Golden Age Computer Game Interview with Melanie Swalwell

A new media and cultural theorist, Dr Melanie Swalwell has recently published Pleasures Of Computer Gaming: Essays on Cultural History, Theory and Aesthetics, edited with Jason Wilson (McFarland, 2008).

ephemera: Tell me about the “Cast-offs from the Golden Age” research project. How did it begin?

Swalwell: The project began when I was approached by staff from a museum in New Zealand who were considering mounting an exhibition about digital games. They asked me to research the history of digital games in New Zealand. That was four years ago. For various reasons, the exhibition didn’t end up happening; but by the time I had written my report for the museum, I knew I had uncovered a fascinating history, one that very few people seemed to know anything about. Needless to say, I kept following the trail. When the people at Vectors Journal called for proposals for an ‘Ephemera’ themed issue early in 2005, I leaped at the chance: not only did the prospect of working with a designer/programmer to realize a multimedia work excite me; the issue theme also seemed highly appropriate, given how many of my research insights had been won by trawling through libraries’ ephemera collections. When you play through “Cast-offs from the Golden Age”, you are the researcher charged with uncovering the history of early digital games in New Zealand. Early on you discover that this will be no easy task. Nevertheless, a picture of the early NZ games industry gradually emerges from your pursuit of various avenues of inquiry. There are moments of fascination and serendipity, as well as the occasional dead end. You are invited to contribute your insights and reflections to the database and these, in turn, become part of the work that is experienced by others.

ephemera: What challenges or obstacles do you encounter in assembling these materials? How do you overcome these challenges?

Swalwell: The obvious challenge in doing this type of research is the lack of any records about the type of things I want to know (such as what games were distributed in New Zealand and when, how many units sold, etc). A perhaps less obvious challenge, but a challenge nonetheless, is dealing with the perception that old games don’t matter. Even with the rise of retro gaming, this is still common and pervasive. The first challenge is reasonably easily gotten around: I talk with as many people as I can about what I’m doing, and often they know something or someone who might know something relevant, and I look for materials in as many places as I can think of (I’ve had particular luck with online auctions and the ephemera collections of libraries, as you’ll see if you play though my interactive piece, “Cast-offs from the Golden Age”). This and talking with people who were around at the time make for very rich understandings. Even if someone doesn’t know the exact numbers of units that were sold or whatever, their insights on other matters more than make up for this. Relatedly, I have been fortunate that there are some very knowledgeable private collectors of New Zealand made games. They have been extremely generous to me and are my expert informants. They are also my collaborators, and we share information and discoveries; having them to bounce ideas around with has been invaluable. The second challenge, the perception that games and game heritage aren’t important, is less easily overcome. Things are gradually changing, but I still get the incredulous reaction quite often when I tell people what I do (“you study what?”). To date, my strategies have been to just keep on going with the work, trying to build one project off the back of the previous one, and to reflect on some of the difficulties encountered in the course of this scholarship. The incredulous response is an important barometer: it speaks volumes about the esteem in which digital games are held. That the subject matter is sometimes not taken seriously has had very real effects on the research from time to time, such as it being difficult to win funding. One can spend all one’s time justifying one’s work, though. Feedback and review of my work by other scholars of games is thus very important: they not only normalize the object of study, they also spur me on to do the best work I can. While I can accept that many people feel ambivalent about games, their centrality to popular culture means that it’s in the public interest to have quality research being done on the subject.

ephemera: What are your favorite images in the project? What discoveries did you make?

Swalwell: Some of my favorite images are of the New Zealand made games themselves. They’re not necessarily great images, but what they represent – the uniqueness of the games that were made locally -- is still very compelling to me, even after 4 years! So: the image of the “Malzak” arcade cabinet, because it’s such an interesting story (you can read about it at www.nztronix.org.nz/malzak.php) and the artwork is so vibrant; the shot of the label on the back of the Videosport console, showing the address at which the console was made – Barry’s Pt Rd, Takapuna (a suburb in Auckland) -- and a serial number -- #0107; this was a real cottage industry); then there’s the shot of a Chastronics arcade cabinet I found that wears its local provenance with pride – it was filling a hole in the counter in a takeaway shop in a small town in the Wairarapa! “The best 20c of fun you’ll ever get!” -- a tacky, yet great, slogan. I really like it. Apart from the games themselves, other favorites are images from the time, discovered in a newspaper’s photographic archive. Some of these show people at play and the insides of particular arcades, or related images, such as the ‘Space Bus’, which was an old Bedford bus modified to look like a spaceship. This was driven around to show off Chastronics’ games to the various operators in New Zealand. It’s an amazing image -- you’ll have to play “Cast-offs” to see this one! An online exhibition of these newspaper and other documentary images is planned.

ephemera: What do the “cast offs” tell us about this golden age?

Swalwell: The fact that many vintage games have been cast off indicates that this early period of gaming history is not valued. Some of these games are literally being thrown out as rubbish. Many people don’t seem to realize that these games are quite rare, and even fragile. Perhaps because they were mass produced, and are big business nowadays, there is the sense that games are not worth saving. But if you think about the shifts that digital games have ushered in to the way we spend our leisure time, the phenomenon is pretty important. If we don’t take care of existing examples of vintage games, then in twenty years time we won’t have any left. Thankfully some people have had the foresight to begin collecting vintage games. But there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure there are working examples of vintage games, able to be played in the future.

ephemera: What future ephemera-related projects do you plan? How will this project be used in the future?

Swalwell: Well, I’m still working on this project, or really the suite of projects it’s become. I’m currently writing a book on this material that draws on much of the ephemera I’ve turned up in the course of my research. As well as a book, this last year I have been working on a preservation project with my colleagues in the ‘NZTronix’ research team (our blog is at www.nztronix.org.nz). For my part, I built the “Early New Zealand Software Database”, to collect information from the wider community about what they know about software that was locally written, especially that written for home computers in the 1980s and 90s. It turns out that there was quite a bit. One interesting thing that’s emerged is the number of hobbyist programs that were written. The database -- online at http://nztronix.org.nz/main.php -- has a facility for people to upload image or picture files or source code that they might have, as well as to select a Creative Commons license for any content that they own. Now is the time to be doing something to preserve and conserve early home computer titles, as disks and other removable media are deteriorating, as are the computers on which they used to run. Other members of our team have been piloting an approach to conserving some of this software. The hobbyist programs have the best chance of being preserved at present: because they were never commercialized, the intellectual property situation is more straightforward – where we know who owns the copyright, we can ask for their permission to work with the software. We hope to have one of these hobbyist titles revived and available for download later this year, to play on Java capable mobile devices. Finally, I have recently moved back to Australia, and I’m keen to research the early history of home computing and games here. It would be interesting to compare it with the situation in New Zealand. Although they are neighboring countries, I suspect that the situation in the two countries in the 1980s was quite different.

ephemera: Thank you, Melanie. This is a remarkable project.