[game_preservation] Call for papers for a panel on early videogames
Devin Monnens
dmonnens at gmail.com
Sun Sep 21 16:38:44 EDT 2014
Alex,
Yes, you can submit a proposal for any of the other panels, but the one I
am proposing is 1973 and earlier :)
We'd be happy to have you there though!
-Devin
On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Alex Handy <alex at themade.org> wrote:
> 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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>
>
--
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com
The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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