Digital Games I: From Mainframe to Metaverse - Introduction and Perspectives

The first games on computers were created during the Cold War with the aim of making new technologies understandable through play. These approaches fueled the university hacker scene, which spawned the first mass-produced games and allowed the medium to become the largest economic factor in the entertainment industry and a driver of innovation in many areas of life over the last fifty years.

The course explains technological, cultural and socio-political aspects of game development using practical examples and highlights the interactions with neighboring cultural techniques. How did independent studios emerge in the 1980s, what role did the Internet play from the 1990s, what were the consequences of the democratization of tools in the noughties?

After historical basics, current possibilities and challenges of game development will be illustrated and the use of game-based techniques in the coming years will be discussed.