How to Present the History of Digital Games

Game History and Its Potential Relatives

There are many fields that seem to be similar to digital game histories. We are able to hold, for example, a dialog between digital game historiographies and the historiographies of other “related” fields and disciplines, such as general game history (including classic games such as chess and other board games; Murray, 1913/1985, 1952), media history, history of cinema, web history, history of technology, history of computing, software history, art history, and so forth, depending on our own disciplinary, communal, and imaginary commitments. Their usefulness, however, and applicability are limited due to the chronological and thematic narrowness of digital game historical studies (and digital games themselves) compared to most of its abovementioned related fields and disciplines. Albeit we can set digital games and game historiography in several continuums, principally, they do not have an extensive tradition—and their context is more or less different and specific. Thus, we are not able to transfer classifications of, for example, art historiography genres into analyses of game histories. Further, there are no appropriate institutionalized “old videogame histories” to which would it be possible to construct as an antagonist in the narratives of “new histories” (cf. Staudenmaier, 1994, p. 260). Nonetheless, there are, however, other potential proper opponents that it can be held in contrast to.

Technology historian John Staudenmaier (1989, 1994) has divided the histories of technology into three types: internalist, externalist, and contextual histories. His basis of the classification is premised in the way a historian makes sense of “the artifact’s role in historical events” (Staudenmaier, 1994, p. 262). That classification could be comparable on some levels to digital game histories. If we define a game or a gaming device as the artifact whose role will be studied, Staudenmaier’s typology is able to be explained in the following sense: Internalist histories are interested in particular games and game device details “with little or no reference to the larger nontechnical [or non-game] context.” Externalist histories, for their part, illustrate developments and changes in presentations or images of games and gaming, or as Staudenmaier describes, interpret “technological [or game related] ambience with no specific attention to technical design.” Contextual studies, according to Staudenmaier, “attempt to integrate the design of a technology [or games or gaming devices in this case] with some aspect(s) of its context” (Staudenmaier, 1994, p. 267). Of course, there are many ways to contextualize, as my article will show.

Classifications of media histories are more problematic because earlier “generations” of media historical studies are mostly related to substantial media institutions (such as histories of public broadcasting companies, Salokangas, 2012). According to media historian Raimo Salokangas, institutional histories form the basis for new case studies, studies of subcategories, and programs as well as studies of the histories of users and media reception. Therefore, I argue that their historiographical categorizations are not applicable within game histories even though the game industry consists of major institutional actors. The difference is that game cultural institutions have rarely held as dominant of a position compared to national broadcasting companies, even though we take note of the leading position of firms such as Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft within the game industry and game cultures. There are not many “official” corporate histories of the leading game companies and platform manufacturers; however, there are some unofficial and journalistic books about these companies or their key employees. Further, in the advent of the history of computing, writing history did not begin with institutional histories, but it rather typically began with professional autobiographies and other studies dealing with issues related to the first (scientific) computers (Aspray, 1994; Lee, 1996; Mahoney, 1988).

Media historiographical research, in addition to research on the historiography of technology, recognizes the importance of the cultural and linguistic changes since the late 1980s in introducing new forms of performing historical studies and representing the past. The existing academic game historical research compliments, in one way or another, the same cultural historical or linguistic turn—or its sort of next phase—new materialist turn, including perspectives on media archaeology and platform studies (e.g., Montfort & Bogost, 2009a). However, one manner of representation is more characteristic, and I refer to it as the “enthusiast genre.” It is more clearly related to the aforementioned internalist histories than to new cultural histories.

Enthusiasts

This book is about vintage games—or, more specifically, the vintage games that have had the most potent influences on both the videogame industry and the culture that supports it. These are the paradigm shifters; the games that made a difference. The word vintage has its origins in the wine industry, where it usually denotes wine produced during a special year—a year in which the grapes were particular delightful. Your humble authors, both lifelong and dedicated gamers and enthusiasts, beg your indulgence: let us be your connoisseurs, your guides on a wondrous tour through the history of some of the finest games ever made. [….] Who is this book for? Clearly, it’s for anyone with a passion for videogaming, but most particularly those who enjoy learning the history of their favorite pastime. It’s also sure to be useful for both experienced and aspiring game designers. (Loguidice & Barton, 2009, pp. ix–x)

The citation below, from the Vintage Games book by Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton, characterizes well the video game history genre I name “enthusiast histories.” The genre is probably still the most dominant in the field, typically consisting of illustrated books that present some highlights of video game histories: the most notable games, “paradigm shifters” as noted above, “vintage games,” which are the most influential games introduced one by one—typically in chronological order, although not necessarily always. The authors of these books are “one of us,” active gamers, “connoisseurs,” collectors, and aficionados who would like to share and boost game-related enthusiasm and feed collective and individual nostalgic feelings about gaming. The authors might have an academic background, but they are not commonly professional (game) historians by training, but more typically, amateurs with a journalistic skill for forging ideas with an alluring flair.

