Study of Transnational European Histories of Videogames

Dr. Alex Wade (Birmingham City University) was a Dissemination Conference (DC) Grant to present the findings of the WG1 deliverable “A preliminary list of existing research on creative computing cultures on a pan-European level” at the annual Digital Games Research Association (DIGRA) conference.

His presentation showcased how a Zotero bibliography was set up under the title “Creative Computing Cultures” to find how, where and why work was published in the area over the past forty years. An outline of this data and the aims of the Grassroots of Digital Europe Action was presented and data was tagged by WG members to provide quantification of the data. Data was applied to visual presentation software through the expertise of Ivo Furman who then presented on the results of the work to date.

Frequency of publishing in countries related to outputs (e.g. book chapter, journal article, monograph) was presented which provided an overview of where research was taking place. A graph was presented showing when work on creative computing cultures were published, with a gradual growth from the early 2000s, to a peak in the mid 2015s. Many of these publications were undertaken in North America, which shows the skew towards publishing with publishers from the USA due to prestige attachment. Topics of research were presented, showing that the top five topics were ‘History’; ‘Demoscene’; ‘Video Games’; ‘Home Computer’ and ‘United Kingdom’. The vast majority of research (>80%) was undertaken in English, the current academic lingua franca.

Click here to view Alex’s presentation.