{"title":"Inspecting the Foundation of Mystery House","authors":"John Aycock, K. Biittner","doi":"10.1558/JCA.36745","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Computer games are recent artifacts that have had, and continue to have, enormous cultural impact. In this interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science and archaeology, we closely examine one such artifact: the 1980 Apple II game Mystery House, the first graphical adventure. We focus on implementation rather than gameplay, treating the game as a digital artifact. What can we learn about the game and its development process through reverse engineering and analysis of the code, data, and game image? Our exploration includes a technical critique of the code, examining the heretofore uncritical legacy of Ken Williams as a programmer. As game development is a human activity, we place it in a theoretical framework from archaeology, to show how a field used to analyze physical artifacts might adapt to shed new light on digital games. \nOpen Access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives: CC BY-NC-ND","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":"6 1","pages":"183-205"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2018-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/JCA.36745","citationCount":"13","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1558/JCA.36745","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ARCHAEOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 13
Abstract
Computer games are recent artifacts that have had, and continue to have, enormous cultural impact. In this interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science and archaeology, we closely examine one such artifact: the 1980 Apple II game Mystery House, the first graphical adventure. We focus on implementation rather than gameplay, treating the game as a digital artifact. What can we learn about the game and its development process through reverse engineering and analysis of the code, data, and game image? Our exploration includes a technical critique of the code, examining the heretofore uncritical legacy of Ken Williams as a programmer. As game development is a human activity, we place it in a theoretical framework from archaeology, to show how a field used to analyze physical artifacts might adapt to shed new light on digital games.
Open Access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives: CC BY-NC-ND
期刊介绍：
The Journal of Contemporary Archaeology is the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to explore archaeology’s specific contribution to understanding the present and recent past. It is concerned both with archaeologies of the contemporary world, defined temporally as belonging to the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as with reflections on the socio-political implications of doing archaeology in the contemporary world. In addition to its focus on archaeology, JCA encourages articles from a range of adjacent disciplines which consider recent and contemporary material-cultural entanglements, including anthropology, art history, cultural studies, design studies, heritage studies, history, human geography, media studies, museum studies, psychology, science and technology studies and sociology. Acknowledging the key place which photography and digital media have come to occupy within this emerging subfield, JCA includes a regular photo essay feature and provides space for the publication of interactive, web-only content on its website.
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