Willian Aspray (1994, p. 10) has recognized the significance of journalistic accounts in writing about the history of computing, but he has also criticized them. According to Aspray, the value of journalistic works for the history of computing is “their entertainment and popular dissemination.” ¹ Aspray further states that most journalistic contributions are based on too few sources and produce speculation and that they “often uncritically accept what they are told by technical experts” (see also Mahoney, 1988, pp. 114–115). One can assume that there are similar limitations within the history of digital games. These books and their historiographical value are of course quite varied. The enthusiast genre consists of very brief illustrated books (e.g., Eddy, 2012) as well as extensive and comprehensive pieces of work (e.g., Donovan, 2011).

In the most extreme cases, the enthusiast style could be said to be guilty of “fetishizing of video games” due to the fact that the books create canons, put games and their developers on a pedestal, and consist of numerous anecdotes and electronic lore supporting the master narrative of innovative game development and developers, cultural consequences, and, sometimes, progress. Friedrich Nietzsche (1874/1999) would have deemed the result as a “monumental history.” The genre typically approaches the history of games with the concepts of progress and (technical) revolution. Carl Therrien (2012) has named this kind of discourse the teleological view of video game history. Erkki Huhtamo (2005, p. 4) situates this style of writing history in a certain historiographical phase, which he calls the “chronicle era,” in which the author lacks “critical distance to their topic and are unable to relate it to wider cultural framework(s), including contemporary media culture.”

There is an alternative version of enthusiast history, which resembles Nietzsche’s (1874/1999) other form of history: antiquarian history. In that case, the presentation is merely a catalogue and not a list of individual, selected monuments and turning point moments. It’s a guide that aims to introduce all of the games to one particular sector. Usually, it is compiled by a collector and targeted at fellow aficionados as well as at other game enthusiasts. Such antiquarian catalogues are most typically published on the Internet as websites and databases, but there are also printed forms of game catalogization as well, such as the books L’Histoire de Nintendo by Florent Gorges and The Video Games Guide by Matt Fox (2013). Sometimes, the books are hybrids of catalogues and chronicles (e.g., Kuorikoski, 2014).

Even though both variations of the enthusiast genre, monumentalist and antiquarian, can be problematic for professional historians due to the shortage of properly documented references or lack of contextualization and criticism, they can, nonetheless, act as good sources as well as provide comparisons for historical studies (see also Guins, 2014, pp. 23–26).

However, the enthusiast genre can also act as a good adversary to another genre, whose mission is to demolish some grand narratives and dominant discourses on digital game histories, which usually center on games and their developers and not on game cultures or contexts. I call this genre the “emancipations genre.” When an enthusiast poses questions, such as what are the best games, who are their creators, and how do I and my community feel about them, emancipators position the research questions differently. They ask, for example, what has been missing in the stories of best games, their canonizations, and their articulated nostalgizations?

Emancipations

Let’s now focus on three excerpts from abstracts about game history from a special issue of Game Studies journal (2013). These examples articulate the counternarrative to the abovementioned enthusiast histories, and clearly, the authors can still be as exuberant as the enthusiasts in introducing their versions:

[Article] argues that specific local developments of a video game industry and market took place in Japan, which has never been addressed in Western histories of games, mainly interested in Japanese video games through a global perspective. (Picard, 2013)

[Article] argues that the entertainment function of local homebrew games was often overshadowed by their potential as a means of communication among the community of users. (Švelch, 2013)

This contribution presents three case studies, focused on the biography of Sierra On-Line cofounder and lead designer Roberta Williams, to analyze this [sic] historical mechanisms through which women are located—and left out of—game history. (Nooney, 2013)

In the abovementioned excerpts, one is able to observe the creation of a “good enemy”: The Western, male-oriented, master narrative of game history, which appears to have been at least been visible in the previously mentioned popular enthusiast game history books. Further, there are also other significant stories and perspectives as critical scholars argue.

