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Where we stand: Our scientific mid-term report

by the CH Ludens Team

Anyone who has already worked on a scientific project knows that an interim scientific report has to be written for the funding body halfway through the project. This is probably one of the less popular text genres. You are under time pressure and the number of readers is very limited. In most cases, such interim reports are probably only read by two or three employees of the funding body in order to hopefully be approved. This is actually a shame, because we realized that writing the scientific report together was extremely beneficial for our project. On the one hand, it helped us to realize how much we have already achieved and on the other, it pointed out problems (mostly concerning the communication in between four universities) that we could tackle accordingly.

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Eine Box ist nicht nur eine Box: Game Verpackung im Wandel der Zeit

von Beat Suter

Verpackung für Videogames ist obsolet geworden. Heute werden 90% aller Spiele als Daten gestreamt oder übers Internet heruntergeladen. Nur ein kleiner Teil der Videogames erhält noch eine Verpackung und wird in Elektronikläden in die Regale gestellt. Früher war das ganz anders.

Ein Videogame wollte inszeniert sein, es musste durch seine Verpackung Aufmerksamkeit erringen, denn es war in den Läden in grossen Räumen voller Schachteln in Regale eingereiht. Und die potenziellen Spielerinnen und Spieler mussten sich lustvoll und etwas mühsam durch Stapel oder gut sortierte lange Tischreihen wühlen. Die frühen Verpackungen zeigten nicht das Gameplay eines Spiels, sondern vermittelten eine anregende Idee der Spielwelt, eine Inszenierung, die von den Betrachtern Imagination forderte. Professionelle Grafiker entwarfen Covers mit ausdrucksstarken realistischen Helden und Szenen, die weit über die Pixelwelt des Spiels hinausgingen.

In den 1980er und 1990er Jahren hatte die Normierung solcher Boxen noch keinen so durchschlagenden Erfolg. Es gab unterschiedliche Formen von Verpackungen. Die Händler versuchten Normierungen einzuführen und zum Beispiel übergrosse Verpackungen wie die grosse Kaiser Box (1989) des Schweizer Publishers LINEL nicht in ihr Sortiment aufzunehmen, weil sie nicht in die Regale passten. Doch sobald sich ein solches Spiel woanders gut verkaufte, wurde es dann trotzdem aufgenommen. Ein Standard für Verpackungen setzte sich erst nach 2000 so richtig durch mit der Polybox.

Dieser Text entwirft eine Entwicklungslinie der Game Verpackungen über die Jahrzehnte hinweg mit speziellem Blick auf Schweizer Videogames, die im freien Markt erhältlich waren.

Continue reading Eine Box ist nicht nur eine Box: Game Verpackung im Wandel der Zeit

A Box is not just a Box: Game packaging in the course of time

by Beat Suter

Packaging for video games has become obsolete. Today, 90% of all games are streamed as data or downloaded via the internet. Only a small proportion of video games are still packaged and placed on shelves in electronics stores. It used to be very different.

A video game had to attract attention through its packaging, as it was lined up in stores on shelves in large rooms full of boxes. And potential players had to enjoy and somewhat laboriously rummage through stacks or well-sorted long rows of tables. The early packaging did not show the gameplay of a game but conveyed a stimulating idea of the game world. Professional graphic designers created covers with expressive, realistic heroes and scenes that went far beyond the pixel world of the game.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the standardization of such boxes was not such a resounding success. There were different types of packaging. Retailers tried to introduce standardization and, for example, did not include oversized packaging such as the large Kaiser box (1989) from Swiss publisher LINEL in their range because it did not fit on their shelves. But as soon as such a game sold well elsewhere, it was included anyway. It was not until the year 2000 that the Polybox really established itself as a standard for packaging.

This text outlines the development of game packaging over the decades with a special focus on Swiss video games that were available on the open market.

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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

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

Call for Paper: Historicizing G.A.M.E.S. 2025 – Gaming, Artifacts, Memory, Experience and Society

by Confoederatio Ludens

Bern, Switzerland, September 11-12, 2025

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=histgames2025

Submission deadline: March 14, 2025

Continue reading Call for Paper: Historicizing G.A.M.E.S. 2025 – Gaming, Artifacts, Memory, Experience and Society

Foto-Wettbewerb: Gewinne einen von fünf Orell Füssli-Gutscheinen im Wert von je 100.- CHF

von Swiss Gamescapes+

Hast du Bilder oder Videos von dir aus dem Wohnzimmer vor dem Fernseher mit Spielkonsole oder in einem anderen Zusammenhang mit digitaler Spielkultur aus der Schweiz vor dem Jahr 2000? Teile sie mit uns!

