Game after : a cultural study of video game afterlife / by Raiford Guins.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Persistent games: -- Ex-game -- Afterlife and the culture of materiality -- Where is history in game studies? -- Now boarding -- Museified: -- Object lessened? -- Artifact-activity -- Slips -- Iconic object -- 2006_0102_04 -- Thinking Inside The (Archival) Box: -- Chronicled -- Era of collection -- Collection of no-things: Mr Higinbotham's oscilloscope of wonder -- After The Arcade: -- Unintentional monuments -- Curious cabinets -- Arcade projects: -- Behind the screen-or the totality of the thing -- eGameRevolution-or Space Invaders behind glass -- Videotopia: exhibit of the true history of video games-or itinerant antiques -- California extreme-the classic arcade game show-or another spin around the present -- American Classic Arcade Museum at Fun Spot-or welcome to the Musecade The International Arcade Museum-or online census project -- Remains of the game -- Thinking Outside The (Game Cartridge) Box: -- NRFB -- Container becomes content -- Cliff Spohn's evocative surfaces -- Landfill Legend: -- Classified -- Trashing E T -- E T as trash -- Memento Mori -- Postscript: Remains to be seen -- Game Saved: -- Restoration hardware -- Back to the fire buttons: vintage arcade superstore -- Supercade unbound: supercade collection -- Serving history: recreation of Tennis For Two -- Final walkthrough -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Overview: We purchase video games to play them, not to save them. What happens to video games when they are out of date, broken, nonfunctional, or obsolete? Should a game be considered an "ex-game" if it exists only as emulation, as an artifact in museum displays, in an archival box, or at the bottom of a landfill? In Game After, Raiford Guins focuses on video games not as hermetically sealed within time capsules of the past but on their material remains: how and where video games persist in the present. Guins meticulously investigates the complex life cycles of video games, to show how their meanings, uses, and values shift in an afterlife of disposal, ruins and remains, museums, archives, and private collections. Guins looks closely at video games as museum objects, discussing the recontextualization of the Pong and Brown Box prototypes and engaging with curatorial and archival practices across a range of cultural institutions; aging coin-op arcade cabinets; the documentation role of game cartridge artwork and packaging; the journey of a game from flawed product to trash to memorialized relic, as seen in the history of Atari's infamous E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial; and conservation, restoration, and re-creation stories told by experts including Van Burnham, Gene Lewin, and Peter Takacs. The afterlife of video games-whether behind glass in display cases or recreated as an iPad app-offers a new way to explore the diverse topography of game history

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