B-side: the Henry Lowood interview

i love this idea!!! i was really interested in hearing more about this topic. definitely a good idea to release this.

I’ll cut this up into a quick and digestible interview. Give me an sec…

Half way through the edited version. It’s uncut with minor edits such as removal of long pauses, addition of free-use music etc.

Hey Robert,

I have an idea for a show you might want to do in the future. I think a show focused on academics that are dedicated to the medium of video games would be an interesting look into the culture. I am currently enrolled in the Media Studies program at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and although no faculty here is writing about videogames, they are more than willing to foster my own academic ventures. Besides looking at those in masters and doctoral programs, you could interview leading scholars, such as Henry Jenkins. I would love to see this episode, although I know it would require you to hold a lot of phone interviews, which I hear on Gamers With Jobs you don’t like so much. Just the same, I recommend you think about it. I’d love to be a part. Thanks for your work, man.

Thank you a LOT for posting the full interview up. As an active MMO developer, this is obviously something of great interest to me, and it was fun to listen to as well!

Hey, just saying thanks for putting this up, I was hoping you would put up just the extra raw material you had for Gotta Catch ‘Em All. Love the show, keep it up!

I think releasing longer, even unedited interviews in-between episodes does more than merely keep the iTunes feed busy. It offers us a chance to learn more about the topics you touched on in the last episode. As much as I love the show thus far, this “B-side” offer is very exciting in its own right. Invariably, something will be cut short during production that will beg for another chance to be heard. As it turns out, of all the stories in Episode 2, this is the one I wanted to hear more about. Thanks a lot and I look forward to future B-sides filling me in.

Robert,
First I wanted to thank you that you released the “Source Material” too. I am always interested in the process that generates creative work.
But to something completely different. I am following the american gaming scene now for a while and I noticed that America seems to have a quiet different view on video game history then we have here in Europe. In the U.S. it always seems as if consoles where on the forefront of gaming but here on the old continent Home computers where much more common.
I myself am German and live in the UK now for some time. And already here you can see a lot of difference in the video gaming culture of the 80s especially. One reason might be that in Germany, Arcades never existed. In Germany coin operated games are gambling and there for installed in gambling halls, which means that nobody under the age of 18 year can enter. Sad isn’t it.
But we had a very strong home computer movement mostly based on piracy because the most of the games were not licensed in Germany and therefor not available. And the second foundation were listing magazines. Hundred or thousands of lines of code that you would type in you C64 or earlier in your Plus4.
The interesting part is that this area and the following Amiga500 area produced a tech savy cracking scene that still echoes in the European developer scene. Because the did not just produced pirated copies. If somebody break a copy protection that was particular nasty he would want everybody to about the fact that it wasn’t a problem for him. So the most cracker crews would put credits in front of the actual program. And this would results in really hard competitions between the cracker groups on who can make the most impressive “demo”.
But after some time a lot of the former crackers became programmers and started to come up with there own projects first ports then at some point plagiarism which were quiet often better, at least technical, as the originals. And I think this love for technical beauty is something you can still see if you look at companies like crytek.
The big difference to the UK was the weapon of choice. While the Germans focused around the Commodores the Brits have used BBC micro and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. But still a lot of home brew and share ware.
Some amazing games from this area are the Turrican series, Giana Sisters, Rick Dangerous or last but not least Flashback. Anybody who does not know them need to get hold of a copy and give them a try.
I miss the times where 8-way scrolling was a big thing.
But to make my point here I love the deep inside that you are offering in the american gaming scene and hope that I could also give you so inside on how it was to see gaming develop from this side of the ocean.
I personally got my first console in November last year.
Ahh and before I forget it. If somebody is interested in the European view on gaming and understands German (sorry), there is a brilliant 2h45min podcast interview on computer games with Teut Weidemann former Goldsoft and Rainbow Arts director.
From mid 2008 :
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/cre089.html

