Gaming the Iron Curtain : how teenagers and amateurs in communist Czechoslovakia claimed the medium of computer games / Jaroslav Švelch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Švelch, Jaroslav, author.

Series:

Game histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Video games--Social aspects--Czechoslovakia.

Video games.

Video games--Political aspects--Czechoslovakia.

Video games--Czechoslovakia--History.

Computer programming--Czechoslovakia--History.

Computer programming.

History.

Computer games--Social aspects.

Czechoslovakia--Social conditions--1945-1992.

Czechoslovakia.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2018]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

"Based on oral histories gathered from players, game creators and hobbyists active in the 1980s, as well as archival material like computer club newsletters, official documents, hobby magazines, TV broadcasts and the games produced in the period, Gaming the Iron Curtain offers a social history of games in Communist-era Czechoslovakia - a country with a rigid centrally planned economy, separated from its Western neighbors by the so-called Iron Curtain. In Czechoslovakia at the time, there was no hardware or software market, no private enterprise, no commercial advertising and no publicly available computing or gaming magazines. Despite these limitations, a vibrant computer hobby scene emerged. Tens of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks played computer games and at least two hundred titles were developed over the course of the 1980s. Aside from playing games, Czechoslovak home computer enthusiasts were also "gaming" their hardware and software by discovering new ways to code, crack and hack. But most importantly, they looked for and took advantage of 'gaps' in the Iron Curtain and the oppressive political regime in order to play and create games. Gaming the Iron Curtain therefore an original historical narrative as well as a comprehensive social historical understanding of how computer games were made and how gaming communities functioned in the Soviet bloc"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Micros in the Margins: Computer Technology in the State Socialist Society p. 1

Toward Normalization p. 3

Beyond the Quiet Life p. 5

A Revolution That Was Normalized p. 9

The State of the Computer Industry p. 12

Electronization Programs of the 1980s p. 15

Men, Women, and Machines p. 18

Side Roads to Micros p. 21

Who Needs a Home Computer? p. 27

Farm Computers and the Courageous Clone p. 31

2 Hunting Down the Machine: Trajectories of Microcomputer Domestication p. 35

A Machine That Obeys p. 39

Wandering Programmers p. 42

Spectacle from the West p. 45

Importing the Standard p. 47

The Shiny Side of Retail p. 50

A Room of Its Own p. 53

3 Our Amateur Can Work Miracles: Infrastructures of Hobby Computing p. 63

Cybernetics for Youth p. 66

Repurposing the Paramilitary p. 71

Activist Meshworks p. 74

Tolerating the Man's World p. 77

Build Your Own Peripherals p. 81

Amateur Entrepreneurs p. 85

Starting a Computer Fanzine p. 87

Samizdat Research Institute p. 90

4 Who's Afraid of Cameplay? Czechoslovak Discourses on Computer Games p. 99

Playing with Computers p. 102

Forbidden Pleasures p. 104

Bringing Games under Control p. 109

Computer Came Advocates p. 112

The Appreciation of Tomahawk p. 116

5 Lighting Up the Shadows: Informal Distribution of Game Software p. 123

From Yugoslavia with Cracks p. 126

The Unregulated (Non)medium p. 133

Lightning-Fast Sneakernet p. 135

Homemade Tape Culture p. 139

(Mis)understanding Games p. 143

A Cottage Arcade Industry p. 147

6 Bastard Children of the West: Establishing a Domestic Coding Culture p. 153

Czechoslovak Homebrew Scene p. 157

Ports and Conversions p. 164

What Became of Flappy p. 167

Forging the Shooter p. 171

Second Lives of Indiana Jones p. 174

Hacking Games p. 178

7 Empowered by Games: Games as a Means of Self-Expression and Activism p. 185

Hello World! p. 190

Adventure in Your Home p. 192

Spreading Unofficial Culture p. 196

Small Subversions p. 199

A Protest of Sorts p. 204

Taking to the Streets p. 206.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9780262349505

0262349507

OCLC:

1077292289

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.