The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Thursday, November 6, 2008 - 3B
The daring list
The Computer and Video Game Archive features several personal gaming stations.
Snew way to veg out
or study your culture.
North Campus
library holds
games old and new
By JAMIE BLOCK
Daily Arts Writer
Deep within the maze of com-
puters that forms the Duderstadt
Center on North Campus, there's
a secret alcove of video-gaming
wonder. Though the room appears
neither glorious nor vibrant - it
was once used to house photocopi-
ers - a look around its walls will
instill glee in anyone who's ever
picked up a controller.
The Computer and Video Game
Archive - a branch of the Art,
Architecture and Engineering
Library - is dedicated to collect-
ing and exhibiting video games.
The archive is no bigger than
an average classroom. Booths
with new televisions and con-
soles line two of the walls, and a
ceiling-high shelf system encom-
passes the third. On the shelves
are games and consoles ranging
from the popular to the incred-
ibly obscure. There's also an enor-
mous television standing in front
of three comfy armchairs, perfect
for plopping down after a stressful
day and inflicting virtual wrath.
All anyone needs to do is walk in
and choose a console and game,
and the staff will set it all up at a
gaming station.
But the archive, open weekdays
from 1 to 8 p.m. on the second
floor of the Duderstadt, is more
than a great new place to play
games. It's proof that video games
are a cultural phenomenon and
an expanding field of academic
study. The idea for the archive
met almost no opposition when it
was pitched, garnering full sup-
port from the University.
"It's an idea whose time has
come. Video games in the aca-
demic world are in the same place
film studies were 20 or 25 years
ago," said David Carter, long-time
game enthusiast and the archive's
founder.
The archive is first and foremost
an academic resource, and while
most of its student use will be rec-
reational, research is already hap-
pening there. The archive plans
to work closely with pre-existing
University courses in several
departments. In one class, Intro
Engineering, students are required
to create their own video game.
Carter hopes the archive will not
only help them research games,
but also allow the finished prod-
ucts to be played by other Universi-
ty students. The Communications,
Psychology and Screen Arts and
Cultures departments also offer
courses that illustrate and analyze
the cultural impact of video games
on society.
The archive is trying to under-
stand the future of video game
studies.
"We collect stuff now trying to
anticipate as best we can what the
needs of researchers and students
will be down the road," Carter
said. "These elements of pop cul-
ture that people tend to look down
at are in fact causing us to think
in new, interesting and different
ways."
Video games have had an
impact on American culture since
their inception, and the trend will
continue as long as the industry
survives. In the days when Pac-
Man and Donkey Kong ruled the
for girls
subscribe to GQ, which
means that issues left on
my coffee table with Megan
Fox on the cover prompt visitors
to ask which
member of_
my all-female
household gets _
the magazine.
(I sometimes
become too
lost in the
heteronorma- KIIERLY
tive gender
clichs in this
circumstance to be able to answer
cleverly.)
I've always had a thing for
glossy men's fashion and life-
style magazines. I think they've
over-emphasized the "sex sells"
angle in recent years, trying to
compete with younger lad mags
like Maxim, Stuff and FHM that
promise more semi-naked women
for your dollar. But for consistent
airport reading, GQ and Esquire
still provide more journalistic
weight than their mainstream
counterparts for women. Why
don't we see - or even expect to
see - stories on tourism in post-
genocide Rwanda in Cosmopoli-
tan?
Esquire recently published a
list of 75 books every man should
read. It was a decent list, markedly
"macho," with several books I'd
recommend myself. But the entries
were often accompanied by cringe-
worthy two-line descriptions -
"'The Grapes of Wrath': Because
it's all about the titty." Oy.
In response, Jezebel.com -
Gawker's pithy blog on "celebrity,
sex and fashion for women, without
airbrushing" - posted a list of 75
books every woman should read.
"Most of the extant rosters of must-
read classics are full of old white
dudes," wrote the Jezebel editors.
This week, I finally got around
to going through both lists, check-
ing off a) the books I've read and
b) the authors listed whom I've
read (but may have been listed for
a different work). Yikes. I'm not
going to tell you how many books
I've read from each list - I know,
I know, they're all very subjective
anyway. But as an English major,
I always feel a little guilty when I
haven't read or heard of all of the
books on these types of lists.
Based on my calculations, I've
read about 50 percent more of the
books on the men's list than on
the women's. Growing up in a gen
eration where our understanding
of the literary canon was expand-
ed to include more than just old
white dudes - or rather, where
alternative canons were created
to answer feminist and post-colo-
nialist criticisms of this preserva-
tion/praise of said old white dudet
- I felt more than a little guilty
for not having read Doris Lessing
or Flannery O'Connor. Am I feed-
ing into the patriarchy's idea of
the canon because I haven't read
more female authors (or books
not necessarily by women but
and boys
addressing concerns of women)?
Are both lists, for the most part,
using gender clichs to dictate
taste in literature? Is it silly to
have a small freak-out because of
them?
Yes, yes and maybe not. We all
need to reevaluate what we're read-
ing (or have already read) once
in a while. Our tastes change, on
average, every 10 years; perhaps it's
time to look at Jane Austen again.
