Exploring the Technical History of Games Through Software and Visualization

The history of computer game implementation, driven by source code and development practice, remains largely hidden from view, with only the most dedicated and technically savvy game historians and scholars able to take part in its study. My research hopes to reveal and encourage access to technical history through the analysis of the scholarly practices used in exploring legacy game systems. I will turn to two primary case studies, MUD1 and DOOM, both of which have creator supported archival collections. In proceeding with a historical study of spatial representation in both games, I hope to embed a meta-analysis into my study that involves both defining specifications and toy systems to support scholarly research, and developing visualizations for scholarly presentation. The result is to, a) make a compelling argument about the technical systems behind historical games, b) create systems for better scholarly research of and communication about technical implementation, and c) promote the preservation and storage of historical game development documentation.