Interventions and Recuperations:

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Interventions and Recuperations Visions of Hope
and Harsh Realities Helen W. Kennedy School of
Cultural Studies University of the West of
England Helen.kennedy_at_uwe.ac.uk 10th June, 2004
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Why do we get the games we get ?

• Economics
• Technology
• Culture

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The System of Technology

• Permanent upgrade culture
• The aesthetic of memory and speed
• Moores Law
• Kutaragi plans PS1 in mid 1980s calculating that
  the chips will be ready by mid 1990s.

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The Economic System

• Developers
• Publishers
• Technologists

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Games as Trojan Horse

• Sonys Ken Kutaragi 1989,
• Playstation will be positioned as the future
  mainstay digital product and a step toward
  introducing computers into the house .. we will
  create infrastructure for a home use computer.
  This will effectively link game machines with
  Sonys audio visual technology. (Asakura 2000
  31)

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Although the system is still porous, the
dynamics of marketing and distribution push
powerfully towards the mainstream, a relatively
restricted repertoire of games promoted by well
connected publishing houses, and towards
marginalizing or asphyxiating the projects of
developers outside this circle (Kline et al
2003179)
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The Publishers

• Top ten control 65 of international market
• Cf independence in music industry
• Publishers are the interface between developer,
  consumer technology
• Licensing deals protect risk
• Sony, Microsoft, Vivendi, Universal, Warner Bros
  all have publishers/developers

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• THE SYSTEM OF CULTURE
• The margin of developer choice
• Taste, class, race, GENDER.
• Early contact with games (not sports)
• Early contact with computers
• Early interest in engineering (dads)
• Teenage dungeons and dragons.
• Interest in controllable fantasy worlds
• People like us.

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Although Cultural Studies recognizes that the
capitalist culture industries are a major site of
ideological production, constructing powerful
images, descriptions, definitions, frames of
reference for understanding the world, it must
continue to insist on the active complexity, and
situated agency, of consumption. Culture is not
something ready-made which we consume culture
is what we make in the practices of consumption.
(Storey, 2002 59)
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Call it a hyper-hip wet dream, but the
information and communications technology
industry require a new active consumer or its
going to stall This is one reason why we are
amplifying the mythos of the sophisticated, high
complexity, fast lane/real time, intelligent,
active and creative reality hackers A nation of
TV couch potatoes (not to mention embittered
self-righteous radicals) is not going to demand
access to the next generation of the extensions
of man. (Mondo 2000 editorial quoted in
Sobchack, 2001140)
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Heroes of Computer Game Culture From Margin to
Centre We were all in it from a sense of
wonder. All of us either had no lives before or
had thrown them over because of these stupid
machines. We may hang out together because we
were all the same sort of jerks. Doug Carlston
co founder of Broderbund software (King
Borland 2003 47)
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Gatekeepers of New Technology But computer games
were different. They were accessible. They came
with their own tools, their own portals a way
inside. And the people who had the keys were not
authoritarian monsters, they were dudes. Romero
was young, but he was a dude in the making, he
figured. The Wizard of this Oz could be him.
(Kushner, 20037)
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Reclaim history of women and computing
Ada Lovelace 1815 1852 Computer software
pioneer. Daughter of poet Lord Byron directed
towards Maths to protect here from the sensual
dangers of poetry.
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VIVE LA REVOLUTION