Continue reading Foto-Wettbewerb: Gewinne einen von fünf Orell Füssli-Gutscheinen im Wert von je 100.- CHF

”Und es läuft heute noch perfekt!”

Galactic Empires for Networks (GEn) – ein Schweizer Multiplayer Spiel (1984-2000)

von Beat Suter

Kann ein Strategiespiel 40 Jahre später noch gleichviel Spannung und Spielspass generieren? Kann ein Netzwerk-Spiel 25 bis 30 Jahre später auf neuen Systemen noch genauso gut funktionieren wie damals? Was unmöglich oder unwahrscheinlich klingt, schaffen drei Schweizer Entwickler mit ihrem Spiel Galactic Empires. Alle drei gehören zu der ersten Generation von Informatik Studierenden der ETH Zürich. Sie haben die Digitalisierung in der Schweiz von Anfang an mitgeprägt. Ihr Multiplayer Spiel hat eine Spieldauer von 4 – 8 Stunden und kann heute noch im gleichen Rahmen gespielt werden, wie damals, als sie mit Freunden ganze Nächte durchgezockt haben.

Der Hinweis kam von einem guten Freund, der in den frühen neunziger Jahren regelmässig Freitag- oder Samstagnacht ein Science-Fiction Strategiespiel in seinem Freundeskreis aus Informatik und Ökonomie gespielt hatte, meist in den Wohnungen und Büroräumen seiner Freunde. Dabei handelte es sich um ein Multiplayer Spiel, das über Jahre immer wieder weiterentwickelt und immer wieder gespielt wurde bis etwa ins Jahr 2008. Die Entwickler und Spieler bezeichneten das Spiel mit GalEmp oder Galactic Empires, später auch GEn, Galactic Empires for Networks.

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“And it is still running perfectly today!”

Galactic Empires for Networks (GEn) – a Swiss multiplayer game (1984-2000)

by Beat Suter

Can a strategy game still provide the same excitement and fun 40 years later? Can a network game work as well on new systems 25 to 30 years later as it did back then? What sounds impossible or unlikely has been achieved by three Swiss developers with their game Galactic Empires. All three belong to the first generation of computer science students at ETH Zurich. They have helped shape digitalization in Switzerland from the very beginning. Their multiplayer game has a playing time of 4 to 8 hours and can still be played today in the same way as it was played all night long with friends.


The tip came from a good friend who, in the early 1990s, regularly played a science fiction strategy game on Friday or Saturday nights with his circle of friends from the IT and business departments, mostly in the homes and offices of his friends. It was a multiplayer game that was developed over the years and played again and again until about 2008. The developers and players called the game GalEmp or Galactic Empires, later also GEn, Galactic Empires for Networks.

Continue reading “And it is still running perfectly today!”

“On the other hand, the girls are quite discreet”: Strip-Poker-Reviews in early German Gaming Magazines

by Aurelia Brandenburg

This post (“’On the other hand, the girls are quite discreet’1: Strip-Poker-Reviews in early German Gaming Magazines”) is an English translation of a paper previously published in German at Spiel|Formen following the conference “Gender & Spielkultur” in Siegen, Germany in July 2023. This is an adapted version with some minor changes for clarity in English while the German original can be found here.

Abstract

Gaming magazines of the 1980s and 1990s are one of the places that laid much of the foundations of modern gaming culture(s). Still, both magazines in German on one hand and erotic games and/or the discourses surrounding them on the other hand have seldomly been researched. Yet, both offer valuable insight in the cultural dynamics of the time, especially from a gender historical perspective. The following paper is an attempt to close some gaps in this field by examining how the rhetoric regarding strip poker games in particular in the German press 1984-1994 developed and what conclusions regarding larger phenomena within (German) gaming magazines at the time might be drawn from that.

Keywords: Strip Poker, Games Journalism, Erotic Games, Gender Studies

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  1. “Andererseits sind die Mädchen sehr diskret”, Koch 1984, p. 54. []