How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression.

Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc.

Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.

Jaroslav Švelch is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at Charles University, Prague, and Lecturer in the Department of Game Design at the Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He is the author of Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games.

Series Foreword xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
A Note on Translations and Pronunciation xix
Introduction xxi
1 Micros in the Margins: Computer Technology in the State Socialist Society 1
Toward Normalization 3
Beyond the Quiet Life 5
A Revolution That Was Normalized 9
The State of the Computer Industry 12
Electronization Programs of the 1980s 15
Men, Women, and Machines 18
Side Roads to Micros 21
Who Needs a Home Computer? 27
Farm Computers and the Courageous Clone 31
2 Hunting Down the Machine: Trajectories of Microcomputer Domestication 35
A Machine That Obeys 39
Wandering Programmers 42
Spectacle from the West 45
Importing the Standard 47
The Shiny Side of Retail 50
A Room of Its Own 53 
3 Our Amateur Can Work Miracles: Infrastructures of Hobby Computing 63
Cybernetics for Youth 66
Repurposing the Paramilitary 71
Activist Meshworks 74
Tolerating the Man’s World 77
Build Your Own Peripherals 81
Amateur Entrepreneurs 85
Starting a Computer Fanzine 87
Samizdat Research Institute 90
4 Who’s Afraid of Gameplay? Czechoslovak Discourses on Computer Games 99
Playing with Computers 102
Forbidden Pleasures 104
Bringing Games under Control 109
Computer Game Advocates 112
The Appreciation of Tomahawk 116
5 Lighting Up the Shadows: Informal Distribution of Game Software 123
From Yugoslavia with Cracks 126
The Unregulated (Non)medium 133
Lightning-Fast Sneakernet 135
Homemade Tape Culture 139
(Mis)understanding Games 143
A Cottage Arcade Industry 147
6 Bastard Children of the West: Establishing a Domestic Coding Culture 153
Czechoslovak Homebrew Scene 157
Ports and Conversions 164
What Became of Flappy 167
Forging the Shooter 171
Second Lives of Indiana Jones 174
Hacking Games 178
7 Empowered by Games: Games as a Means of Self-Expression and Activism 185
Hello World! 190
Adventure in Your Home 192
Spreading Unofficial Culture 196
Small Subversions 199
A Protest of Sorts 204
Taking to the Streets 206
Conclusion 215
Bricoleurs and Tacticians 218
We Have Always Been Indie 219
Toward Comparative Histories 221
Preserving the Peripheral 223
Epilogue: After the Curtain Fell 227
Computers and Games in Transition 229
A Belated Cottage Industry 232
Homebrew Lives On 234
The Game Industry Today: Adventures, Army, and Automation 235
Where Are They Now? 238
Appendix: Important Dates 241
Glossary 243
Notes 247
Bibliography 315
Index 345