Presented as part of of J. Stenros, O. Sotamaa, B. Perron, S. Deterding & S. P. Walz: The Game Studies Language Exchange Program: Uncovering Hidden Gems of European Game and Play Research. Peer-reviewed panel, DiGRA 2013, August 28, 2013, Atlanta, GA, USA.

1. claus Piasa media archaeology of computer games
Sebastian Deterding
MAGIC Lab, Rochester Institute of Technology
DiGRA 2013, Atlanta, August 28, 2013
c b

2. 2
claus pias
* 1967
Professor, media theory and
history; director, Center for
Digital Cultures, Leuphana
University Lüneburg
Dissertation at Bauhaus
University Weimar under
Joseph Vogl

3. 3
michel foucault
Archaeology of Knowledge
marshall mcluhan
Medium Theory
friedrich kittler
(War) media technologies as conditions of
possibility for historical forms of knowing
media history,made in germany

4. an archaeology of cybernetics
• Cybernetics/simulation/computation is the episteme
of our age, computers are its media-technical
condition of possibility
• Information processing is the main object, output,
boundary, starting point of knowing today
• Information processing = cosm0s = thinking =
meaning: a soul-less, body-less machine
• As cybernetics waned as a philosophy in the 1970s,
it became naturalised as CS
• Cybernetics must ignore the analog and materiality
4

5. an archaeology of cybernetics
• McLuhan understood media as extensions of man
• Cybernetics understands computers as »human-
extended machines« (Licklider): flattens thinking/
acting, man/machine, mind/matter
• Computer games exemplify the cybernetic
conditions of possibility of knowing
5

6. 6
2002 2011

7. computer spiel welten
• Why are computer games (the way they are)?
• What are the historical (discursive, technical)
conditions of possibility for computer games to
emerge?
• How do they in turn condition the forms of knowing
possible in and with computer games?
• 3 discursive fields and cases show the homology of
computer games and cybernetics: action/SAGE,
adventure/Internet, simulation/war games
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8. action
Attentive time-critical selection of optimal actions
8

9. action
• Time-critical choice of predefined actions: Taylorist
scientific management
• Machine-tracking of human action in numbers:
experimental psychology, WWI Army Mental Tests
• Training and control of users: behaviorism
• Real-time interaction with GUI invisibilizing rules:
Computerisation of flight simulation training
9

10. adventure
Reasoned decision-critical choice of optimal routes
10
arpanet
colossal cave

11. adventure
• World as mapping of node relations: relational
databases
• History as routing through and changing of nodes:
graph theory as used in telephone routing
algorithms
• Decision-making as memory-less result of current
node state
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12. simulation
Patient configuration-critical choice of optimal possible set
12

13. simulation
• Numerical modelling of decision-making:
mathematic game theory
• Translation of reality into probability distributions:
WWII operations research
• Model-based exploration of possible futures: war
games
• Object-oriented programming: SIMULA
13

14. why care?

15. »You are all just
replicating the cybernetic
episteme of our age.
What are your blind spots
and limits of knowing?«
historicizing proceduralism
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16. sebastian@codingconduct.cc
@dingstweets
codingconduct.cc
Cheers!