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CH Ludens at the Vintage Computer Festival Zurich 2025

by Adrian Demleitner & Eugen Pfister

Setting the Stage

“The Vintage Computer Festival Zurich is committed to the preservation and revitalisation of historical computers and technologies and brings past eras of computer technology to life.” (https://vintagecomputerfestival.ch/ translated by the authors). The first Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) took place in 2013, originally in Winterthur. In 2016, the festival moved to Zurich, where it is still held annually today. Here former and current developers meet early adopters from the past millennium. And they are all increasingly taking their children with them so that they can share part of their own story with them. “Visitors can take a fascinating journey back in time to the early days of computing and experience the development of this ground-breaking technology at first hand” (Idem). This is why our colleagues from the ZHDK have naturally been regular guests at the festival even from before our project. With the start of our project, guests became exhibitors and speaker. In November 2023, Larissa Wild presented her CH Ludens sub-project for the first time at the VCF with the title “CH-Ludens: Exploring the game design scene in Switzerland in the 80s & 90s”. In addition, our colleagues from Zurich wo/manned a booth to draw attention to our project and find interview partners for our research. In fact, the VCF was and is an excellent opportunity for us to get in touch with people who have developed games over the past century. This is also the reason why we presented CH Ludens again at this year’s VCF in the Kraftwerk Selnau (that is 2025) with our own stand and a presentation.

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Diving into Early Swiss Player Cultures with Swiss Gamescapes Plus – Methodological Approach and Early Phase Report

by Arno Görgen, Addrich Mauch & Kevin Negele

 “I think I’ll be holding a controller in my hand until I drop dead. And you can’t take this from me anymore. It’s a bit of a way of life, all these cultures.” (Sascha Böhme, I29, 19.07.2024, 01:26:43)1

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