I love Joan Didion (listed on
the Jezebel list for "Slouching
Towards Bethlehem") and Jhumpa
Lahiri (for "The Namesake,"
though I think "Interpreter of
Maladies" would have been a
better choice). I love Jean Rhys's
"Wide Sargasso Sea" and Alice
Gender neutral,
utterly biased.
Walker. But Michael Herr's "Dis-
patches" would probably make
my non-gender-specific-list-of-
books-everyone-should-read,
too. So would Salman Rushdie's
"Midnight's Children" (both on
Esquire's list).
Soto make an unranked,.incom-
plete, utterly biased list of books I
think highly of (especially because
I wasn't happy with a list that ran
in the B-side earlier this semester),
here goes:
"Collected Shorter Plays
of Samuel Beckett," Samuel
Beckett: Because you can't ask
me to choose between "Play" and
"Krapp's Last Tape."
"Foe," J.M. Coetzee: A story
from the canon, rewritten in the
point of view of a woman, by a
male author.
"Interpreter of Maladies,"
Jhumpa Lahiri: An easy choice,
buta clear choice.
"Say You're One of Them,"
Uwem Akpan: Cruel, unforgiving
and beautiful prose - from a Uni-
versity MFA.
"The Gospel According to
Jesus Christ," Jose Saramago:
Make it to the ending - it's worth
it.
"Slouching Towards Beth-
lehem," Joan Didion: "Vintage
Didion" is a good introduction,
too. A writer I've always wanted to
emulate.
"Pale Fire," Vladimir Nabok-
- ov: "Lolita" maybe the sexy favor-
ite, but this is his most clever.
"Homebody/Kabul," Tony
Kushner: Incredible monologue.
"Story of My Life," Jay McIn-
erney: A personal favorite. If you
know anything about the '80s, or
Rielle Hunter...
s "Confessions," St. Augustine:
Reading this - and, yes, listening
to Sam Cooke - makes me want to
believe in God.
Chou wants you to tell her
what's wrong with her list. E-mail
her at kimberch@umich.edu.
The archive is open weekdays from 1 to 8 p.m.
gaming world, arcades sprung
up as social hubs and a way for
young people to come together.
Carter fondly recalled the arcade
atmosphere from his youth: "The
greasy food, the cacophony, sen-
sory overload, sights, and sounds
and smells."
The archive attempts to pre-
serve the authentic feeling of its
old games by having the original
consoles and controllers when-
ever possible. Playing a game on a
single joystick allows for a far more
accurate recreation of the original
experience than using an Xbox
controller. I
The list of old consoles is impres-
sively thorough; it includes the
Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision,
TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Mas-
ter System, and Carter is always
looking for more. For computer
games, Carter has some obscure
old machines, going as far back as
the Commodore Vic-20 and the
Tandy Color Computer3. He's even
searching for '80s-era televisions
on which to display the games. As
Carter remembers, a large part of
the frustration with gaming in its
infancy was "dealing with the fick-
leness of the technology." The old
equipment has a unique charm to
it, especially seeing it all together
on the shelves. It's a comprehen-
sive timeline of gaming's evolution,
all contained in one unassuming
little room.
What's so crucial about the
archive is that all this gaming
equipment is finally being con-
served. As the years go by, old con-
soles become harder and harder
to find. Carter hopes that creating
the archive now will make video
games easier to study later, allow-
ing for researchers to access the
oldest gaming technology, most of
whichwould otherwise have faded
so far into obscurity that it would
be impossible to find.
But recreational gamers need
notworry-thearchivedoesn'tjust
house games of bygone days. The
room holds nearly every console
imaginable, including the current
big three: Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360
and Playstation 3. While the supply
of games is by no means complete
- the archive has only 400 games
total - it's certainly sufficient to
entertain a modern audience. The
archive has both new releases like
"Halo 3" and "Heavenly Sword"
and popular classics like "Duck
Hunt" for the original Nintendo
Entertainment System.
With only a few gaming sta-
tions, there is often a wait to play
during popular hours. Carter
would love to expand the archive,
but space at the University is
a precious commodity, and he
doesn't have high hopes. With a
relatively constraining budget as
well, the archive relies heavily on
donations and is always accepting
games and equipment because, as
Carter simply and accurately put
it, "things break." As an added
bonus, donations are tax-deduct-
ible. (E-mail game.donations@
umich.edu for details.)
The games of today that are
attracting recreational use are
by no means less culturally sig-
nificant than the classics of the
industry's origin. Gaming is in the
media every day and is becoming a
dominant form of media itself. The
archive is playing a role in the pro-
cess; it has plans to aid in a study
on the impact of violence in mod-
ern video games and is helping to
organize asymposium ongaming's
other cultural influences.
The archive's grand opening
is Nov. 17 from 3:30 to 6 p.m. The
opening ceremonies will feature
speeches and include food.And, of
course, there will also be plenty of
gaming. Carter expects that "the
day after that is probably going
to look a lot like the day before."
The archive plans to begin reserv-
ing stations for gamers and hopes
to hire another student to enable
operational hours on weekends.
The Computer and Video Game
Archive is a great place to hang
out with friends, but more impor-
tantly, it's a sign that the Uni-
versity and the academic world
as a whole are starting to rec-
ognize the significance of gam-
ing in modern culture. Whether
you're looking for modern hits or
arcade classics, the archive is a
great place to visit and play. Who
knows? You might even learn
something.
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