Finding the ‘Magic’ in Programming Games: A Critical Digital Humanities Approach to Studying Video Game Code

The digital humanities encompass large-scale computational methods, the digitisation of historical sources but also critical approaches to all things digital. This paper takes a humanities-based approach to researching historical video game source code, examining how cultural meanings become embedded in technical structures, and how these structures then influence cultural possibilities. By studying ‘ludemes’, the fundamental elements of gameplay, the text explores how programmers develop theories about their software and how players engage with video games through these aesthetic-technical foundations. Drawing on media archaeology, it argues that source code operates as a layer atop multiple strata of hardware, connected to silicon and electronic signals. [This situates code within computational infrastructure and materiality, presenting older computing devices and their source code as a means of understanding the operational principles of computation and the emergence of culture from programming practice.] By synthesising technical and cultural analysis, the paper positions source code as cultural documentation worthy of humanities investigation. This approach bridges the gap between computer science and cultural studies, offering a new perspective on how interactive media participate in broader cultural transmission and create new possibilities for meaning-making, memory, and imagination.

In order to demonstrate this approach, the outlined methodology involves play-analysis, distant code reading, and close interpretation informed by media archaeological perspectives on code and materiality. The case study draws parallels between the original assembly code of the 1991 puzzle game Poizone and its 2023 Python port. This reveals that, despite the gameplay remaining unchanged, the code discloses different conceptualisations and developer perspectives that are encoded in technical architectures. A structural source code analysis demonstrates to yield insights that are not accessible through conventional media studies. This analysis shows that cultural meanings have the capacity to persist across technological changes, and that computational materiality exerts a significant influence on the process of meaning-making through the medium of algorithmic logic and player experience.