Josephine Anstey

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Josephine Anstey
History of Gaming 1 Context(s)
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Josephine Anstey
anthropology and its sister sciences have so
far laid too little stress on the concept of play
and on the supreme importance to civilisation of
the play factor. Foreward to Homo Ludens Johan
Huizinga, 1938
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Josephine Anstey
What is play?
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Josephine Anstey
What is a game?
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Josephine Anstey
Why do we play?
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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts
Tools/Machines that Play 1
Skittles Bagatelle Pin Ball Video Arcade Games
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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts
Tools/Machines that Play 2
Mechanical Dolls Automata AI, Intelligent
Agents, Robots

• The Turk 1770 (a fake)
• Spore 2007

Alpha Wolf, Blumberg 2001
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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts
Tools/Machines that Play 3
1939 Allen Herschell carousel
Rides DisneyQuest Motion Platforms
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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts
Games-gtVideo Games
Madden Football PS2 2005
Pong Atari 1972
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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts
Role Playing Games 50s Lord of the Rings
70s Dungeon and Dragons Text-based Adventure
Games 80s Chat Rooms Muds and Moos 2000s MMORPGs
World of Warcraft 2007
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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts

• Art and Performance 1
• Drama 30's-60's
• Artaud, Brecht, Ionesco
• Theatre of Cruelty
• Theatre of Absurd

Antonin Artaud by Man Ray
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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts

• Art and Performance 2
• Happenings 1950/60s
• Cage, Nam June Paik, Kaprow etc etc.
• Fluxus

John Cage, Variations V, 1965
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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts

• Computers 1
• Interaction
• Digitilization
• Procedure

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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts

• Computers 2
• 1960s
• Mainframes
• Vector Graphics realtime
• Light pens for interactivity
• Mathematics of Representing Objects
• 1970s
• Mainframes
• Raster Graphics things slow down
• WIMP
• First Paint Program Shoup Ray Smith

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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts
Computers 3

• 1966 HMD Evans and Sutherland
• 1991 CAVE, Cruz Neira, DeFanti, Sandin

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Josephine Anstey
Various Video Games Contexts

• Computers 4
• 1980s
• Workstations, PC
• Growth of CG for special effects
• (Tron 1982) (Roger Rabbit 1988)
• Non-linear editing
• 1990s
• Ubiquitous Pcs, Games
• Web (91), Browsers (93)
• 2000s
• Fast Pcs
• Dwindling fortunes of high end graphic computers
  (SGI)
• Games make more money than movies

Tron above, Sims below
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Josephine Anstey
Video Games/Computer Games

• Games Now and Future
• Mainstream Games - faster, more realistic
• Innovation driven by VR dreams? Holodeck that
  supports all senses
• AI Dreams? Intelligent Agents human look, human
  intelligence
• Other Dreams?