Table Of Contentplaying
past
history and nostalgia in video games
the
E d i t E d by
Zach Whalen
Laurie N. Taylor
Playing the Past
Playing the Past
History and Nostalgia
in Video Games
Edited by Zach Whalen
and Laurie N. Taylor
Vanderbilt University Press • Nashville
© 2008 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Playing the past : history and nostalgia in video games /
edited by Zach Whalen and Laurie N. Taylor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8265-1600-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1601-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Video games. 2. Video games—Psychological aspects.
3. Video games—Study and teaching. I. Whalen, Zach,
1979– II. Taylor, Laurie N., 1978–
GV1469.3.P483 2008
794.8—dc22
2007051878
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
1 Playing the Past: An Introduction 1
Laurie N. Taylor and Zach Whalen
Part I. Playing in the Past
Negotiating Nostalgia and Classic Gaming
2 Why Old School Is “Cool”:
A Brief Analysis of Classic Video Game Nostalgia 19
Sean Fenty
3 Homesick for Silent Hill:
Modalities of Nostalgia in Fan Responses
to Silent Hill 4: The Room 32
Natasha Whiteman
4 Playing the Déjà-New:
“Plug it in and Play TV Games” and the
Cultural Politics of Classic Gaming 51
Matthew Thomas Payne
5 Hacks, Mods, Easter Eggs, and Fossils:
Intentionality and Digitalism in the Video Game 69
Wm. Ruffin Bailey
6 Screw the Grue:
Mediality, Metalepsis, Recapture 91
Terry Harpold
vi Playing the Past
Part II. Playing and the Past
Understanding Media History and Video Games
7 Unlimited Minutes:
Playing Games in the Palm of Your Hand 111
Sheila C. Murphy
8 Visions and Revisions of the Hollywood Golden Age
and America in the Thirties and Forties:
Prince of Persia and Crimson Skies 126
Andrew E. Jankowich
9 Toward a New Sound for Games 145
Thomas E. Gersic
10 Remembrance of Things Fast:
Conceptualizing Nostalgic-Play
in the Battlestar Galactica Video Game 164
Anna Reading and Colin Harvey
Part III. Playing with the Past
Nostalgia and Real History in Video Games
11 Just Less Than Total War:
Simulating World War II as Ludic Nostalgia 183
James Campbell
12 Performing the (Virtual) Past:
Online Character Interpretation
as Living History at Old Sturbridge Village 201
Scott Magelssen
13 Documentary Games:
Putting the Player in the Path of History 215
Tracy Fullerton
14 Of Puppets, Automatons, and Avatars:
Automating the Reader-Player
in Electronic Literature and Computer Games 239
Robert P. Fletcher
Contributors 265
Index 271
Preface and Acknowledgments
It is now seven years since Espen Aarseth declared 2001 to be “year one”
of computer game studies, and while this nascent, interdisciplinary field
has seen its share of vigorous debate, studying games remains an increas-
ingly rich and important intellectual endeavor. Whether one considers
the so-called ludology v. narratology debates to be over, or ever to have
taken place to begin with, this collection seeks to offer something differ-
ent by discussing a specific set of ideas emerging from a central question:
what do video games have to do with history, memory, and nostalgia?
Rather than discussing how best to study video games or invoking video
games as a generic metaphor, the authors in this collection put a variety
of approaches into practice, reflecting the strengths of their respective
disciplines, in order to unpack the complex negotiations of temporality
and historical representation in games and gaming culture.
The present volume is the product of a conversation that began at the
first game studies conference at the University of Florida in 2005. At this
relatively small gathering, a diverse group of scholars met to discuss video
games and nostalgia, and found surprising and deep interplay among our
respective ideas and approaches. The result, this collection, encapsulates
a broad and expanded conversation into a cogent statement that video
games help us think about history and nostalgia in profound and impor-
tant ways.
A note on terminology: throughout this collection, authors use the
terms video game, videogame, computer game, and digital game to refer
generally to the same kinds of objects. There are significant shades of
meaning among these terms, and it may well be the case that selecting
one term over the others may (consciously or not) predispose a given
argument to certain assumptions. The prefix video is, perhaps, technically
less accurate or inclusive than it may once have been, and even digital may
not be a universal descriptor if one traces the prehistory of modern video
games to include their analog and mechanical predecessors. It might be
argued that computer satisfies the universality requirement, since some
vii
viii Playing the Past
form of computation is nearly always involved in the phenomenon we’re
discussing, but since that term is often used (in the United States) to dis-
tinguish games made for personal computers from console-based games,
computer games may not always correctly denote the same objects for dif-
ferent readers. While video games is arguably the most widely recognized
of the terms in question, the decision of whether to separate the two or
use the neologism videogame brings up another set of questions and pos-
sible assumptions. For example, in a comment thread on gameology.org,
Ian Bogost defends his use of videogame in his book Unit Operations by
arguing that he does so for rhetorical reasons: “Separating the words, in
my opinion, suggests that videogames are merely games with some video
screen or computer attached.” Jesper Juul, on the other hand, compares
Google results to argue that he uses video game in Half-Real because video
game is used far more frequently and is thus already the accepted stan-
dard (“Videogames”). For the purposes of this collection, we have left the
terminology up to each individual author, and although the term each
author uses may betray regional, disciplinary, or rhetorical preferences,
the reader should generally assume that video game, videogame, computer
game, and digital game are interchangeable.
A book like this does not come into existence without the help and
encouragement of many different people. The editors would like to thank,
first of all, our contributors whose dedication and hard work in refining
their chapters made this possible. Also, we’d like to thank Terry Harpold
for reviewing drafts of our chapter, and Donald Ault for his advice and
encouragement through the whole process. Finally, Betsy Phillips at Van-
derbilt University Press deserves all of our thanks and appreciation for
her enthusiasm for the project and her unending patience with two first-
time editors.
— Zach Whalen and Laurie N. Taylor, Editors
Works Cited
Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies, Year One.” Game Studies: The International
Journal of Computer Game Research (www.gamestudies.org). 1.1 (2001). Accessed
27 June 2007.
“Videogames or Video games—What Are We Talking About?” Comment thread at
gameology.org (2 December 2006). Accessed 27 June 2007.
Playing the Past
