🪴 Jachére

Case Study Arc Angels

Nov 22, 20243 min read

Abstract

Paolo Baerlocher’s Aldebaran sits at an insightful intersection of demoscene practices, UK microcomputers and multilingual regional ties in Switzerland, early thought-to-be-impossible 3D graphics, the professionalisation of video game development and programming as a meaningful human activity. I’m especially interested in the interplay of demoscene and video game programming practices and apply critical code studies to look at this socio-historic assemblage.

Considerations

  1. Interviews with all relevant participants
  2. Critical code analysis of relevant code fragments
  3. Contextualizing code fragments through practices

There are two possible arcs that would interest me, and make sense for my Dissertation

  1. Demoscene - Video Game Development
  2. Study Ludeme in source code

The first arc would focus on how video game development is contextualized in contrast to making demos and would help sharpen what makes video games code what it is. The second would concentrate on searching, reading, analysing and contextualizing ludemes’ manifestation in code. With those two arcs in mind, it makes sense to me, to look at Aldebaran’s source code and contextualise it through demoscene practices and draw partially on ludem theory.

Questions

  • On what level will I do critical code studies (source code, programming practices, semiotic/rhetoric on code and programming)?
  • How are ludemes and coding practices related, such as design patterns and routines?
  • What study before can we relate to, reconfirm but also expand with our own research?

Outline/Thoughts

  • 1980/90s were a time of professionalization in video game development (cite)
  • making video games became not only a technical feat (as it is often told in popular video game history) but needed a multitude of technical, creative and organizational skills, making it necessary to work in communities
  • something about international relations of exchange in computer cultures, especially alternative ones like the demoscene (which could make the Swiss example work, since we’re multilingual and privileged in terms of mobility) 
  • demoscene communities and video game developers always had a symbiotic relationship (cite) necessitating a influence on each others practices and cultures
  • how did the relationship between these two communities influence video game development?
  • case study analyzing exchanges on two layers: programming and social practices
  • focus on Aldebaran as an assemblage that was equally influenced by video game history (Zarch by Braben) and demoscene practices (3d and highly optimized code)
  • highlighting the ludic practices in the demoscene (megademo?) but also how a video game is not simply an interactive demo (ludemes?); showing (hinting?) at different types of computational creative works based on the same tech, but with different social recipients and cultures in mind/conceptualization
  • methodologically perspectives include sociology, history and critical code studies
  • based on oral history interviews with members of a video game dev group and a demoscene group, and a personal archive with paratextual and technical artifacts from the two groups

Sources

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