In “CH Ludens – The Podcast”, Arno Görgen and Eugen Pfister are sitting down each month to have a chat with a different member of “Confoederatio Ludens” to talk about how they got here, their research and what they learned about the history of Swiss games culture and game design as part of the project until now. You can also find the full podcast will all episodes here.
Continue reading CH Ludens – The Podcast: …talking with Pierre-Yves Hurel (UNIL)
By the late 1990s, gaming and gaming magazines had turned mainstream in the German-speaking countries. Popular characters like Lara Croft, Pikachu or Sonic were a cultural phenomenon in their own right, games and early digitisation had become a normal part of youth culture, and gaming magazines were as popular as they had never been before, but not quite mainstream yet. One of the first magazines to take that leap was Bravo Screenfun.
In “CH Ludens – The Podcast”, Arno Görgen and Eugen Pfister are sitting down each month to have a chat with a different member of “Confoederatio Ludens” to talk about how they got here, their research and what they learned about the history of Swiss games culture and game design as part of the project until now. You can also find the full podcast will all episodes here.
Continue reading CH Ludens – The Podcast: …talking with Yannick Rochat (UNIL)
In “CH Ludens – The Podcast”, Arno Görgen and Eugen Pfister are sitting down each month to have a chat with a different member of “Confoederatio Ludens” to talk about how they got here, their research and what they learned about the history of Swiss games culture and game design as part of the project until now. You can also find the full podcast will all episodes here.
Continue reading CH Ludens – The Podcast: What is Confoederatio Ludens?
Hiloko Kato beschäftigt sich seit mehr als 10 Jahren mit Games aus sprachwissenschaftlicher Sicht. Für das laufende SNF Sinergia Projekt CH Ludens sieht sie sich das Phänomen Computerspiele in den Schweizer Medien, insbesondere im Schweizer Fernsehen, genauer an. Zur gleichen Zeit hat sich Eugen Pfister mit der Berichterstattung Schweizer Zeitungen zu Computerspielen in den 1980er Jahren auseinandergesetzt. In einem Gespräch – das in einem Google Doc von Frühjahr bis Herbst 2025 stattfand – tauschen sich die beiden über ihre bisherigen Erkenntnisse aus und entwickeln gemeinsam neue Fragen.
GATE (Bright Software 1991 / Apple IIgs) is a Gauntlet-inspired action game that was developed by the Swiss studio Bright Software for the Apple IIgs in 1991, towards the very end of the platform’s lifespan. In this part two of our case study, we analyse the story, audio-visual aesthetics and game mechanics of the game as a historical source, its reception and conclude our case study.
This is the second part of our two-part case study on the game GATE. You can find the first part here.
Continue reading Emulators and Fantasy Villains: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #2
At the end of the 1980s, four young people met in the Basel area and started developing a game called GATE for the Apple IIg in their free time. They came together partly through ice skating, a computer store and an early fascination with computers. The result was an unlikely reinterpretation of Gauntlet for the Apple IIgs, unlikely because the computer was already fourteen years old at the time of programming. The game itself even found a publisher, first in France and then in the USA, but it failed to achieve great success.
Continue reading Curiosity and Computer Stores: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #1
“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.
Continue reading CH Ludens at the Vintage Computer Festival Zurich 2025
Die Fallstudie von Necronom (Lunatic Software/Linel, 1991, Amiga) erschien zwar diesen März als erste Fallstudie auf unserem Blog1, aber sie war nicht die erste, an der wir gemeinsam in unserem Projekt gearbeitet haben. Bereits ein Jahr zuvor, im März 2023 und kurz nach Beginn unseres Forschungsprojektes, haben wir uns gemeinsam ans Spielen und Analysieren von Ball Raider (Golden Gate Crew/Diamond Software/Robtek, 1987, Amiga) gesetzt. Das Spiel ist eine Breakout-Variante für den Amiga aus dem Jahr 1987. Es war in vielerlei Hinsicht ein erstes Kennenlernen für uns. Es war das erste Mal, dass wir gemeinsam an einem Text arbeiteten. Es war das erste Mal, dass wir gemeinsam spielten. Es war das erste Mal, dass wir vor der Herausforderung standen, wie wir uns am besten ein Amigaspiel aus den 1980er Jahren erfahrbar machen könnten. (Zu dem Zeitpunkt hatten wir noch keinen Amiga in unserem Gamelab). Nun, aller Anfang ist schwer und wir lernten aus unseren Fehlern. Unsere ersten Spielerfahrungen mit Ball Raider sammelten wir auf unseren modernen Windows PCs und MacBooks mittels des sehr zugänglichen FS-UAE Amiga Emulators. Es war eine harte Schule. Nur kurz darauf beschafften wir uns unsere Joysticks. Das Spiel erschien uns unnachgiebig schwer. Nun, das ist es auch bis zu einem gewissen Grad. Allerdings lernten wir auch, was für einen Unterschied es machte, Ball Raider über den Emulator zu spielen oder auf einem Amiga.
Continue reading Fallstudie: Ball Raider (Golden Gate Crew/Diamond Software/Robtek, 1987, Amiga)
How did we as scientists become what we are today? Where does our interest in digital games come from? Join us on a short autobiographical journey to the ludic beginnings of the CH LUDENS team.
Continue reading “The Feel of Sweaty Fingers” – The CH LUDENS Team’s First Memories of Digital Games
