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NEW MEDIA AS MATERIAL CONSTRAINT an Introduction to Platform Studies

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NEW MEDIA AS MATERIAL CONSTRAINT an Introduction to Platform Studies NEW MEDIA AS MATERIAL CONSTRAINT An Introduction to Platform Studies Ian Bogost, Nick Montfort We introduce platform studies, a family of approaches to digital media. In platform studies, close consideration is given to the detailed technical workings of computing systems. This allows the connections between platform technologies and creative production to be investigated. Two short studies of the Atari VCS (2600) and the Nintendo Wii show how close consideration of this sort can inform our understanding of the history, present, and future of new media. Platforms have been around for decades, right under our video games and digital art. Those studying new media are starting to explore the low level of code to learn more about how computers are used in culture, but there have been few attempts to go even deeper, to the metal — to look at the base hardware and software systems that provide the foundation for computational expression. Platform studies is such an attempt, investigating the relationships between the hardware and software design of standardized computing systems — platforms — and the creative works produced on those platforms. INTRODUCING PLATFORMS The hardware and software framework that supports other programs is referred to in computing as a platform. A platform in its purest form is an abstraction, simply a standard or specification. To be used by people and to take part in our culture directly, a platform must manifest itself materially. This can be done in the chips, casings, peripherals, and other components that make up the hardware of a physical computer system. A platform may also include an operating system. It is often useful to see a programming language or environment on top of an operating system as a platform, too. Whatever the programmer takes for granted when developing, and whatever, from another side, the user is required to have working in order to use particular software, is the platform. In general, platforms are layered -— from hardware through operating system and into other software layers —- and they relate to modular components, such as optional controllers and cards. Studies in computer science and engineering have addressed the question of how platforms are best developed. Studies in new media have addressed the cultural relevance of particular software that runs on platforms. But little work has been done on how the hardware and software of platforms influences, facilitates, or constrains particular forms of computational expression. By choosing a platform, new media creators simplify development and delivery in many ways. Their work is supported and constrained by what this platform can do. Sometimes the influence is obvious: A monochrome platform can’t display color, a video game console without a keyboard can’t accept typed input. But there are many more subtle ways that platforms interact with creative production, due to the idioms of programming that a language supports or due to transistor-level decisions made in video and audio hardware. In addition to allowing certain developments and precluding others, platforms also encourage and discourage different sorts of expressive new media work with much more subtlety. In drawing raster graphics, the difference between setting up one scan line at a time, having video RAM with support for tiles and sprites, or having a Bogost & Montfort, 1 native 3D model can end up being much more important than a few numbers representing resolution and color depth. Particular platform studies may emphasize different technical or cultural aspects and draw on different critical and theoretical approaches, but to deal deeply with platforms and new media, these sorts of studies will all have to be technically rigorous. The detailed analysis of hardware and code can connect to the experience of developers who created software for a platform and users who interacted with and will interact with programs on that platform. Only the deep investigation of computing systems will reveal the interactions between these systems and creativity, design, expression, and culture. New media studies, focusing on artifacts, games, and works of digital art and literature, have been undertaken on many different levels. The ones we describe next have been discussed in the context of a specific video game before, but here we briefly explain how they are relevant to digital media studies overall.1 This provides some context for our focus on the lowest level, that of platform. Reception/operation is the level that includes reception aesthetics, reader response theory, psychoanalysis, desensitization to violence studies, and empirical studies of interaction and play. Only interactive media are explicitly operated, but all sorts of media are received and understood, so insights from other fields can often be usefully adapted to digital media at this level. Interface studies include the whole discipline of human-computer interface, comparative studies of user interface done by humanists and literary critics, and approaches from visual studies, film theory, and art history. Remediation concerns itself with interface, although reception and operation are concerns of that approach, too. This is not unusual. Many new media studies span multiple levels, but there is often a focus on one. Form/function is the main concern of cybertext studies and of much of the work in game studies and ludology. Narratology, previously used to understand literature and cinema, is an approach that deals with form and function and which has been applied to new media as well. Because these approaches deal with the same level, it is at least meaningful to imagine a narratology/ludology debate — whether or not any such debate has occurred — while it makes much less sense to think about a psychoanalysis/ludology debate or a remediation/narratology debate. Code is a level that has only recently been explored by those investigating new media. Code studies, software studies, and code aesthetics are not yet widespread, but a few interesting books and panels dealing with the code level signal an increasing interest in the way creative work is programmed and understood by programmers. The discipline of software engineering is a related field that concerns itself with the code level as well as with organizational and individual capabilities for software development. Platform is the abstraction level beneath code, a level which has not yet been systematically studied. If code studies are new media’s analogue to software engineering and computer programming, platform studies are the humanistic parallel of computing systems and computer architecture, connecting the fundamentals of new media work to the cultures in which they were produced and the cultures in which coding, forms, interfaces, and eventual use are layered upon them. Our focus here in on this platform level. We hope that studies at this level will help to fill in our overall understanding of new media and will benefit the humanistic Bogost & Montfort, 2 exploration of computing. We also want to emphasize that we see all of these levels, not just the top one, as being situated in culture, society, economy, and history. Because of this, we seek to describe how platforms have come about as well as how they influence further cultural production. This awareness of contexts informs our approach to platform studies, just as it has informed the best new media studies at other levels in the past. Next, we discuss three examples from different eras of computing to explain the general relevance of platform studies in new media. Our examples include two video game consoles and one general-purpose personal computer system. They are the 1977 Atari Video Computer System (later called the Atari 2600), the 1991 Multimedia Personal Computer, and the 2006 Nintendo Wii. 1977: THE ATARI VCS (2600) The Atari VCS (renamed the Atari 2600 in 1982) was the first successful cartridge-based video game console. We describe the elements of the Atari VCS: The 6507 processor, its Television Interface Adapter (TIA), its interchangeable ROM cartridges, and a variety of 8-pin controllers.2 These can help why VCS games imitated some aspects of arcade games while they left other aspects aside. We conclude this section with a detailed discussion of how sprite graphics worked on the VCS and how this influenced the development of cartridges. Pre-VCS Gaming The Atari VCS appeared at a time when the vast majority of video games were played in bars, lounges, and arcades. Today, the arcade cabinet is a rare sight, but in their heyday coin-operated games generated more income than today’s home console-dominated market.3 At a time when coin-ops ruled the market, part of the appeal of the home console system was its promise to tap a new market of kids and families. That year Atari, eyeing the home market for video games, also designed a home Pong and arranged for Sears to sell it exclusively — which they did, moving 150,000 units in 1975.4, Atari’s triumph was short-lived, however. In 1976 General Instrument released its $5 AY-3-8500, a “PONG-on-a-chip” that also contained simple shooting games. It, along with other cheap processors, allowed even companies without much electronics experience to bring Pong-like games to market. They did — there were 75 available by the end of 1996, “being produced in the millions for a few dollars apiece.” Even if Atari had cornered the market for home Pong, having that system in a home wouldn’t have done anything to lead to future sales. How many Pongs could one house have needed? Atari looked, instead, to model some features of the nascent personal computer market with a home console that used interchangeable cartridges, allowing the system to play many games. There would be an important difference from home computing, as Atari saw it, though: All of the cartridges for the system would be made by one company.
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