Playing with Home Computers

Until now, one of the most popularly shared views about the origins of the video game industry was that video games started out as American and Japanese commodities which were subsequently exported to other countries, thus creating a powerful global industry. The aim of this book is to break with this misconception that has traditionally reproduced a scenario in which most of the countries were limited to just importing and using the technology as it came. In Spain, as well as in other European countries, computer usage and video games were collectively co-produced, actively reshaped, appropriated and circulated with the participation of profiles of people as diverse as politicians, entrepreneurs, businessmen, engineers, programmers, coders, and also kids playing with their first computers. By taking into account such a wide variety of actors, this book reveals an initially and unexpected active agency usually overshadowed by the stories of great inventors and companies. Given the access and the possibility to tinker and experiment what could be done with the first computers, this book shows how some of these early users and enthusiasts started circulating certain kinds of knowledge and practices that did not fit in with the utilitarian uses of computers and that, eventually fostered the development of the video game and home computer scenes.

Ignasi Meda-Calvet, Economics and Technology studies, Campus Barcelona, La Salle University, Spain.