A Story or a Machine? Revisiting the Work of Bohuslav Blažek, the Czechoslovak Pioneer of Game Studies
- Jaroslav Švelch(author)
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| Title | A Story or a Machine? |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Revisiting the Work of Bohuslav Blažek, the Czechoslovak Pioneer of Game Studies |
| Contributor | Jaroslav Švelch(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.14 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/historiographies-of-game-studies-what-it-has-been-what-it-could-be/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Jaroslav Švelch |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2025-07-25 |
| Long abstract | This chapter introduces the game scholarship of Bohuslav Blažek, a forgotten Czechoslovak pioneer of game studies who published several texts on games in the late 1980s as well as the book The Labyrinth of Computer Games (Bludiště počítačových her), published in 1990 but written in the final years of the Communist regime. Trained as a philosopher, psychologist, and filmmaker and better known for his work on theatre, media, and environmental issues, Blažek drew from an eclectic selection of literature and promoted play (including computer games) as a way towards a more participatory and communal post-industrial society. His 1990 book contains a sophisticated inquiry into the structure of computer games as a medium, anticipating some of the formative questions of game studies. One section headline asks whether computer games were “stories or machines,” predating the so-called “ludology versus narratology” debate by about a decade. Moreover, the book embodies an inclusive and interdisciplinary vision of games research that remains inspiring to this day. This chapter revisits Blažek’s writings on computer games and situates them in the background of his intellectual biography and the historical context of late socialist Czechoslovakia, offering an alternative to the Western-centric and Anglo-Saxon histories of the intellectual inquiry into digital games. |
| Page range | pp. 307–329 |
| Print length | 23 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Jaroslav Švelch
(author)Jaroslav Švelch (he/him) is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Charles University, Prague, and a part-time Associate Professor of Game Studies with the Film and TV Faculty of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In his first monograph Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games (MIT Press, 2018), he traces the hidden histories of home computing and gaming in the former Soviet bloc. His second book, Player vs. Monster: The Making and Breaking of Video Game Monstrosity (MIT Press, 2023), offers a cultural history and a critique of the role of monsters in video games. He has also published work on local game production, humor in games, and video game voice acting. He is a co-founder of the Central and Eastern European Game Studies (CEEGS) conference and the inaugural chair of DiGRA Central and Eastern Europe (2022–).