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Coin-Operated Americans

Coin-Operated Americans PDF Author: Carly A. Kocurek
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452945217
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
Video gaming: it’s a boy’s world, right? That’s what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry’s craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade. From the dawn of the golden age of video games with the launch of Atari’s Pong in 1972, through the industry-wide crash of 1983, to the recent nostalgia-bathed revival of the arcade, Coin-Operated Americans explores the development and implications of the “video gamer” as a cultural identity. This cultural-historical journey takes us to the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, for a close look at the origins of competitive gaming. It immerses us in video gaming’s first moral panic, generated by Exidy’s Death Race (1976), an unlicensed adaptation of the film Death Race 2000. And it ventures into the realm of video game films such as Tron and WarGames, in which gamers become brilliant, boyish heroes. Whether conducting a phenomenological tour of a classic arcade or evaluating attempts, then and now, to regulate or eradicate arcades and coin-op video games, Kocurek does more than document the rise and fall of a now-booming industry. Drawing on newspapers, interviews, oral history, films, and television, she examines the factors and incidents that contributed to the widespread view of video gaming as an enclave for young men and boys. A case study of this once emergent and now revived medium became the presumed enclave of boys and young men, Coin-Operated Americans is history that holds valuable lessons for contemporary culture as we struggle to address pervasive sexism in the domain of video games—and in the digital working world beyond.

Coin-Operated Americans

Coin-Operated Americans PDF Author: Carly A. Kocurek
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452945217
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
Video gaming: it’s a boy’s world, right? That’s what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry’s craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade. From the dawn of the golden age of video games with the launch of Atari’s Pong in 1972, through the industry-wide crash of 1983, to the recent nostalgia-bathed revival of the arcade, Coin-Operated Americans explores the development and implications of the “video gamer” as a cultural identity. This cultural-historical journey takes us to the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, for a close look at the origins of competitive gaming. It immerses us in video gaming’s first moral panic, generated by Exidy’s Death Race (1976), an unlicensed adaptation of the film Death Race 2000. And it ventures into the realm of video game films such as Tron and WarGames, in which gamers become brilliant, boyish heroes. Whether conducting a phenomenological tour of a classic arcade or evaluating attempts, then and now, to regulate or eradicate arcades and coin-op video games, Kocurek does more than document the rise and fall of a now-booming industry. Drawing on newspapers, interviews, oral history, films, and television, she examines the factors and incidents that contributed to the widespread view of video gaming as an enclave for young men and boys. A case study of this once emergent and now revived medium became the presumed enclave of boys and young men, Coin-Operated Americans is history that holds valuable lessons for contemporary culture as we struggle to address pervasive sexism in the domain of video games—and in the digital working world beyond.

Atari Age

Atari Age PDF Author: Michael Z. Newman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262035715
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
The cultural contradictions of early video games: a medium for family fun (but mainly for middle-class boys), an improvement over pinball and television (but possibly harmful) Beginning with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey and Pong in 1972, video games, whether played in arcades and taverns or in family rec rooms, became part of popular culture, like television. In fact, video games were sometimes seen as an improvement on television because they spurred participation rather than passivity. These “space-age pinball machines” gave coin-operated games a high-tech and more respectable profile. In Atari Age, Michael Newman charts the emergence of video games in America from ball-and-paddle games to hits like Space Invaders and Pac-Man, describing their relationship to other amusements and technologies and showing how they came to be identified with the middle class, youth, and masculinity. Newman shows that the “new media” of video games were understood in varied, even contradictory ways. They were family fun (but mainly for boys), better than television (but possibly harmful), and educational (but a waste of computer time). Drawing on a range of sources—including the games and their packaging; coverage in the popular, trade, and fan press; social science research of the time; advertising and store catalogs; and representations in movies and television—Newman describes the series of cultural contradictions through which the identity of the emerging medium worked itself out. Would video games embody middle-class respectability or suffer from the arcade's unsavory reputation? Would they foster family togetherness or allow boys to escape from domesticity? Would they make the new home computer a tool for education or just a glorified toy? Then, as now, many worried about the impact of video games on players, while others celebrated video games for familiarizing kids with technology essential for the information age.

Slot Machines

Slot Machines PDF Author: Marshall Fey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781889243023
Category : Gambling
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A history of slot machines from their inception up to the casino machines of today.

An American Premium Guide to Coin Operated Machines

An American Premium Guide to Coin Operated Machines PDF Author: Jerry Ayliffe
Publisher: Crown Pub
ISBN: 9780896890244
Category : Coin-operated machines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Illustrates and lists current prices for antique vending machines, jukeboxes, slot machines, mechanical fortune tellers, pinball, and other game machines

Gaming at the Edge

Gaming at the Edge PDF Author: Adrienne Shaw
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452943443
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
Video games have long been seen as the exclusive territory of young, heterosexual white males. In a media landscape dominated by such gamers, players who do not fit this mold, including women, people of color, and LGBT people, are often brutalized in forums and in public channels in online play. Discussion of representation of such groups in games has frequently been limited and cursory. In contrast, Gaming at the Edge builds on feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories of identity and draws on qualitative audience research methods to make sense of how representation comes to matter. In Gaming at the Edge, Adrienne Shaw argues that video game players experience race, gender, and sexuality concurrently. She asks: How do players identify with characters? How do they separate identification and interactivity? What is the role of fantasy in representation? What is the importance of understanding market logic? In addressing these questions Shaw reveals how representation comes to matter to participants and offers a perceptive consideration of the high stakes in politics of representation debates. Putting forth a framework for talking about representation, difference, and diversity in an era in which user-generated content, individualized media consumption, and the blurring of producer/consumer roles has lessened the utility of traditional models of media representation analysis, Shaw finds new insight on the edge of media consumption with the invisible, marginalized gamers who are surprising in both their numbers and their influence in mainstream gamer culture.

