Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. xliii, 351 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

1. "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"--

Series statement

1. Game histories

Uniform title

1. Game histories.

Subject

1. 1945-1992
2. Video games > Social aspects > Czechoslovakia
3. Video games > Political aspects > Czechoslovakia
4. Video games > Czechoslovakia > History
5. Computer programming > Czechoslovakia > History
6. Video games
7. Video games > Social aspects
8. Computer programming
9. Social conditions
10. Czechoslovakia > Social conditions > 1945-1992
11. Czechoslovakia

Genre/Form

1. History.

Contents

1. Micros in the margins : computer technology in the state socialist society -- Hunting down the machine : trajectories of microcomputer domestication -- Our amateur can work miracles : infrastructures of computer hobby -- Who's afraid of gameplay? : Czechoslovak discourses on computer games -- Lighting up the shadows : informal distribution of game software -- Bastard children of the West : establishing a domestic coding culture -- Empowered by games : games as a means of self-expression and activism.

Call number

1. JFE 19-2102

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Author

1. Švelch, Jaroslav, author.

Title

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

Publisher

1. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2018]

Type of content

1. text

Type of medium

1. unmediated

Type of carrier

1. volume

Series

1. Game histories
2. Game histories.

Bibliography

1. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological term

1. 1945-1992

LCCN

1. 2018007544

Other standard identifier

1. 40028697329

ISBN

1. 9780262038843 (hardcover alkaline paper)
2. 0262038846 (hardcover alkaline paper)

Research call number

1. JFE 19-2102