Game

The Influence of Manic Miner on Early Video Game Design, 2024

The emergence and rapid proliferation of computer technology made it possible for people to own computers and use them for not only typing work. While there were numerous straightforward games to program, rock stars known for their aptitude for philosophy quickly became bored and made bold efforts to write more validating computer games. The outcome of such experiments is one of the most widely played games on the BBC Micro: Manic Miner. This essay seeks to examine both the technical and design innovations of Manic Miner that led to the evolution of the computer game industry. The importance and role of Manic Miner within its contemporary context, the technical and design advances that Manic Miner introduced to the genre, and the significance of Manic Miner in the broader timeline of computer games are also discussed. The essay concludes by establishing how the innovations of Manic Miner went on to influence game design and programming on the whole. The foundation of Manic Miner is a game code typed into and subsequently played on the BBC Microcomputer. Under design constraints that enabled a very wide variety of play, the gaming framework was exceptionally well-suited for that platform. This game code, freely distributed by the author, originated publicly from the TV series "The Computer Programme," broadcast in the Spring of 1985 on BBC1. Essentially a tech guide to the Micro, the characters became icons, from which a rock band evolved. Founding members included the author/programmer of Manic Miner, who adapted this code into a game before pursuing its promotion elsewhere in the BBC. Prior to 1985, Micro Computer games were typically a one or two-player experience. The personal computer, with its rudimentary built-in sound and limited graphic capability, lent itself to simplistic playing experiences. Games, such as the numerous arcade clones notwithstanding, traditionally comprised an uncomplicated "text and quests," instructions to fold a letter into an "L" shape and mail it to the "President." Although clever and humorous, these games fell well short of being an enjoyable playing experience.

Games and Culture, 2006

A short, speculative account of the state of play in the formation of a discipline or field of computer games studies. The processes of academic teaching, research, and institutional positioning in regard to computer games are viewed from the perspective of wider currents and crises influencing knowledge formation today. It is argued that the different approaches to computer games cannot ignore the differences in their conceptions of the object of study in a naive pluralism. These different conceptions of games as parts of the technocultural milieu must encounter each other in the name of the struggle against the avoidance of critical thought concerning the nature and forms of technoculture that often prevails in the production of specialist “knowledge” today.

2012

Proceeding of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference on - MindTrek '12, 2012

Despite the common tendency to understand computer games as a medium somewhere between film and traditional software, this paper argues for a more appropriate position amongst literature. This writing explores the opportunities in analogizing digital games not as art, but as literature. Within this framing new opportunities reveal themselves for innovative game design and more manageable archiving of games and their relationships. It should prove useful to media theorists, designers, and game librarians seeking a new way to frame the analysis and production of digital games.

This paper is part of an experimental approach aimed to study the nature of videogames. We will focus on videogames rules in order to try to understand the anatomy of a videogame. Being inspired by the methodology that Propp used for his classification of Russian fairy tales, we have cleared out recurrent diagrams within rules of videogames. We then analysed these rules diagrams by using the definition of a game drawn by Salen & Zimmerman, which led us to propose a definition for the nature of gameplay. Through an additional analysis, we will be able to propose a typology of videogames rules which extends the typology proposed by Frasca.

According to the perennial, popular collegiate yardstick/burden that is U.S. News & World Report, computer game design is one of the fastest growing curricula that college and universities are adding to satisfy the estimated $82.4 billion game industry by 2015 (Gearon, 2012). Obviously, there is a market and need for a book such as Game Invaders, but thankfully, its ambitions extend past vocational competencies. Beyond just showing expected undergraduate readers how to play with expensive modeling software, the University of Teesside authors challenge them to understand games as the intersection between creativity and technology. Game Invaders' intention is to provide a pack of theories and models from which the reader can draw to better understand (and potentially create) computer games. Mercifully, these authors spare their readers from unnecessary academic jargon as they convey the importance of utilizing models and theories when thinking about computer games as a medium. Somewhat surprisingly, Salen and Zimmerman's Rules of Play (2004) is absent from the book's bibliography, since, 10 years later, this current work could be viewed as the intentional theoretical descendant of that now canonical tome— albeit in a much condensed form and focused solely on computer games. In particular, Mateas and Stern's (2004) views on interaction and narrative would have been interesting to reference in the Game Invaders chapter on pleasure and narrative, while Caillois' (2004) thoughts on the classification of games could have provided an alternative context for genre construction. The niche that this book attempts to fit into is defined by the authors' own statement from Chapter 5: " [T]he graphics have become a lot more sophisticated but in many ways the gameplay has not developed nearly as much " (p. 61). Teaching students to understand gameplay and how to analyze it are the backbone for this effort. For communication scholars, the book's focus on defining games as implementations of the code of interaction is especially valuable. The theoretical pack is comprised of: genre, activity profiles (what one actually does within a particular game), sources of aesthetic pleasures (contrasted to other communication media), emotional models of play, player types, perceptual opportunities, semiotics, and the code of interaction. The thread running throughout this theoretical tapestry, however, is the discussion of agency and how computer games rely on our " belief in the myth of interaction " to satisfy the players' desire/acquiescence for a limited form of involvement. This focus on agency within the interaction and the way meanings are constructed within the player-game dynamic is particularly useful for communication scholars.

cs.potsdam.edu

2011

Canadian Journal of Media Studies

Based on a consideration of the outlooks of the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), Actor-Network Theory (ANT), as well as theories in the philosophy of technology, this critical essay is an argument for a greater recognition of the need to preserve significant early computer games written in BASIC and to provide improved public access to these programs. Although many of these programs have been preserved and presented to the public by hobbyists, there are significant gaps that have the potential to prevent recognition by future researchers of the pivotal role played by non-corporate actors in the early development of the video-game industry. Such informal efforts at curating these items so that they can be easily accessed are also limited by copyright laws. Effectively addressing these issues requires increased support from museums and scholarly institutions.