Researchers from the DARTS research group have built an arcade machine based on the snaparcade.cat project. It is a classic arcade cabinet designed to play video games created with the Snap! programming language.
The machine brings together three key elements connected to free and open culture:
– open-source software: Snap!
– open‑source arcade hardware: the cabinet’s 3D design and its electronic components
– knowledge sharing and community‑driven game creation: individuals or groups can design their own games and share them so they can be played on a real arcade machine.
Snap!Arcade also has clear research, political, and educational motivations. Its aim is to encourage people not to remain passive consumers of (and through) technology, but to become active creators who use technology to express ideas and build projects. Snap! is a block‑based programming language that makes programming accessible to anyone interested in coding.
The arcade built by DARTS carries the motto “permanently under construction”, emphasising its open and evolving nature. It invites the entire UOC community to contribute by creating new games or interactive installations that can be experienced on the machine itself. In this way, Snap!Arcade is not only a research prototype, but also a shared platform for experimentation, participation, and collective technological imagination.
This arcade is part of a broader research agenda exploring interaction design, free culture, and technological sovereignty, with particular attention to social dimensions such as co‑creation and co‑design. At a time when distraction‑driven persuasive design is widespread, and when increasingly sophisticated forms of the attention economy and surveillance capitalism shape our digital environments, Snap!Arcade can be understood as a small act of technological dissent. In this sense, it represents a form of applied, practice‑based research that seeks to introduce people to alternative ways of understanding and engaging with technology.
