Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Technology
Episode: Alex Wade, “Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)
Description: In his book Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), Alex Wade examines the culture of bedroom coding, arcades, and format wars in 1980s Britain. Wade interviews gamers, developers and journalists to better understand the cultural habitus of early gaming. Wade expertly explores the bedroom culture of early coders, examining the ways in which games were copied and distributed among players. He situates gaming in the underground subcultures of arcades, connecting early arcade cultures to present-day gambling and gaming. Wade analyzes the ways that 1980s gaming gave rise to today’s gaming industry. Through his in-depth research in...