Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826516017 ISBN 13: 9780826516015

Verlag: Univ of Chicago Press behalf of Vanderbilt Univ. P, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Playing the Past brings together a group of interdisciplinary scholars to examine the complementary notions of history and nostalgia as they are expressed through video games and in gaming culture. The scope of these related concepts moves from the personal to the cultural, and essays in this collection address video game nostalgia as both an individual and societal phenomenon, connecting the fond memories many of us have of classic gaming to contemporary representations of historical periods and events in video games. From Ms. Pac-Man and Space Invaders to Call of Duty and JFK: Reloaded, the games many of us have played since childhood inform how we see the world today, and the games we make and play today help us communicate ideas about real world history. By focusing on specific games, historical periods and media ecologies, these essays collectively take an in depth look at the related topics of nostalgia for classic gaming, gaming and histories of other media, and representations of real history in video games.

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Laurie N. Taylor, PhD, researches video games and digital media at the University of Florida. Her articles have appeared in Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research, Media/Culture, Computers and Composition Online and Works & Days.

Zach Whalen, a PhD Fellow at the University of Florida, edits the game studies blog Gameology.org and is Production Editor for ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies.

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An eclectic group of scholars examines the complementary notions of history and nostalgia as they are expressed through video games and in gaming culture.

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Playing the Past

History and Nostalgia in Video Games

By Zach Whalen, Laurie N. Taylor

Vanderbilt University Press

Copyright © 2008 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8265-1601-5

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments, vii, 
1 Playing the Past: An Introduction Laurie N. Taylor and Zach Whalen, 1, 
Part I. Playing in the Past Negotiating Nostalgia and Classic Gaming, 
2 Why Old School Is "Cool": A Brief Analysis of Classic Video Game Nostalgia Sean Fenty, 19, 
3 Homesick for Silent Hill: Modalities of Nostalgia in Fan Responses to Silent Hill 4: The Room Natasha Whiteman, 32, 
4 Playing the Deja-New: "Plug it in and Play TV Games" and the Cultural Politics of Classic Gaming Matthew Thomas Payne, 51, 
5 Hacks, Mods, Easter Eggs, and Fossils: Intentionality and Digitalism in the Video Game Wm. Ruffin Bailey, 69, 
6 Screw the Grue: Mediality, Metalepsis, Recapture Terry Harpold, 91, 
Part II. Playing and the Past Understanding Media History and Video Games, 
7 Unlimited Minutes: Playing Games in the Palm of Your Hand Sheila C. Murphy, 111, 
8 Visions and Revisions of the Hollywood Golden Age and America in the Thirties and Forties: Prince of Persia and Crimson Skies Andrew E. Jankowich, 126, 
9 Toward a New Sound for Games Thomas E. Gersic, 145, 
10 Remembrance of Things Fast: Conceptualizing Nostalgic-Play in the Battlestar Galactica Video Game Anna Reading and Colin Harvey, 164, 
Part III. Playing with the Past Nostalgia and Real History in Video Games, 
11 Just Less Than Total War: Simulating World War II as Ludic Nostalgia James Campbell, 183, 
12 Performing the (Virtual) Past: Online Character Interpretation as Living History at Old Sturbridge Village Scott Magelssen, 201, 
13 Documentary Games: Putting the Player in the Path of History Tracy Fullerton, 215, 
14 Of Puppets, Automatons, and Avatars: Automating the Reader-Player in Electronic Literature and Computer Games Robert P. Fletcher, 239, 
Contributors, 265, 
Index, 271, 

CHAPTER 1

Playing the Past

An Introduction

Laurie N. Taylor and Zach Whalen

Outbreaks of nostalgia often follow revolutions. —Svetlana Boym (2001)

In late 2006, Sony's PlayStation 3 console and Nintendo's Wii (codenamed "The Revolution") promised to usher in a new era of gaming with powerful graphics and innovative approaches to play. Joining the Xbox 360, these game systems complete the seventh console generation, and already (as of 2007) speculation is growing over the eighth. At the same time that gamers were lining up to pay over $700 for the PlayStation 3's high-definition capabilities, many other game enthusiasts were drawn to the moderately priced Wii—not for its graphics or even its motion-based input, but rather for the ease with which it allows players to reexperience classic games like Super Mario Brothers (1985) and Donkey Kong (1985) through its Virtual Console. Nintendo's branding has always emphasized its franchise characters like Mario and Yoshi; with the Wii, that nostalgic branding is fully realized in the form of a commodity—downloadable emulations of the actual games many of us grew up playing.

