opposite end of the range than Blake’s Console Wars, it does means that it unfortunately lacks mass appeal. What this text lacks in appeal, however, it surely makes up for in historical importance.
Although these three individuals represent a wide range of video game historians, as all three are published authors, they still only make up a very small amount. A large part of video game history and cultural studies is conducted in less organized arenas, such as logs, social networks, etc. Publishing does provide a layer of filtering for audiences, yet its antiquated process does not necessarily match this field. There are, of course, solely-online publishing opportunities, like Refectory, to bring cutting-edge research to a broader audience, but still a lot of commentary on video games consumed by the masses is more or less unfiltered.
This lack of filtering translates to near-immediate and unaltered access to commentary on video game culture, yet it also creates the dilemma of lack of academic designation. In some cases, like Norman Caruso or The Gaming Historian, this means captivating YouTube content free of monetary influence, but Caruso is the exception, not the rule. Most of the popular commentary surrounding American video game culture is biased, vitriolic rhetoric used only to further some sort of agenda or sales plan. Ultimately, this new field allows the freedom of varying points of entry and contribution, but also requires the individual to possess essential reasoning and critical thinking skills in order to delineate fact from fiction, genuine opinion from targeted marketing, entertainment from scholarship.
References:
Guins, Raiford. 2014. Game After. A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press.
Harris, B.J., 2015. Console wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the battle that defined a generation, New York, NY: Dey Street Books.
Kent, S.L., 2001. The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond: the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world, Roseville, CA: Prima Pub.
Suominen, Jaakko, and Anna Sivula, ‘Participatory Historians in Digital Cultural Heritage Process: Monumentalization of the First Finnish Commercial Computer Game’, Refractory – a Journal of Entertainment Media (2016)
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