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Video Games & Computer Holding Power by
Sherry Turkle (1984, The New Media Reader, pp. 500-513)
- by 1982 people spent more money on video games than movies & records combined
- video games as an analogy for constructed “rule governed worlds” & simulation
- TV is something you watch, video games are something you do
- comparison of video games to pinball (ancestor): “In pinball you act on the
ball. In Pac-Man you are the mouth.” - concept of identifying with the game character
- first video game: Space War, built at MIT in the early 1960’s (required a super computer)
- Pong – 10 years later / more portable
- Space Invaders / Joust (progression in nature of characters: Pong was just a
marker, these were visually more complex) - advent of adventure games; interactive books
- relationship between fantasy role playing games & computer culture
- video game as altered state; metaphor of meditation/total concentration
- opportunity for perfection