[MUSIC]
PAUL:
Welcome to Brainwaves, a podcast about big ideas produced at the University of Colorado Boulder.
I’m Paul Beique.
This week, one of the fastest growing industries in the world...
Is all in cyberspace.
More than a quarter of earth’s population plays video games, according to Microsoft.
That’s two billion people forking over billions of dollars.
What’s the big deal? And where can video games go from here?
We’ll talk to a professional “shoutcaster”—we’ll explain that in a minute, a video game archaeologist and a video game designer who draws inspiration from unlikely places.
If you haven’t already, please like and subscribe to brainwaves wherever you get your podcasts.
If you have a question about a show, or you have a big idea you want us to explore, you can email us at brainwaves@colorado.edu.
We’ll start this week with e-sports, where the best video game players compete in front of thousands of fans and a huge online community.
Our first guest, Devin Younge, isn’t a player, he’s a color commentator, just like the ones that call games in live sports. Here he is calling a game of League of Legends.
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PAUL:
You can read more about Devin Younge in the podcast description.
That’s the world of gaming today. But where did it all start?
[console boot up sound]
I paid a visit to the Media Archaeology Lab on the campus of CU Boulder to find out.
When you walk into the Media Archaeology Lab, you’re transported back four or five decades. Desks and shelves are lined with what was once cutting-edge technology, but which now are museum pieces.
Libi Striegl: We have an Altair 8800B, which was one of the first personal kit computers from 1976, to the kind of classic IBM PC 5150, Commodore 64s, a bunch of different Apple II series computers. The Macintosh Classic is in this room as well.
PAUL:
That’s Libi Rose Striegl, a PhD student in the intermedia arts, writing and performance program in the College Of Media, Communication And Information at CU Boulder. She runs the Media Archaeology Lab with a group of eight volunteers.
The lab is one of the largest collections of functional, obsolete technology in the world. They have stuff dating to the 1890s, but is seems the big draw are video games from a time when turning on your computer sounded like this.
And when Super Mario Brothers sounded like this.
(GAME SOUND)
So, what’s the reaction when adults who played these games as kids walk into the media archaeology lab?
Striegl:
Usually overwhelming nostalgia. Often amazement that we have it and that it still works.
PAUL:
And what about kids?
Striegl:
Surprisingly, also nostalgia. So, we get this weird reaction often with 18- and 19-year-olds who are nostalgic for a thing they never knew, but have known for so long in pop culture, or things that they’ve seen online or played emulations of, or they’ve seen in the movies for their entire lives. And so, they know that it exists and they’ve never gotten to touch it.
PAUL:
And what’s the game the adults most want to play? One that takes them all the way back to the ’40s -- the 1840s.
Striegl:
Well, we almost always fire up “Oregon Trail.” Because everyone knows “Oregon Trail.” But we also have a large selection of text games or interactive fiction games that are really popular.
PAUL:
That includes “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” game and “Zork.”
But if you just want to play the games of your youth -- or your parents’ youth--like “Donkey Kong,” or “Frogger,” they’ve got you covered, too.
Striegl:
So, we’ve got everything ranging from old arcade-style games like “Asteroids” and “Moon Lander” and things like that, to the Mario games and racing games. We get a lot of asks for our copy of the Atari “E.T.” game, and then people start to play it and are not happy to discover that it has earned its reputation for a reason.
PAUL:
You can see what’s happening at the media archaeology lab at mediaarchaeologylab.com.
As video games have become more mainstream, plenty of naysayers have pushed back, saying they’re too violent or melt kids’ brains.
Brainwaves Dan Strain asked Danny Rankin about that.
Rankin is head of the “Whaaat?! Lab” at Cu Boulder’s “ATLAS Institute.”
He studies video game and designs some of his own with some pretty unexpected inspirations.
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PAUL:
Thanks for listening to Brainwaves. You can like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
And again, if you have a question about this show, or you have a big idea you want us to explore, you can email us at brainwaves@colorado.edu.
I’m Paul Beique.
I produced this show alongside Dan Strain and Andrew Sorensen.
Cole Hemstreet arranged our theme music.
We’ll see you next time, on Brainwaves.