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From Zero to Kilo: Status report on the Bern GameLab

by Aurelia Brandenburg, Addrich Mauch, and Kevin Negele

In April 2024, the Bern Team of CH Ludens announced that we were starting to collect gaming magazines  relevant to our research as part of our GameLab, which in turn is a collaboration between the Bern Academy of the Arts and the University of Bern at the Swiss Center for Game Design Studies. Since then, over a year has passed and much has happened. So much that we want to use this opportunity to reflect on the current status of our collection, the challenges we faced in first starting it, and what we have learned from this process so far. This blog post will go over our first steps in the making of the GameLab, our current magazine and game collections and, finally, our visions for the GameLab.

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Swiss Listing Games? More listing games from Switzerland wanted!

by Beat Suter

So far, CH-Ludens has only been able to identify and archive just four listing games that were created in Switzerland. All four oft hem were printed as winners in computer magazines and therefore available as printed source code in archives that preserve computer magazines.

These are the games Jagdszene Chicago (1985) by Christoph Cronimund, Cave Flight (1985) by René Straub, Top Tennis (1985) by Bernhard Dalle and Muri (1987) by Markus Wild and Marius Wey.

Of course, in the early 1980s, there were many more “listed games” in Switzerland than just these four. Unfortunately, they were not published anywhere. In response to their monthly calls for submissions, the computer magazines received many listing games from young programmers. But only the best ones were published. Today, a large number of these listing games are considered irrevocably lost. However, it is possible that young programmers of the time still have old floppy disks with their game prototypes from the listing era at home. The CH-Ludens research group would be very interested in these games. We are researching the entire history of Swiss game design up to the year 2000 and would be happy if you could search your old disks and notes for lost “Listing games”. Or maybe you know of a game or two that has been published somewhere that we haven’t found. Please send your information to gamelab.zurich at zhdk.ch.

Continue reading Swiss Listing Games? More listing games from Switzerland wanted!