How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression.
How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression.
Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Svelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc.
Svelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.
By:
Jaroslav Svelch
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780262549288
ISBN 10: 026254928X
Series: Game Histories
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 19 September 2023
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Series Foreword xi Preface xiii Acknowledgments xvii A Note on Translations and Pronunciation xix Introduction xxi 1 Micros in the Margins: Computer Technology in the State Socialist Society 1 Toward Normalization 3 Beyond the Quiet Life 5 A Revolution That Was Normalized 9 The State of the Computer Industry 12 Electronization Programs of the 1980s 15 Men, Women, and Machines 18 Side Roads to Micros 21 Who Needs a Home Computer? 27 Farm Computers and the Courageous Clone 31 2 Hunting Down the Machine: Trajectories of Microcomputer Domestication 35 A Machine That Obeys 39 Wandering Programmers 42 Spectacle from the West 45 Importing the Standard 47 The Shiny Side of Retail 50 A Room of Its Own 53 3 Our Amateur Can Work Miracles: Infrastructures of Hobby Computing 63 Cybernetics for Youth 66 Repurposing the Paramilitary 71 Activist Meshworks 74 Tolerating the Man’s World 77 Build Your Own Peripherals 81 Amateur Entrepreneurs 85 Starting a Computer Fanzine 87 Samizdat Research Institute 90 4 Who’s Afraid of Gameplay? Czechoslovak Discourses on Computer Games 99 Playing with Computers 102 Forbidden Pleasures 104 Bringing Games under Control 109 Computer Game Advocates 112 The Appreciation of Tomahawk 116 5 Lighting Up the Shadows: Informal Distribution of Game Software 123 From Yugoslavia with Cracks 126 The Unregulated (Non)medium 133 Lightning-Fast Sneakernet 135 Homemade Tape Culture 139 (Mis)understanding Games 143 A Cottage Arcade Industry 147 6 Bastard Children of the West: Establishing a Domestic Coding Culture 153 Czechoslovak Homebrew Scene 157 Ports and Conversions 164 What Became of Flappy 167 Forging the Shooter 171 Second Lives of Indiana Jones 174 Hacking Games 178 7 Empowered by Games: Games as a Means of Self-Expression and Activism 185 Hello World! 190 Adventure in Your Home 192 Spreading Unofficial Culture 196 Small Subversions 199 A Protest of Sorts 204 Taking to the Streets 206 Conclusion 215 Bricoleurs and Tacticians 218 We Have Always Been Indie 219 Toward Comparative Histories 221 Preserving the Peripheral 223 Epilogue: After the Curtain Fell 227 Computers and Games in Transition 229 A Belated Cottage Industry 232 Homebrew Lives On 234 The Game Industry Today: Adventures, Army, and Automation 235 Where Are They Now? 238 Appendix: Important Dates 241 Glossary 243 Notes 247 Bibliography 315 Index 345
Jaroslav Svelch is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at Charles University, Prague, and Lecturer in the Department of Game Design at the Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He is the author of Gaming the Iron Curtain- How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games.
