Why would someone want to do that, voluntarily?

As a preparation for the Leisure Electronics 2024 Proposal, I’m trying to capture some thoughts for the contribution.

I’m interested in video game graphics programming practices. One aspect of that interest is the motivation and intention that these programmers had, back then, when they went about their programming business. Why did they do, what they did? The slightly sarcastic reframing of the question for the proposal comes about from my own experience. It’s not a scientific question, but an honest wondering. I experienced learning to code as something very frustrating, time-taking and occupying. And up to this day, I haven’t heard from anybody who slid into coding easily and has fond memories of the process.

So, the question is also a question to myself. Why did I do that^1 as a way of relating to the world.

I investigated the three cases Ball Raider.md), Robox.md), and Aldebaran.md)^2, the programmer, created with the help of Robin François. I was interested in the source code, and the interview was so fantastic that I needed to include work on this case.

After a mapping of the three cases this week and having a rough overview on the interviews I can say with certainty, that there are some patterns. In all three cases it was always two friends with complementary skill sets that shared some social life, were rather at the beginning of their career and engagement with computers, had already done some serious tinkering with the machines and came about the wish to now create a game together¹. A certain threshold was reached, enough skill, knowledge, and courage was accumulated to take that challenge.

This is also a moment after which the biographies of the three cases diverge again. Making a game needs a complete need set of skills and knowledge. It’s not only about the ability to draw or program, but also about organization and management of a workload. Having made that experience of creating and publishing a game, it influence the individual biographies a lot. But that is another trajectory.

Taking a step back and asking about the why, it seems to be one of these questions that can’t get answered by the programmers themselves. For them, it was the obvious thing to do. The got hold of a computing machine, and they started to do their programming thing. Paolo Baerlocher and Laro Schatzer were a bit more specific regarding their motivation. Both used the same terminology, “magic”, when describing their first encounters with computers. In both cases, they retold how they hooked up the computer to the television, and now you could decide yourself what is shown on screen, even if it’s meagre compared to what’s shown usually. I guess there is something something about being socialised with a passive mass medium, such as television and suddently get the opportunity to control it.

There must be some material written on this fascination of creation and control. In the case of Paolo, I would guess programming was an important way of thinking about the world, akin to what Marino wrote on Kittler @marinoCriticalCodeStudies2020 goes into a similar direction, although less detailed, in the interview.

I understand them very well, and have the feeling that there are some pointers towards a unique ontology of coding for creation. Might have to look into that aspect again if there is some material. The initial question then could be reframed towards, what kind of engagement with the world did the programmer seek and does it show in the code, or in the way they treated their code?

An aspect that I thought very little about yet is the sociality of programming. At least for Heinz Lüem, that aspect is important as he took part in groups and communities where being able to code was ratifying and he was able to socialize via that. That is also important for Paolo Baerlocher, but lesser so for Laro Schatzer. I might want to at least mention this aspect.

Log 2024-12

• Finished the draft for the DHd 2025 workshop proposal.
• Finished the article on Intersecting video game studies and digital humanities in Switzerland and handed it in for translation 🥳
• Visited UNIL for two lectures by Sophie Bémelsman and Matthieu Schroeter. Sophie talked about her sociologists/anthropologists approach to studying the Smaky. Matthieu about his work of restoring the game Blupimania.md). Fantastic presentations about how to approach technological objects of study through the build-up of technicity. I love the mix of actor-network and bricolage with Sophie and her appell to reflect on the effect of our research subjects/objects on us, how they inscribe themselves into our lifes and research.
• Happy finding out that Matthieu published the original Blupimania.md) for Smaky source code, writen in C and containing original comments by Daniel Roux, the creator of the game.
• Worked on mapping out the cases for Leisure Electronics 2024 Proposal. There is one for Robox and those sketches here on paper. They help me tremendously to think through the material and how code and hardware become actors themselves.

Open: mapping-ball-raider-and-aldebaran.jpeg Open: 83c5e80d73ded3cda4aebd35e6470e81_MD5.jpeg Open: 83c5e80d73ded3cda4aebd35e6470e81_MD5.jpeg Open: 83c5e80d73ded3cda4aebd35e6470e81_MD5.jpeg Open: 83c5e80d73ded3cda4aebd35e6470e81_MD5.jpeg

Footnotes

1. The Warheli case is similar as well. ↩