Get on the party line

In this article we explore the influence of parties and the emergence of party videogames in the early 1980s at Mattel Electronics, at the time a division of the massive toy company Mattel. Despite the relative marginality of party games in game studies, we have much to gain from studying their history and transformations. Intellivision, produced by Mattel Electronics, was the main rival to the Atari VCS and differed from the latter through an emphasis on sophisticated gameplay. The turn to Intellivision party games involved a vision for home videogaming, but also reflected how the category of ‘party’ shaped cultures of work, play, and design at Mattel Electronics. Attending to the complexity of the party category, we examine how a party ethos shaped Intellivision videogame production and how actual parties influenced game design and labor practices. Then we analyze how some Intellivision videogames were forged around the party category, focusing on ‘Party Line,’ a cartridge that was almost finished before the great 1984 videogame crash in the US shuttered Mattel Electronics. From this analysis we draw a range of insights that illuminate the place of party studies in game studies. That place cannot be reduced to party games as such. Nor can it be reduced to festive, rebellious, and spirited gatherings. Parties as organizational practices played a crucial role in fostering creativity and teamwork, and had structural implications for weaving together different forms of labor. If party studies is an attempt to take seriously what has been often disregarded as frivolous, then it is important to note the cultural work that party games can do within larger historical contexts – like expanding our understanding of diverse gamers and legitimating videogames as an acceptable pastime to skeptical publics.