{"id":2324,"date":"2012-01-17T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=2324"},"modified":"2012-02-11T15:15:11","modified_gmt":"2012-02-11T20:15:11","slug":"what-comes-before-the-platform-the-refuse-of-videogames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=2324","title":{"rendered":"What Comes before the Platform: The Refuse of Videogames"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve tended to focus on close readings of individual videogames on Play the Past<\/em>—such as my look at Prison Tycoon<\/em><\/a> or the code of JFK: Reloaded<\/em><\/a>—and while these readings have been informed by a progressive sensibility, they have been plagued by a problem common in videogame studies. And that problem is the emphasis on the games themselves—the on-screen digital event—rather than the hidden system of relations that made the games possible in the first place. Platform studies<\/a>, which I have advocated for<\/a> on Play the Past<\/em>, tries to address this issue by highlighting the interplay between a game’s hardware, software, interfaces, reception, and use. But in a sense, by expanding the circle of what new media critics look at, platform studies makes it easier to ignore what lies beyond that circle. I’m thinking in particular of the stages of a videogame platform’s life cycle that come before the platform itself. Before the console. Before the PC. Before the phone.<\/p>\n

Before the platform was ever sold and held in the palm of your hand or stored on a stand in your living room, it was assembled. And before it was assembled its components were mined and manufactured. And before they were mined and manufactured, millions of deals were made and dollars exchanged.<\/p>\n

I’m writing in the passive voice, with what grammarians call a “deleted agent,” because we would prefer not to think about who<\/em> assembled the consoles and phones we play our games on, or who<\/em> mined the rare minerals that are essential to modern electronics. If we do let our thoughts stray in that direction, we might merely fondly remember the “Bunny People” from Intel’s late 1990s Pentium II advertising campaign:<\/p>\n