Games can also be discussed in terms of symbols and power and perceived as political tools (on these questions related to historiography of technology, see Staudenmaier, 1994, p. 269). Revealing the fact goes well with the ideas of social constructionism. Probably the most essential premises of this within a game context are the neglect of determinism, one-eyed, progress-oriented canonization, and demonstrations that games and game cultures, as well as game histories, are products of various historical events, processes, societal forces, and ideologies, thus raising awareness related to the phenomenon in question (cf. Hacking, 2009, pp. 14, 20). Social constructionist motivation has already become more or less “worn-out”; however in newer fields, particularly in such fields as the academic study of the history of games, it still seems to hold significant influence. Thus, I would argue, in future, we will see an increasing amount of studies that aim to rhetorically challenge and unmask “traditional histories” and master narratives by revealing counternarratives; histories focused on gender in gaming and game development; geographical and cultural variations; regional developments; prehistories; transnationalism; independent, “homebrew,” and amateur productions; and the like. Likewise, the significant studies placing topics such as societal class, politics, and ethnicity among game cultures and game development are emerging.

The aim of these studies is to provide contradictory, alternative, and enriching perspectives on history, or rather histories, of games (culture). They seek to inspire debate, not only in the wider researcher community but also among gamers and the public. Their perspective toward history is not usually progress oriented but is merely ambiguous and almost always contextual, not focusing as much on the question of game core, rather on the shell and surrounding layers of gaming situations (Mäyrä, 2008) and relations between gamers, games, society, and cultures. Hence, they use not only games, gaming devices, and interviews with practitioners as sources but also a plethora of paratexts (Consalvo, 2007, pp. 8–11, 20–22; Jones & Thiruvathukal, 2012, pp. 143–148) such as game magazines, game critiques, advertisements, oral histories of gamers, online discussions, manuals, walk-throughs, and so on.

Typically, the representatives of the genre are professionally educated historians, or they are specialized in questions on histories within their own disciplines such as communication or cultural studies. Use of the sources is, thus, critical and comparative.

Of course, all of the game histories that I label as emancipatory are not (social) constructionist. Rather, they aim to fill game historical gaps and increase historical knowledge and the production of a “more complete” game historical narration. However, this is not always the case. For example, Laine Nooney (2013) emphasizes the need to think critically in one’s opposition for the completion of a certain narration: “The question of rigorously exploring gender as a historical category within game studies deserves better than a merely additive or contextual move of ‘digging up’ a history of women and games.” However, in the sense that counternarratives are able to erect national, thematic, or other competitive canons and monuments—or tear them down. Filling gaps is also a goal of the next game history genre I call “genealogies.”

Genealogies

While the history of matching tile games written here is not the only possible history to be made, a history of matching tile games is not just a theoretical idea imposed upon the world. Rather, there is much evidence that the notions of resemblance, genre, of games derived from other games, are important aspects of the development and consumptions of video games, including matching tiles games. I understand game genres as a [sic] continued negotiations between all users of games, including developers, players, and reviewers. While genres come and go, and genre definitions are always imperfect, the idea of genre still plays a role in the creation and use of video games: The developer consciously creates a game that is a twist on a genre, and players consciously select a specific type of game because they enjoy the kind of experience that genre gives them. (Juul, 2007)

Raiford Guins (2014, p. 22) argues that recently, a shift in game histories has occurred from the “chronicle era” to the “collection era” consisting of the efforts of professional historians and archivists as well as amateurs and hobbyists. Studies, which I label as belonging to the genealogies category, are one example of several different practices under the same umbrella where the collections of games are important. This is related to the antiquarian enthusiasm I described earlier, but I would argue that its methods and aims are different: more scientifically oriented and more aware of methodological connections in the creation of genealogies.

Genealogies focus more on games or the triad of a game, player, and gaming device than on context (for more on this type of research, see, e.g., Juul, 2007) even though they recognize, at least implicitly, the importance of contexts. They link to common traditions in art studies of making style historical taxonomies producing typically familiar pedigrees of games in general or games within a specific genre. Authors of these studies can be hobbyists or amateurs, but more commonly, they have academic training, not usually in history but more likely in computer science, arts studies, or design studies. Additionally, I would propose that they share the same concept of progress with the enthusiast type of history, although my argument can be disputed. The approach is progress oriented at least in those situations where new game generations and versions are thought to be improved upon from their predecessors. However, that is not necessary, if the evolution of games is merely considered as an adaptation, not an improvement.

Genealogical type of histories borrows metaphors from the natural sciences, for example, from biology, and discusses the evolution of games. Their method would again be described with a metaphor: that is (biological) morphology which means a comparison of differences and similarities between studied games (Will, 2009). The study characteristically begins with a formulation of a studied game genre’s common core and continues with a more or less detailed comparative description of variations and evolutions within the genre. The study is illustrated with a tree or a map of games and their connections. The year of publication normally has some sort of significance in these illustrations, thus making the study somewhat historically oriented.

