Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association Vol 6(9): 82-99 http://loading.gamestudies.ca The Dreamcast, Console of the Avant-Garde Nick Montfort Mia Consalvo Massachusetts Institute of Technology Concordia University
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract We argue that the Dreamcast hosted a remarkable amount of videogame development that went beyond the odd and unusual and is interesting when considered as avant-garde. After characterizing the avant-garde, we investigate reasons that Sega's position within the industry and their policies may have facilitated development that expressed itself in this way and was received by gamers using terms that are associated with avant-garde work. We describe five Dreamcast games (Jet Grind Radio, Space Channel 5, Rez, Seaman, and SGGG) and explain how the advances made by these industrially productions are related to the 20th century avant- garde's lesser advances in the arts. We conclude by considering the contributions to gaming that were made on the Dreamcast and the areas of inquiry that remain to be explored by console videogame developers today. Author Keywords Aesthetics; art; avant-garde; commerce; console games; Dreamcast; game studios; platforms; politics; Sega; Tetsuya Mizuguchi Introduction A platform can facilitate new types of videogame development and can expand the concept of videogaming. The Dreamcast, however brief its commercial life, was a platform that allowed for such work to happen and that accomplished this. It is not just that there were a large number of weird or unusual games developed during the short commercial life of this platform. We argue, rather, that avant-garde videogame development happened on the Dreamcast, even though this development occurred in industrial rather than "indie" or art contexts.