From Copenhagen, Oct 17

Nick Montfort – MIT (w. Bogost at Georgia Tech)
and the ports have names for the sea
Reimagining Games for the Atari VCS

understand platforms and their material affordances to creative works
A bunch of interesting examples from the VCS…

Shira Chess
Balancing on the Great Gender Platform

gaming platforms are rhetorical platforms

platforms are gendered
Wii and DS marketing

platforms are a site where discourse happens, thus they themselves are rhetorical in that they allow and constrain different things

From Copenhagen, Oct 17

Keith Massie
The Pla(t/y)form of L337: Difference, Differance and Differ@nce in/through L337

platform and different forms of leetspeak

Hugo Gernspeck 1911 father of sci-fi

Derrida critiques idea that thought -> speech -> writing
leetspeak reinforces Derrida
meaning is like a snow-globe, not a map. requires interability

differance -> differ and defer

Keith introduces diff@nce (differ@nce?)

Casey O’Donnell
Taking the NES’s PPU Bait: the birth and effects of the graphics processing unit

NES PPU (pixel processing unit) as example of how platforms affect collaborative practice

the ppu allowed a bunch of innovations: movable background, 8×8, 8×16 sprites, separation of screen code and game code

most games before the NES were engineer-driven games, but the separation of graphics with game code afforded the games industry to break into more specialized roles (art and programmers)