game history

The Arcade Machine

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Okay. Something major that I was unaware of:

Even earlier than Pinball Construction Set, which (text adventures aside) has popular distinction as the first game creation system, there’s a product for the Apple II and (later) Atari 400/800 computers called The Arcade Machine.

This is a tool for creating simple top-down shooters in the Space Invaders/Galaga mode, which seems rather narrow — but then so is a dedicated pinball design tool. Going by some screenshots, it also seems very flexible within those limitations.

The Arcade Machine was designed by Chris Jochumson and Doug Carlston, the latter being one of the two founders of Brøderbund. Yes, this is an early Brøderbund release — pre-Choplifter. That totally makes sense, and it also may explain why although reviewed well this tool has gone so under the radar these last thirty years — as this was just before Brøderbund hit it big and became a major publisher.

Also going by the back of the Atari box, it seems there was a contest where Brøderbund would reward the best user-derived game with a prize of $1,500 ($3,600 in 2012 dollars).

So much of videogame history has become obscure. And some of this stuff, you’d expect it would be fairly important.

The Meganode

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [redacted]

When I want to read Catch-22, what are the options? I can go to a library, and do it for free. While I’m there, I can browse the rest of his works or nearby, possibly similar, books. I can search by topic, author, or year of publication. If I want my own copy, I probably can find it at a nearby bookstore. Failing that, I can order it online for a pittance.

Thanks to Gutenberg, books are indexed and ageless. They may go out of print or become obscure, but one way or another you will always be able to find a copy. Then with a copy in hand, the only thing between you and their ideas is the work of digesting them.

How about if I want to watch Nosferatu — not the Werner Herzog one; the Murnau version? If I’m near an urban center, it may be showing at an indie theater or festival. If it’s October, I may track it down on a classic movie channel on cable. Or I can rent the DVD or VHS (or indeed borrow it from the library). If I go to a video store, there’s a good chance it’s in stock. Or, again, I can just hit up Amazon.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Jam Together—Thinking Inside the Box

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [redacted]

A medium goes through its phases. Generally it starts off piecemeal, little snippets of ideas that stand alone, each studying the nature of the medium. What’s possible? How do things look? How do people respond? Later the ideas coalesce into short subjects, often delivered through a reservation in some passing medium. Periodicals set aside pages for short stories. Networks set aside airtime for TV episodes.

Later, as the public becomes accustomed to format and language of the medium and as its authors start to understand its implications and potential, the ideas will get more complex and demand more room to develop. That extra room in turn demands new methods and understanding of the changed space and its implications for communicating. Thus we have long-form subjects — your novel and your Sistine Chapel and feature film and television serial.

Although videogames have been around for a few decades, they have spent about half of their active life spinning their wheels. Part of the problem, I think, is in the eagerness about twenty years ago to move on to long-form subjects before anyone really mastered the short form. If we’re to look to any model for a healthy development of what we now know about game design, that model might be the golden era of television.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Phantom Fingers: The Series – Part Three: Focused Fire

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [redacted]

What can I say about Space Invaders that you don’t already know? Not a lot, I reckon, so I’m not going to go into too much depth on the facts. If you need more, there’s the Internet. Rather, I mean to frame the available information within the discussion we’ve been having, with an aim to highlighting its greater relevance.

You will recall we talked about Pong, and the easy introduction it provided into that alien space on the other side of the TV screen. Although there wasn’t much meaning to be had, the passive control the game provided over that one packet of information, bouncing around its tiny gameworld according to discernible laws acting on their own, allowed the player to mentally map out the game’s reality.

There was a whole new, bottled system of cause and effect for the player’s mind to lock into and understand. And as minimally involving as the laws and interface were, they were novel and fascinating, and simple to digest — to the extent that Pong became a cultural sensation.

Then, as we discussed, four years later, Breakout came along and reframed Pong as a solitary experience, as a complex space, and as a distinct narrative. Now the player’s focus was entirely on the gameworld, rather than the gameworld acting as a catalyst for two players to entertain each other. In turn, the gameworld had more to focus on.

The player’s every action — as indirect as the interface remained — resulted in a tangible effect, or consequence, within the world. A tile would break, the board would be a little more open, and the surfaces to bounce off of would be a little different. The interaction was suddenly more meaningful, at least within the narrow scope provided. And then when the board was clear, twice over, the game was over. There was a distinct goal to achieve, entirely within the parameters of the game’s bottle universe.

Well, all those changes were significant. Different designers took away different lessons by how they balanced those changes in their heads, and ran off to extrapolate further — leading us to at least two distinct schools of game design and a new focus on a single player’s causal relationship with the gameworld, as compared to videogames as a mere game or social tool.