In this sense, the method resembles the early 20th-century phase in archaeology, ethnology, and museology, for example, when the mentioned cultural sciences borrowed ideas and conceptualizations from natural sciences and aimed to organize collections of artifacts, tools, handicrafts, buildings, fishing equipment, and so forth, to follow taxonomies and evolution theory. Most likely, the current studies have received influences from early cultural anthropological studies of games where these sorts of taxonomies have been presented as well (e.g., Culin, 1907; Murray, 1913/1985), now boosted with computer-aided ways of handling and representing research data.

The family trees of games that genealogical studies create can be both quite straightforward (e.g., Kuittinen, 1999) and more complicated (Juul, 2007). Still, one important objective of them is to create a system of games revealing their reciprocal connections, influences, and sources of inspiration of game designers (and show their originality or lack thereof). These studies do not only hold objects as histories. I argue that their aim is to create tools for design and design studies as well as to spot gaps and missing links between games and to understand the features of games more specifically.

Historical genealogies and family trees can grow and begin to include a large number of games and thus to provide possibilities for digital humanistic research. The last genre I will describe is also quite total in its nature; however, it approaches the question of total history from a very different perspective, even contrasting the ideas of the “big data” type of digital humanism, “culturonomics,” and all-inclusive taxonomical databases. I call this genre as “deep diggings,” “deep excavations,” or even “pathologies.”

Pathologies

This chapter is a contribution to the cultural and historical mapping of electronic gaming. Its basic premise is at least seemingly simple: electronic games did not appear out of nowhere; they have a cultural background that needs to be excavated. (Huhtamo, 2005, p. 4; see also Huhtamo, 2012)

On the one hand, what I define as deep excavations or pathologies refers to the media archaeological studies of games, which seem to be an increasingly popular trend among studies of game history (see, e.g., Huhtamo, 2002, 2005, 2012; Nooney, 2013; Parikka & Suominen, 2006; Parisi, 2013). It can be defined as a subtype of the aforementioned emancipatory genre, but here I have regarded it as its own genre. Game archaeology, as a subcategory of media archaeology, taking inspiration from Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge and drawing from the works of media theorists such as Siegfried Zielinski, Friedrich Kittler, Wolfgang Ernst, Thomas Elsaesser, Wendy Chun, and others, is most generally focused on the pre- and protohistories of games, which can also lead to a tendency to underline ruptures, anomalies, material, embodied, and experiential as well as experimental aspects of contemporary game cultures (see Huhtamo & Parikka, 2011; Parikka, 2012). Tom Apperley and Jussi Parikka (2015, p. 15) warn about the dangers of reductive explanation when considering the media archeological approach:

It is important that media archaeology is not understood solely as a media-historical enterprise that writes alternative stories of media incorporating its “losers.” Rather, in a manner similar to platform studies, it is an “under the hood” methodology that challenges screen essentialism by excavates [sic] the archive of media culture from inside the machine. (see also Guins, 2014, p. 7) ²

Media archeological research, even though it is not a uniform approach or “school,” indicates that digital games are situated in a more or less unconventional historical framework. In Erkki Huhtamo’s case, this typically means connecting games and gaming devices not only to the history of information technology but also to media culture, industrialization, consumption, and the mechanization of work as well as domestic and public spaces. The context is, however, in many cases, the same type of 19th-century industrialization, regardless of what the archaeological excavation deals with: games, mobile devices, television, cinema, interactive user interfaces, and so forth.

On the other hand, deep excavations are not necessary related to temporal layers, rather they are merely associated with single objects. In that sense, I place several distinct platform-oriented studies and software studies into this category, although some researchers, such as Parikka and Apperley (2015), put emphasis on the differences between platform studies and media archaeology. Commonly, Platform Studies refers to the series of books published by MIT Press and edited by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. Media archaeologists might, for example, claim that platform studies are too often focused on popular artifacts, such as the monuments of the “winners” of historical narrative. Platform studies can be considered as merely a brand or a franchise more than a uniform methodological approach (for more on these critiques, see Apperley & Parikka, 2015). It also seems that platform studies are not that as highly theorized as media archeological studies and merely remain on a documentation and descriptive level. Tom Apperley and Jussi Parikka (2015, p. 2) argue that the authors of the first book of the Platform Studies series, Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost (2009a) “primarily performed platform studies rather than explicate its method” (cf. Montfort & Bogost, 2009b). This issue has continued in the following books of the series. Of course, there are differences between the books and theoretical methodological elaborations, and for example, Jones and Thiruvathukal have introduced the concept of a “social platform” in their book on the Nintendo Wii console. I argue, however, that (most of) the media archaeology and platform studies share a distinct pathological view: both are interested in an artifact’s “inner life,” opening the black box—or a postmortem of a corpse—with divergent tools. Generally, the autopsy occurs after “the primary lifecycle” (Jones & Thiruvathukal, 2012, p. 2) has ended or is considered to be ending anytime soon. Apperley and Parikka (2015, p. 3) define the similarities in a different manner: “the two approaches share a concern with the historical analysis of recurring discourses and alternative paths of media history.” They emphasize the (social) constructionist process of historizing a platform: “We suggest that platforms are not recalled and rediscovered through platform studies, rather in the process of platform studies a uniform platform is produced.”

