[game_preservation] Call for papers for a panel on early videogames
Alex Handy
alex at themade.org
Sun Sep 21 15:48:45 EDT 2014
Gee, I should do one for this. Specifically, I should do somehting about
our Habitat project:
http://themade.org/posts/552
On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com> wrote:
> Call for Papers for a Panel on Early Videogames
>
> Conference: Southwest/Texas PCA/ACA Conference, Albuquerque, NM February
> 11-14, 2015
>
> Deadline: October 26
>
>
> 1973, was a landmark year in the history of videogames. Although PONG was
> released in 1972, Atari was not able to manufacture much more than about
> 400 units before the end of the year; by the end of 1973, there were an
> estimated 10,000 PONG machines and another 40,000 clones on the market.
> 1973 also saw the release of 101 BASIC Computer Games, which showcased the
> vibrant field of computer games made possible through flexible programming
> languages like BASIC and FOCAL and the distribution of thousands of
> minicomputers to schools and colleges across the country.
>
>
> However, outside of the major titles mentioned above, very little is known
> about the games produced during this period. What makes research more
> difficult is very little documentation survives, particularly game source
> code, which was usually destroyed by unsympathetic administrators or lost
> or forgotten over the years. Many games only exist today in accounts from
> people who designed or programmed them at the time, or in scant published
> papers. As a result, the period preceding 1973 can be considered the Dark
> Ages of Videogames.
>
>
> The purpose of this call to papers is to help document these early games
> before more information is lost for good. I am looking for papers on any
> early videogames produced in 1973 or earlier. I seek to establish a panel
> on early videogames at upcoming academic conferences, starting with the
> Southwest/Texas PCA/ACA conference to be held in Albuquerque in February
> 11-14, 2015. The hope is that as a result of this panel, key themes in
> early videogames can be discovered and eventually an edited book of essays
> can be collected similar to Mark Wolf's Before the Crash.
>
>
> Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
>
>
>
> - Torres y Quevedo's Chess Player
> - Turing's Chess programs
> - Nimatron, Nimrod, and other early NIM machines
> - Goldsmith and Mann's Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device
> - Claude Shannon's early “EM” games (Caissac and Bird Cage)
> - Early Pool games (incl. Michigan Pool Game, 1954; IDI Pool Game,
> 1966; RCA Pool Game, 1967)
> - IBM 701 Blackjack program (1954?)
> - Cold War Military Simulations (Hutspiel, T.E.M.P.E.R., etc.)
> - Business Simulation Games (AMA's Top Management Decision Simulator,
> University of Washington's TOP Management Decision Game, etc.)
> - The Carnegie Tech Management Game
> - A.S. Douglas's Tic-Tac-Toe
> - GE/NASA Space Generator (1964)
> - Fritz Spiegel's Military Trainer/Bolkow's Training Device for
> Marksmen (1960)
> - Rand Corp's Handball/Jai Alai game (1963)
> - Kalah (1961, MIT PDP-1)
> - Edmund Berkeley's Relay Moe
> - Early sports games:
> - John Kemeny's BASIC Baseball and Football games (1965)
> - CDC Baseball game (1967)
> - Charles Bacheller's BASIC basketball game (1967)
> - Jacob Bergmann's BASIC 1967 World Series simulation
> - Dan Daglow's Baseball (1971)
> - Edward Steinberger's PDP-5 Dice Game (1965)
> - DECUS Bingo (1966)
> - Golf Simulations from DECUS
> - IBM Catalog games:
> - BBC Vik the Baseball Demonstrator (Jack and Paul Burgeson)
> - Blackjack (A.J. Lang)
> - Blackjack Demonstration (Karl E. Hitt)
> - Checker Demonstration Program
> - Simulation of a One-Armed Bandit (Dick Conner)
> - Three Dimensional Tic-Tac-Toe (H.F. Smith, Jr.)
> - The Socratic System (1963)
> - The Huntington Project
> - 101 BASIC Computer Games (including individual games from the book)
> - People's Computer Company games (including entries from What To Do
> After You Hit Return)
> - Hunt the Wumpus
> - Highnoon and other unpublished BASIC and FOCAL games
> - MIT's 3D Tic-Tac-Toe
> - Mouse in a Maze and other PDP-1 demonstration programs
> - GE Artillery Game
> - Mike Mayfield's Star Trek
> - SPASIM
> - PLATO games
> - Independently built arcade machines or computer games (like Lawson's
> Demolition Derby)
> - The influence of pinball and other electromechanical (EM) games on
> the videogame industry and arcades
> - Biographies of early videogame designers from this period
> - Discussions of trends, social-economic, and cultural forces and
> contexts that shaped early videogames
> - Any other videogames not mentioned, but made in 1973 or earlier
>
>
> The following will not be considered unless substantially new information
> is described in the abstract, as these games are already well documented or
> there are already detailed research papers on the subject completed or in
> progress:
>
>
>
> - Spacewar!
> - Charles Babbage's Tic-Tac-Toe Automaton
> - The Sumerian Game/Hamurabi
> - PONG
> - Computer Space
> - Magnavox Odyssey
> - Lunar Lander
> - Oregon Trail
> - Tennis for Two
> - Arthur Samuel's Checkers
> - Lunar Lander
>
>
> If you are interested in participating in the panel, please submit an
> abstract of 500 words or less to dmonnens (at symbol) gmail.com with the
> subject header “Panel on Early Videogames.” Deadline for Submissions is
> October 26 in anticipation of the SW/TX PCA/ACA conference's November 1
> deadline for paper proposals.
>
> You can also contact me if you are interested in participating in the
> project or in a panel at another conference.
>
> For more information on the SW/TX PCA/ACA conference, please see:
> http://southwestpca.org/conference/call-for-papers/
>
> --
> Devin Monnens
> www.deserthat.com
>
> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
>
>
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>
>
--
Alex Handy
Founder/Director
The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment
610 16th St.
Suite 230
Oakland, CA 94612
Dial #0230 to be buzzed in
http://www.themade.org
510-282-4840 (Me)
510-210-0291 (The MADE)
410-2-31337-2 (mobile)
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