Keep up the good work
J

Hey Jens. That’s really interesting. I think regional differences in gaming culture are really pronounced (just look at a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R), and having these different threads going creates a lot of cool diversity. I’m particularly intrigued by the idea that a hacker arms race in Germany lead to the very fine technical work of Crytek. I wonder if any of those guys great up cracking software, and whether they would admit it these days? Thanks for listening. –Robert

Robert,
I will listen to the interview again but I think that Teut Weidemann was saying that he was starting as a cracker, then became developer and now is having to fight the legacy for cracking. I will verify that and if I can translate the quotes. A hint t this is also if you look at the sid-player, the composers of the songs and then you look at what the songs where used for.
And I don’t think that anybody has a problem with a problem with admitting to break software when they were 15. But it might be a problem to find those.
I think that the problem we are facing today is also different then in the 80s. Piracy back then was driven by the need for games, you could not get them legally, because of censorship in east Germany or licensing issues. Today, piracy is driven but money, or by an maybe misguided believe in freedom of cultural goods.
I myself am making a living by generating IP, I am doing research, so I should be strongly supporting copyright. But often I find myself in the understanding position, because I have a lot of support, I get paid to come up with something and it is enough to participate on those cultural goods, like games, music or movies. If you now consider people that are not part of an western society, how will they be able to participate.
It is a tricky problem and we will talk about it for quiet a while.
But to come back to the original point I am sure that you still can find those old cracker folks in established companies today. Germany has a strong Hacker culture, Germans like to break things just for showing that it can be broken. And this gave those guys an understanding of the technology on a level that nobody else had, that is the reason why hackers are amazing developers, but this energy has to be focused in a productive way.
If you want to get a deeper understanding for that search on youtube for “Chaos Communication Congress” or make a nerd holiday in Holland this summer, at the Hacking At Random, https://www.har2009.org/ .
Regards
J

Jens,

I agree with allot of what you’re saying here. Video game history is rather similar here in Sweden to your description of Germany. The C64 was huge which led into the Amiga 500 and during the early nineties the war was on between the Amiga 500, the Atari ST and the PC with the PC being the only one to walk away. During this time these where the machines that teenagers gamed on, the consoles where largely viewed as being “for kids”. This is still apparent today with PC games dominating the sales charts almost every month (even if consoles are constantly gaining ground). Like the UK, and contrary to most of Europe (from what I’ve heard) the Xbox brand is pretty strong when compared to Playstation, much of this is down to the original xboxes close relation to the PC. Many PC gamers shifted over to console first with this system as it had a standard harddrive and DVD-player and was easily modded and could run Linux, etc. Many of those who I know that did this are now “legal” users of xbox 360:s and have completely made the transition from PC gaming to consoles.

We had the same situation with crackers, pirating and the demo scene even if there was no “censorship” issue to hide behind, more of a distribution issue, but mostly I think it was like today, an economic incentive.

Teboda
I think a big indicator for the paradigm shift in the incentive for cracking is that you don’t see demos on cracked games anymore. Do to the lack of PC I am not certain on the current status but even back in 2000 I was not seeing them anymore.
On the Amiga or on the other machines from this area the demos where way of showing of the pride to achieve something that was meant to be impossible or at least very difficult. That is all gone and a complete way of creative expression almost died with it. That’s a shame.
I think the piracy issue of our days is still treated with the old drugs, copy protection, DRM or whatever. Technical barriers are still just barriers so they can be overcome, always.
I believe to solution for the piracy is not technical. The questions is first what our understanding of intellectual property is. And what kind of possibilities are there to allow the creators of IP make a living from it. (I am trying to avoid the word monetization.) And I think this is not a problem of the gaming industry it is a problem for everybody that is producing IP one way or the other.
I think that this is going to be one of the big questions of this century.
Well, how did we get to this topic.
Sorry for another long comment but Germans have a problem with short sentences.
J

Thanks for posting the raw interview. I enjoyed the whole thing. Please continue to do this in future episodes (even if you have to make a new feed for them).