According to Michel de Certeau, the opposite of atomic history is not universal history, rather it is a total history discourse. According to de Certeau, historians became interested in the principles or their organization, instead of facts and events, in the early 20th century (de Certeau, 1988, pp. 108–109). Finnish social historian Matti Peltonen has defined the total historical viewpoint as a way of examining historical phenomenon comprehensively with a certain principle that takes a phenomenon’s every aspect into account (Peltonen, 2003, p. 13; about combining micro- and macrohistorical perspectives and total history, see Lepetit, 1996, pp. 74–75; Ricoeur, 2000, pp. 292–293). In that sense, a deep reading and thorough deconstructing and contextualizing of a single artifact, game, device, or even a single line of programming code can be considered as total history. Influences and contexts are not looked at from only the perspective of the game world but from various possible points of view. Therefore, I would not label it, in Staudenmaier’s (1989) terminology, as internalist history, because it only moves away from an object and toward contextualization. However, platform studies books do not, for example, thoroughly examine everything about the platform they study but simply consist of selected case studies that only reveal different sides or layers of the particular platform. Francois Furet (1982, p. 11) has noted that the aim of total history is not practically reachable.

Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost have defined, in their book Racing the Beam (2009a), five separate layers in digital media. All of the layers are surrounded by cultural context: reception/operation, interface, form/function, code, and platform, and as Jones and Thiruvathukal (2012, p. 9) suggest, culture, or social context actually, “pervades and shapes every sublayer of the platform.” All of the layers can be approached from the perspective of game history, and elaborating John Staudenmaier’s ideas of the history of technology, I would argue that the artifact in the focus of historical research is composed of those same layers.

Conclusion

Studies of digital game histories have lately begun to be found from a wider range of academic interest areas. Clearly, there are major differences between various academic studies and other representations of the past. An obvious point of the article is that when we talk about the history of (digital) games, we are actually able to talk about numerous matters. Even when we bring up contextualization and source criticism, our ideas about them might vary (Revel, 1996; see also Guins, 2014, p. 12).

One aspect of the difference is associated with education: Whether or not the author has academic training and whether or not the education is a historian’s academic training—and what sort of “school of history” the author is supporting. This affects the author’s research methods, uses of metaphors, argumentative styles as well as the use and documentation of sources. Inspired by Prensky’s (2001) concept of a “digital native,” one could argue that a “native historian’s” approach differs from an “immigrant historian’s” method of conducting research and representing the past.

Another main variable is related to involvement. Is the author, for example, a game designer, developer, or an active hobbyist herself or himself, and who is the audience? Is the main audience a community of hobbyists, some portion of the general public interested in games, historians, game scholars, and/or game developers and industry people?

The third matter is connected to the mission of the author. Are they aiming to increase the public understanding of games and game cultures? Are they directing to provide new knowledge for purposes of game development? Are they targeting to provide stimuli to individual and collective game nostalgia and reminiscences?

The fourth issue is related to sources: What are the essential sources telling about history of digital games—and in some cases, also about game cultures. How and why should one preserve the sources? The researchers, coming from different perspectives, are able to call on, at least partially, the same sources, but typically, they ask different questions of them.

As a historian of (digital) games and game cultures, one has to ponder the abovementioned questions. In every case, I would argue that the pleasure of conducting research on history arises from the opportunity to follow the actors and clues and find something new, while discovering something widely unknown about the history of digital games, game cultures, and the history of humankind on a more general level.

In this article, I have only selected some themes and examples for the classification of four game historical genres. In future, one has to use more empirical evidence in order to test whether or not the suggested classifications are functional and usable and what sort of internal variations they potentially contain.