Distributed for DIAPHANES
Computer Game Worlds
Computer games have become ubiquitous in today’s society. Many scholars have speculated on the reasons for their massive success. Yet we haven’t considered the most basic questions: Why do computer games exist? What specific circumstances led to the creation of this entirely new type of game? What sorts of knowledge facilitated the requisite technological and institutional transformations?
With Computer Game Worlds, Claus Pias sets out to answer these questions. Tracing computer games from their earliest forms to the unstoppable commercial and cultural phenomena they have become today, Pias then provides a careful epistemological reconstruction of the process of playing games, both at computers and by computers themselves. The book makes a valuable theoretical contribution to the ongoing discussion about computer games.
With Computer Game Worlds, Claus Pias sets out to answer these questions. Tracing computer games from their earliest forms to the unstoppable commercial and cultural phenomena they have become today, Pias then provides a careful epistemological reconstruction of the process of playing games, both at computers and by computers themselves. The book makes a valuable theoretical contribution to the ongoing discussion about computer games.
Reviews
Table of Contents
Part I: Action
1 Kairos
2 Experimental Psychology
3 Army Mental Tests
4 Ergonomics
First Digression: Instances of Notation
Second Digression: Heroes of Work
Third Digestion: Organic Constructs
5 Calculating Motion
The Differential Analyzer
Project Pigeon
6 Visibility and Commensurability
Whirlwind and the Issue of Interruption
Image Processing in the Williams Tube
SAGE
The TX-0 and the Techno-Logic of Hackers
Spacewar
Sensorama
7 A New Ergonomics
Sketchpad
Humans as Stopgaps
Word Processing as a Shooter Game
Xerox Star
8 Computer Games
Odyssey
Pong
Part II: Adventure
9 Caves
10 The Construction of the Artificial World
Being (Das Sein)…
… the Being (das Seinde)…
…and “Technological Language”
Soft Modernity
11 Narratives
Nuclei and Catalyses
Thinking “Red”
Soap Operas
12 Programs, Labyrinths, Graphs
Flowcharts
Working through Labyrinths
Graphs and Networks
Memex
The Best World
Part III: Strategy
13 “That Naïve Concept of Utility”
14 Chess and Computers
15 Tactical Chess and War Games
Hellwig’s “Tactical Game”
Hoverbeck and Chamblanc
Reisswitz’s Kriegsspiel…
… and Its Successors
16 Operations Research and the Weather
Lanchester’s Law
Operations Research
Vilhelm Bjerknes
Richardson’s Theater of Computers
John von Neumann
17 The 1950s
Computer Games
Cellular Automata
Politics and Society
Game Theory and the Cold War
18 The 1960s
Vietnam
Integration
Criticism of Game Theory
Object-Oriented Programming
19 The 1970s
Computers for Everyone
Pedagogical Postgame
Afterword
Works Cited
Index
1 Kairos
2 Experimental Psychology
3 Army Mental Tests
4 Ergonomics
First Digression: Instances of Notation
Second Digression: Heroes of Work
Third Digestion: Organic Constructs
5 Calculating Motion
The Differential Analyzer
Project Pigeon
6 Visibility and Commensurability
Whirlwind and the Issue of Interruption
Image Processing in the Williams Tube
SAGE
The TX-0 and the Techno-Logic of Hackers
Spacewar
Sensorama
7 A New Ergonomics
Sketchpad
Humans as Stopgaps
Word Processing as a Shooter Game
Xerox Star
8 Computer Games
Odyssey
Pong
Part II: Adventure
9 Caves
10 The Construction of the Artificial World
Being (Das Sein)…
… the Being (das Seinde)…
…and “Technological Language”
Soft Modernity
11 Narratives
Nuclei and Catalyses
Thinking “Red”
Soap Operas
12 Programs, Labyrinths, Graphs
Flowcharts
Working through Labyrinths
Graphs and Networks
Memex
The Best World
Part III: Strategy
13 “That Naïve Concept of Utility”
14 Chess and Computers
15 Tactical Chess and War Games
Hellwig’s “Tactical Game”
Hoverbeck and Chamblanc
Reisswitz’s Kriegsspiel…
… and Its Successors
16 Operations Research and the Weather
Lanchester’s Law
Operations Research
Vilhelm Bjerknes
Richardson’s Theater of Computers
John von Neumann
17 The 1950s
Computer Games
Cellular Automata
Politics and Society
Game Theory and the Cold War
18 The 1960s
Vietnam
Integration
Criticism of Game Theory
Object-Oriented Programming
19 The 1970s
Computers for Everyone
Pedagogical Postgame
Afterword
Works Cited
Index