In the lead-up to the 2004 presidential election, game publisher Kuma Reality Games released a free downloadable game mission that allowed players to reenact the then-controversial Swift Boat patrol on which candidate John Kerry earned his Silver Star. (Completing the mission is not that easy, it turns out, and one may conclude that Kerry's actions were deserving of the medal he received.) At the same time that media outlets were running hotly-contested stories about the Swift Boat patrol, Call of Duty was one of the best-selling PC games of 2003, and it was recognized both with a Game Developers Choice Award and as the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Game of the Year.

Call of Duty is an intense first-person shooter (FPS) set during World War II. Its impressive visuals are frequently celebrated for their "cinematic" quality. As one reviewer observed, the game "shamelessly [recreates] scenes from such recent films as Band of Brothers and Enemy at the Gates ... I've never played a game that captures the feel of Hollywood's version [of] World War II like Call of Duty. It really is like being in a war movie" (GamesFirst). This displacement of the documentary function of games—those ostensibly based on "actual" events—toward a Hollywood or pop-media measure of their realism suggests that something more is going on than the straightforward reenactment of history. In all of these examples (Nintendo's Virtual Console, John Kerry's Silver Star, and Call of Duty), video games operate with a clear—and a clearly mediated—relationship to the past.

As video games have become more complex and expressive, real world history has found an interesting place on the video game shelf among the fantasy, science fiction, and sports settings many games offer. As Call of Duty and the Swift Boat game demonstrate, games can use history for the purposes of politics, education, historical revision, or entertainment, but in all of these instances, a sense of nostalgia establishes the relationship between the real present and a virtual past. Similarly, the Nintendo Wii counts on its players' nostalgia for their experiences of old Nintendo games; its Virtual Console, like any emulator, reproduces a more or less faithful repetition of an actual, personally historical experience with gaming.

Games are finding their way into more and more aspects of our lives—in homes, cars, workplaces, and museums, and can even be found on city streets and crossing areas by way of mobile platforms like PDAs, mobile phones, GPS systems, handheld dedicated game systems, and more. As such, video games are playing an increasing role in communicating complex ideas—real world history, media ecologies, and gaming histories. In all of these instances, a playful intimacy grounded in nostalgia becomes an important element in how games express these ideas. The essays in this collection join a growing field of video game scholarship to explore the role of nostalgia as it configures playing in, of, and with the past.

As editors, we have found surprising and interesting connections among the approaches to history gathered within this volume. Moreover, a personal dimension of nostalgia has allowed us to recall our own histories with games. We have been lucky enough to see a cultural gaming literacy develop along with the creation and evolution of game studies as a nascent discipline. While we both began our academic careers in digital media during the rise of game studies, our interest in games and gaming long predates our scholarly engagements with them. As first players and now scholars, we have seen more generations of consoles than we have decades in our lives. Our first gaming experiences included the Atari, the Commodore 64, and the first Nintendo, but we began as gamers with the first Nintendo Entertainment System (NES); we are both members of the "Nintendo Generation." Our early gaming memories are colored by the Nintendo Power Pad, Nintendo Power magazine, and Nintendo's famous game characters—Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Link, Zelda, Samus Aran, and many others. We have played games on every console since the mid-1980s. Now we can play all of those classic games again through emulation on our...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Univ of Chicago Press behalf of Vanderbilt Univ. P
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826516017
• ISBN 13: 9780826516015
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 298
• Herausgeber: Whalen Zach
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland