Micro Makers. Early ZX Spectrum Homebrew Development. Curatorial Essay

History of Games Annual Symposium. 27/28 June, 2014 Exhibition: MicroMakers, Early ZX Spectrum Homebrew Development Curator: Skot Deeming. Consultant: Alison Gazzard. __________________________________________________________________________

Works in the Exhibition: Games: StarQuake. Steve Crow. 1985. Ant Attack. Sandy White. 1983. Skool Daze. David Reidy, Helen Reidy, Keith Warrington. 1984. Jet Set Willy. Matthew Smith. 1984 Trashman. Malcolm Evans. 1984 Wanted: Monty Mole. Peter Harrup.1984 Deus Ex Machina. Mel Croucher. 1984 Knightlore. The Stamper Bros. 1984 Jet Set Willy. (« remake » de Gameboy). Paul Taylor. 2001. Flappy Bird Simulator. “Timmy” 2014. Various Vintage ZX Spectrum Hobbyist Magazines. Various ZX Spectrum Software Cassettes. Tape Load Error (Fan Made Tshirt) Chelsea Girl 1 (Fan Made Tshirt) Fantasy World Dizzy Mug (Fan Made Graphic on Coffee Mug)

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Curator's Statement. Independent video game creators have become a focal point for emergent discourses in contemporary video game production. Often comprised of small teams, or single creators, INDIE games are simultaneously situated both as an appendage to the larger video game industry, and as being autonomous and separate from it. Yet, the stories of independent development both from within and without the industry are not new, rather they are part of a larger cycle of discourses which are revisited with the emergence of new technologies, communities and phenomena within gaming culture's history. At Indiecade East in February of 2014, Indie Game Developer Bennett Foddy gave a talk on the “State of the Union” of the current independent game development landscape, its apparent fracturing, and its murky origins. Through a sampling of works from the medium's history, Foddy's thesis is clear: communities resembling those of contemporary indie game development are commonplace within gaming's larger history, and that those of us who make, study, and write about video games, could do well to examine these communities and the works created by them. This exhibition is one such way of examining a particular movement in gaming culture's history, a

movement whose threads can be traced throughout various communities, including contemporary indie game culture. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Released in the UK in 1982, the ZX Spectrum is an 8 bit colour microcomputer with a unique set of affordances that catalysed a hobbyist video game development movement. The narrative of the Spectrum is a unique one; seeing Sinclair Research Ltd dedicated to releasing an affordable computing platform for the cost of a 100 pounds. The Spectrum's low cost saw many college students, computing enthusiasts, and hobbyist programmers adopting the new computer. Stories of much of the early days of software development for the platform recount tales of young men, sitting in their bedrooms, dormrooms, and basements, spending countless hours learning how to code on the Spectrum's tiny keyboard. As the Spectrum gained traction within the UK, these hobbyist game makers began to shift and alter into small game studios. However, while some went on to be much larger video game studios in the larger video game and software industry, others remained at a small scale, releasing games that were personal creative endeavours, rather than commercial products of the video game industry. Here we can see the discursive connections to our contemporary independent video game production landscape. On the one hand we see the origins of the UK gaming industry, while on the other, the rise of hobbyist game making practices that continue to thrive today, if through different means. At the height of the Spectrum's popularity, dozens of print magazines were dedicated to the platform, featuring game reviews, trips and tricks for coding, advertisements for 1 st and 3rd party hardware, etc. But one of the unique features of many of these publications were the tape swap and sales pages that sat near the magazines' end. While some developers had access to retail and mail order sales through small publishers, others used these sections to sell, share and distribute their games, thus creating a network of makers, users and players. This exhibition features works both by hobbyist developers and members of what was then the nascent video game industry within the UK, the works have been chosen through careful consideration of what would be considered the platform's canon, as well as by looking at works that experimented with narrative, theme, politics and technology. Several of the contemporary selections within the exhibit were chosen to illustrate a still thriving hobbyist development scene, both for the Spectrum itself, as well as works for other platforms inspired by the Spectrum homebrew scene. As a platform reaches the end of its commercial life, it is taken up by new creative communities which extend its life well beyond that of a commercial device. While homebrew game making communities for nearly every heritage gaming console still thrive today, what's unique about the Spectrum is that its origins were steeped in these movements. What is it that keeps a commercially abandoned device embedded in our cultural imaginations? Fan cultures contribute to the long-term heritage of a platform, and the various software created for it, by creating all manner of paratextual objects and artefacts derived from the iconography and unique aesthetic of the Spectrum. The exhibit features a few selections from Zazzle, a marketplace and hub of fan creative activity. These works (Tshirts and housewares) highlight fan contributions to the canonization and valorization of the Spectrum and its numerous game titles. Whether it be through early creative practices that led to a burgeoning video game industry within the UK, or post consumer homebrew development and fan-based creative practices, it is clear that the Spectrum still occupies a place in the popular imagination of DIY computer and gaming cultures. --skot deeming, 2014. _____________________________________________________________________________________ **Curator's note on the challenge of exhibiting localized technologies. One of the primary challenges of staging this exhibit was the fact that the Spectrum was a platform unique

to the UK, which poses technical problems for staging such an exhibit. Should we decide to show the works on original hardware, this would mean that each ZX Spectrum would need to be connected to a Voltage convertor (to convert the plugs and power requirements from the European standard, to the North American standard), as well as a video standards convertor (to convert the European PAL video signal format to the North American NTSC format). Given this challenge, it is difficult to present these works in their “original” form, due mostly to the conversion of the video signal. PAL runs at 625 lines of resolution with a frame rate of 25 fps, whereas NTSC features 525 lines and a frame rate of 29.97 fps. As a result of these challenges, we have chosen to present a single Spectrum as part of the exhibit, with all of these conversions technologies as part of the display. For the remainder of the works in the exhibit, however, we have elected to use ZX Spectrum emulation running on contemporary computing hardware. This has enabled us to stage the exhibit without the prohibitive costs and time of having to source operational hardware, and conversion technologies. While there is still much debate over the role of migrations, surrogation and emulation in video gaming preservation and heritage, in the case of this exhibit, it happens to be the only reasonable solution to the problem of exhibiting vintage localized computing technologies, and indeed in the future may be our only solution to exhibiting any historical works as original hardware breaks down, or becomes more difficult to source. _____________________________________________________________________________________

Special Thanks to: le laboratoire de recherche et d'enseignement en jeu vidéo de l'Université de Montréal, Social Sciences and Humanties Research Council of Canada, Bibilotheque et Archives nationales Quebec, LUDOV, Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre, mLab, Concordia University, Homo Ludens, Montreal Joue, Faculte des arts et des sciences Universite de Montreal, Alison Gazzard, Espace Fibre, Valerie Walker, Yasin Farzinali, Adam Van Sertima.