For now let’s jump the Pacific, and ride the narrative train for a while.

( Continue reading at Game Set Watch )

Baer, Alcorn Talk ‘Brown Box’ Beginnings, Industry Birth

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Baer started off by leaping back to the late ‘30s, the time before “electronics” was a noun. Back then, it was all about radio. Radio enthusiasts were radio hobbyists, and radios were simpler to build than a model Gundam. They were also a cultural phenomenon. Baer showed off an advertisement that read “Big Money in Radio – become a Radio Serviceman!” “Hey,” the young Baer realized. “I think this could be me.” So he spent the next few years dangling off roofs, installing wires through people’s windows.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Defining the Next Generation

  • Reading time:28 mins read

by [name redacted]

This article was originally intended as a conclusion to NextGen’s 2006 TGS coverage. Then it got held back for two months as an event piece. By the time it saw publication its window had sort of expired, so a significantly edited version went up under the title “What The New Consoles Really Mean”.

So we’re practically there. TGS is well over, the pre-orders have begun; Microsoft’s system has already been out for a year (and is now graced with a few excellent or important games). The generation is right on the verge of turning, and all those expensive electronics you’ve been monitoring for the last few years, half dreading out of thriftiness and secret knowledge that there won’t be anything good on them for a year anyway, will become the new status quo. Immediately the needle will jump and point at a new horizon, set around 2011, and everyone will start twiddling his thumbs again. By the time the drama and dreams resume, I’ll be in my early thirties, another American president will have served nearly a full term – and for the first time in my life I really can’t predict what videogames will be like.

The Nose Before Your Face

  • Reading time:12 mins read

by [name redacted]

Part eight of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation, under the title “The Value of Simplicity”.

So lately we’ve been swinging back toward thinking about games as a medium of expression. It’s not a new concept; way back in the early ’80s, companies like Activision and EA put all their energy behind publicizing game designers like rock stars – or better yet, like book authors – and their games as unique works by your favorite authors. This all happened just after figures like Ed Logg and Toshihiro Nishikado started to extrapolate Pong and SpaceWar!, incorporating more overt narrative frameworks and exploring more elaborate ways of interacting with the gameworld. From this initial explosion of creativity came Steve Wozniak and the Apple II, providing an easy platform for all of the early Richard Garriotts and Roberta Williamses and Dan Buntens to come.

Then stuff happened, particularly though not specifically the crash; the industry changed in focus. On the one hand we had ultra-secretive Japanese companies that – like Atari before them – usually didn’t credit their staff for fear of sniping and for the benefit of greater brand identity; on the other, what US companies remained tended to inflate beyond the point where small, expressive, intimate games were economically feasible. And then there’s just the issue that, as technology grew more complex, design teams grew larger and larger, making it harder for any one voice to stand out, leading to more of a committee-driven approach.

NextGen’s Top Ten Years In Gaming History

  • Reading time:30 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in some form by Next Generation. I was asked not to include 1999 or 2000, because the Dreamcast was perceived as a low mark in the industry rather than a high one. I was also asked to include the previous year, to suggest that we were in the middle of an upswing. So… that explains some of the selections.

In videogames, as in life, we tend to get things right about a third of the time. There’s one decent Sonic game for every two disasters; one out of every three consoles can be considered an unqualified success; the Game Boy remake of Mother 1 + 2 was released in one out of three major territories. With the same level of scientific accuracy, one can easily say that, out of the thirty years that videogames have acted as a consumer product, there are maybe ten really excellent milestones, spaced out by your 1984s and your 1994s – years maybe we were all better off doing something out-of-doors.

It kind of makes sense, intuitively: you’ve got the new-hardware years and the innovative-software years, spaced out by years of futzing around with the new hardware introduced a few months back, or copying that amazing new game that was released last summer. We grow enthusiastic, we get bored. Just as we’re about to write off videogames forever, we get slapped in the face with a Wii, or a Sega Genesis – and then the magic starts up all over again, allowing us to coast until the next checkpoint.

Buttoning Down

  • Reading time:14 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation, then later BusinessWeek, under the title “Revolution Pressing the Right Buttons“.

There’s only so much you can do with a button. You press it, something happens. You don’t press it, something doesn’t. If it’s an analog button, and you press it even harder, maybe that thing will happen even more: maybe you’ll run faster, or you’ll punch with more vigilance. Maybe if you hold down a second button when you press that first one, something subtly different will happen. Instead of lashing out with a whip, say, the little man on the TV screen will throw a boomerang. Either way, he still attacks; the second button just changes how he does it. Those are more or less our options: do something, do more of something, or do a different kind of something. It’s all very straightforward. So too, then, is the history of game controllers.