The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and countless others who invented the gaming industry. Astrosmash, Snafu, Star Strike, Utopia--do these names sound familiar to you? No? Maybe? They were all videogames created for the Intellivision videogame system, sold by Mattel Electronics between 1979 and 1984. This system was Atari's main rival during a key period when videogames were moving from the arcades into the home. In
Intellivision, Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman tell the fascinating inside story of this overlooked gaming system. Along the way, they also analyze Intellivision's chips and code, games, marketing and business strategies, organizational and social history, and the cultural and economic context of the early US games industry from the mid-1970s to the great videogame industry crash of 1983.
While many remember Atari, Intellivision has largely been forgotten. As such,
Intellivision fills a crucial gap in videogame scholarship, telling the story of a console that sold millions and competed aggressively against Atari. Drawing on a wealth of data from both institutional and personal archives and over 150 interviews with programmers, engineers, executives, marketers, and designers, Boellstorff and Soderman examine the relationship between videogames and toys--an under-analyzed aspect of videogame history--and discuss the impact of home computing on the rise of videogames, the gendered implications of play and videogame design at Mattel, and the blurring of work and play in the early games industry.
《Intellivision》的引人入勝故事，這是一款在1970年代末和1980年代初被忽視的電子遊戲系統，其命運受到美泰（Mattel）、雅達利（Atari）以及無數其他創造遊戲產業的人的影響。
Astrosmash、Snafu、Star Strike、Utopia——這些名字對你來說聽起來熟悉嗎？不熟悉？或許有點熟悉？它們都是為Intellivision電子遊戲系統創造的遊戲，該系統由美泰電子公司於1979年至1984年間銷售。在電子遊戲從街機轉向家庭娛樂的關鍵時期，這個系統是雅達利的主要競爭對手。在《Intellivision》一書中，Tom Boellstorff和Braxton Soderman講述了這個被忽視的遊戲系統的迷人內幕故事。沿途，他們還分析了Intellivision的晶片和程式碼、遊戲、行銷和商業策略、組織和社會歷史，以及1970年代中期至1983年電子遊戲產業大崩潰期間美國早期遊戲產業的文化和經濟背景。
雖然許多人記得雅達利，但Intellivision卻在很大程度上被遺忘。因此，《Intellivision》填補了電子遊戲學術研究中的一個重要空白，講述了一個銷售數百萬台並與雅達利激烈競爭的主機的故事。Boellstorff和Soderman利用來自機構和個人檔案的豐富數據，以及與程式設計師、工程師、高管、行銷人員和設計師的150多次訪談，檢視了電子遊戲與玩具之間的關係——這是電子遊戲歷史中一個未被充分分析的方面——並討論了家庭計算機對電子遊戲興起的影響、美泰在遊戲設計中的性別意涵，以及早期遊戲產業中工作與遊戲的模糊界線。
Tom Boellstorff is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of
The Gay Archipelago,
A Coincidence of Desires, and
Coming of Age in Second Life.
Braxton Soderman is Associate Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of
Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject (MIT Press).
湯姆·博爾斯托夫（Tom Boellstorff）是加州大學爾灣分校人類學系的教授，著作包括《同性戀群島》（The Gay Archipelago）、《欲望的巧合》（A Coincidence of Desires）以及《在第二人生中成長》（Coming of Age in Second Life）。
布雷克斯頓·索德曼（Braxton Soderman）是加州大學爾灣分校電影與媒體研究系的副教授，著作包括《逆流而上：電子遊戲與流動主體》（Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject）（麻省理工學院出版社）。