Automatic Pleasures

Automatic Pleasures PDF Author: Nic Costa
Publisher: D'Aleman Publishing
ISBN: 9789963291724
Category : Coin-operated machines
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
This book has stood the test of time. Copies of the first edition have over the years regularly sold for many times the cover price. The full color book is once more in print. Since its original publication it has been cited in many academic papers and has since become the definitive work on the subject. It caused embarrassment to the huge American coin machine industry when it was first published in 1988- they were busy celebrating the centenary of the Juke Box in that year as an American invention whereas the book revealed that it was actually an earlier British invention. It awoke huge interest in Japan by giving them long sought answers as to the origins of the Pachinko machine (which at the time was consuming as much as a quarter of the gross domestic product in Japan). As a direct result of the book a new museum was established in the Japanese city of Kobe and for a short while the author became a national celebrity there. The book established many new facts and destroyed many of the myths that had arisen in the gaming industry during the 20th century. Originally an ancient Greek invention, the advent of the coin machine in the 19th century heralded a Victorian revolution which sought to establish a fully automated society. The visionaries of the past are the direct forbears of the all pervasive computer industries -without the gaming and coin machine industries it is doubtful as to whether today's computer dominated age would have ever happened. Most important of all, it is fun to read!

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel PDF Author: Carly A. Kocurek
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501319795
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
Brenda Laurel is best known for her work with Purple Moon, the pioneering game company she cofounded in the 1990s. Purple Moon's games were based on years of research Laurel completed in an effort to understand why computer games seemed to be of so little interest to girls. Using diverse archival sources such as trade journals, newspapers, and recorded interviews, alongside Laurel's completed games and own writings and an original interview with Laurel herself, this volume offers insight into both the early development of the games for girls movement of the 1990s and the lasting impact of Laurel's game design breakthroughs. In her work with Purple Moon, Laurel drew on her background in theatre as well as her expertise in human computer interaction and qualitative research. By relying on this interdisciplinary background, Laurel made significant contributions to our understanding of the design and development of games as a medium for emotional rehearsal and storytelling. Additionally, her dedication to research-informed design has had a longstanding impact as companies and designers increasingly rely on audience research and metrics to shape their practices. The newest in Bloomsbury's Influential Video Game Designers series, Carly Kocurek highlights the contributions of a designer whose work has had a profound impact on the development of both games for girls and empathy games.

They Create Worlds

They Create Worlds PDF Author: Alexander Smith
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 042975261X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 575

Book Description
They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. 1 is the first in a three-volume set that provides an in-depth analysis of the creation and evolution of the video game industry. Beginning with the advent of computers in the mid-20th century, Alexander Smith’s text comprehensively highlights and examines individuals, companies, and market forces that have shaped the development of the video game industry around the world. Volume one, places an emphasis on the emerging ideas, concepts, and games developed from the commencement of the budding video game art form in the 1950s and 1960s through the first commercial activity in the 1970s and early 1980s. They Create Worlds aims to build a new foundation upon which future scholars and the video game industry itself can chart new paths. Key Features: The most in-depth examination of the video game industry ever written, They Create Worlds charts the technological breakthroughs, design decisions, and market forces in the United States, Europe, and East Asia that birthed a $100 billion industry. The books derive their information from rare primary sources such as little-studied trade publications, personal papers collections, and oral history interviews with designers and executives, many of whom have never told their stories before. Spread over three volumes, They Create Worlds focuses on the creative designers, shrewd marketers, and innovative companies that have shaped video games from their earliest days as a novelty attraction to their current status as the most important entertainment medium of the 21st Century. The books examine the formation of the video game industry in a clear narrative style that will make them useful as teaching aids in classes on the history of game design and economics, but they are not being written specifically as instructional books and can be enjoyed by anyone with a passion for video game history.

Pocket Guide to Coin-Op Vending Machines

Pocket Guide to Coin-Op Vending Machines PDF Author: John Carini
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
ISBN: 9780764316586
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Features photos, descriptions, and prices for over 300 coin-op vending machines dating from the late 1890s to the 1960s. Common to rare machines include those that dispensed candy, gum, peanuts, tobacco, aspirin, breath pellets, matches, stamps, and cigars. Also includes hints for finding machines, restoration, servicing, common terminology, price guide.

Vending Machines

Vending Machines PDF Author: Kerry Segrave
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786481595
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
Although the 1880s are considered the beginning of the vending machine era, these devices have existed for a couple of thousand years. The earliest reference to a vending machine was made by Hero--a Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer who probably lived in Alexandria during the first century a.d.--who described and illustrated a coin-operated device to be used for vending sacrificial water in Egyptian temples. Completely automatic, the device was set in operation by the insertion of a five-drachma coin. This work traces the history of the vending machine from its inception to its current place in popular American culture, with the eight chapters covering significant eras. Successes and failures of the machines, economic factors influencing the popularity (or lack thereof) of vending machines, and the struggle of industry to become a dominant, large-scale method of retailing products are discussed. This text is richly illustrated and includes appendices on vending dollar value, vending sales by location type and vending statistics.