How do I hold this thing? Controlling reconstructed Q*berts

Abstract

Preserving a historically significant video game frequently requires either preserving or adapting a touchable interface for contemporary use. While control techniques are often evaluated in terms of fidelity between in- and out-of-game actions, this essay emphasizes several ways that fidelity must be actively constructed. Bringing a haptic perspective on video gaming into conversation with game history and preservation, this essay examines ways that textual materials surrounding and supplementing a work can be used to construct haptic fidelity. The video game Q*bert is selected as a case study both because of its historical and cultural significance and because it makes idiosyncratic use of controller and force-feedback technologies. The essay concludes that playing Q*bert in a preservation setting requires several unique accommodations at the level of touchable interface, and each accommodation illustrates another way that supplementary texts help construct historical haptic fidelity.

That bygone feeling: Controller ergonomics and nostalgia in video game play.

“…Interestingly, these data also suggest that varying controller schemes or using nonoriginal equipment do not necessarily harm feelings of nostalgia either, which could explain the popularity of retro gaming on modern consoles—for example, the popularity of older Nintendo games played via the Wii Virtual Console or Switch Online using modern controllers and equipment. Recalling Hodges et al (2017), whereas the linkages between haptic feedback and gameplay in Q * bert were robust enough for players to notice their absence, the SMB games have been so widely reproduced and distributed that the linkages between the NES controller and Mario gameplay are not as strong. Yet another interpretation of this finding is that the current student de facto equates the ergonomics of a retro game to its controller, and this is potentially problematic.…”

“…Yet another interpretation of this finding is that the current student de facto equates the ergonomics of a retro game to its controller, and this is potentially problematic. For example, the environment in which one played their older video games could be included as an ergonomic concern—standing in front of an arcade machine (Hodges et al, 2017) or considering the various locations one might have had a home gaming console (Hjorth & Richardson, 2020). 6 Engaging the concept of braiding (in which different sensory experiences are enmeshed, Mitchell, 2005), Hodges et al (2017) discussed the interplay between Q * bert’s haptic feedback, game cabinet sounds, and paralinguistic on-screen cues (the infamous “ @!#@ ” speech bubble) as jointly and individually critical to the “feel” of the game.…”

“…For nostalgic video games, the game and the controller used to play it become perceptually and mentally tied to each other. This is most clearly demonstrated by Hodges et al (2017) in a case study of retro arcade game Q *bert, in which they demonstrate that critiques of modern releases of the game were likely attributable to the general inability to reproduce the feel of the original arcade cabinet, which included force-feedback joysticks and other novel (albeit outdated) haptic feedback mechanisms.…”

Assembling Auras: Towards a Methodology for the Preservation and Study of Video Games as Cultural Heritage Artefacts

“…Nevertheless, the aforementioned non-academic sources are the best heritage professionals and scholars have to work with if they are researching video games. Guins (2014) addresses this situation when discussing the use of such sources by academia and 'demonstrates several ways in which works that may have once seemed "nonacademic or lacking in seriousness" (p. 25) are now valuable primary sources' (Hodges, 2017(Hodges, , p. 1585). In the case of video games, scholars are forced to use non-academic sources as there was not much done by academia on the subject.…”

‘Seeing isn’t doing’: Examining tensions between bodies, videogames and technologies ‘beyond’ the game

“…More specifically, this article contributes to existing scholarship about the ‘negative’ embodiments that emerge in videogame play – including discussions of failure, anger and fatigue (see Apperley, 2009; Ash, 2013; Keogh, 2018; Kirkpatrick, 2009; Sudnow, 1983; Taylor, 2012). In addition, this article helps flesh out understandings of how material ‘outside’ the game shapes players’ embodied relations with the game (of which there has been limited academic attention to date; see Egliston, 2019; Ash, 2012a; Hodges, 2017). This is especially important if we are to take seriously the popular perspective that videogame play is a distributed ‘assemblage’ of various human and nonhuman parts (see Taylor, 2009), specifically, that material beyond the played game is a taken-for-granted way that many people engage, feel and think about games (see Consalvo, 2007; Kirkpatrick, 2015).…”