In 1997, Nokia included the game ‘Snake’ on a mobile phone handset for the first time.

1997

In 2008, Apple launched its app store for the iPhone, and allowed anyone to submit games and other apps for approval to its store.

1997 2008

In the years that followed, mobile has become a focal point for many of the changes sweeping the games industry.

2008 today

Stories about big companies transforming industries are easy to tell.

I want to tell a more complicated story.

I want to look at this period of time, between Snake and the App Store, in America, Europe and Japan.I want to look at how games connect all of us.

1997 2008

When I tell people that I study the history of games, they often tell me, “That sounds fascinating”, before adding the disclaimer, “I’m not much of a gamer myself.”

Then I ask them about their experiences with games.They then talk endlessly about their treasured memories of playing with technology.Everybody games. So why do they feel excluded from games culture? In part, it’s because of the histories we’ve been telling.

I once met a “non-gamer” who helped to create experimental poetry in MUDs in the 1990s, the precursors to MMORPGs today.

What if games history was actually made by “non-gamers” like them? What if we included those experiences in our histories? How would that change our understanding of the culture of gaming?

I think something gets lost when histories of games focus on product launches.

I think something gets lost when histories of games focus on big companies.

I think something gets lost when histories of games focus on famous game designers.

I think something gets lost when histories of games focus on core gamers.

I think games history is co-created just like gameplay is: in messy, complicated ways.

I want to tell stories about ordinary people doing unusual things in that private space between person and machine.

I want to understand how those people made new worlds in their relationships with technology.I want to understand how technology changed them.

And I want to re-examine the stories we tell about big companies and famous designers.I want to see them as participants in a world that is co-created by everybody and everything,not as the architects of a world that the rest of us are just living in.

I want to tell complicated histories about the worlds that emerged between the product launches.

1997 2008

I’m going to start with a book about mobile games.

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