Video Games have evolved since 1958, Physicist William Higinbotham created the first video game. The game is like the 1972 game Pong, but much simpler. The game was a simple tennis game and it was quite beloved by the people at a Brookhaven National Laboratory open house (Brookhaven Nation Laboratory, 1958).
This is a great stepping stone into the future of video game design, playability, music, and even the history of video games. The game is named Tennis for Two and it has been called the first ever video game for decades and has been a pioneer in game design. There have been many video games since then and Tennis for Two has been a success and fail throughout video game history.
First, we’re going to talk about the fails of video games throughout its legacy. Many games have failed, but the biggest k
...nown is the video game crash of 1983 (known as the Atari shock in Japan.). Video game crash is mostly known for the downfall of Atari and the uprising of Nintendo's home console.
The Nintendo Entertainment System or NES for short. The video game crash was mostly caused by copying of licensed games from companies that didn’t give permission for the copycat clone game. Mostly games that were the same but with different names. That practice today would be the same as Sony copying Mario and putting Mario on Sony's game systems without Nintendo’s consent. Most companies had to adapt to the changes or face bankruptcy.
Nintendo is great example of companies adapting. The Japanese company saw the influx in computers and knew that computers could run games better than console. Nintendo also knew that consoles
and games were being hated at the time by kids. Advertisements made by Nintendo mostly never used the words “console” or “game” in fear of retribution. Nintendo advertised more as a toy than a game console.
The company also saw the trend in robots at the time, so Nintendo advertised ROB the robot with the NES. Nintendo also saw the high pricing on computers and other games, so Nintendo tried to make consoles on the cheap as well as being impressive for the time; Nintendo still goes by that rule even today. Once a card company and now one of the biggest game industries on the market. During the time video games were fairly new and didn’t really know how to properly design games.
Most game designers didn’t know how to tell the player what to do without straight up telling the player. Consoles back then couldn’t run too many words on screen, so game designers would use manuals and booklets to tell the player what to do. Which isn’t good mostly for kids losing the booklet or simply not reading it.
If you lost the booklet than you could not be able to beat the game, because the internet didn’t exist yet. Some games didn’t even need to use a booklet to tell you how to play the game. An example of this is Super Mario Bros. on the NES. The player would learn to jump, kill enemies, go into pipes and learn about power ups on one simple level. The level was perfectly designed to teach the player how to play without telling them anything.
The design of games evolved later on with some ideas being used
to give a feel to the game. Some designs go for fun, strategy, or even emotion. Most designs play with your emotions either through Mario’s happy upbeat music or Dark Souls rage quieting difficulty.
“The effects of music on man have been considered phenomenologically from antiquity to the nineteenth century mainly from the medical point of view according to Kümmel (1977) which will be preferentially referred to in the brief historical comments of the present section.” (Music-Evoked Emotions—Current Studies, 2017.). Music in games helps to build a scary scene with a horrendous beast, fighting in a war like in COD WW2, can cause sad emotional feeling and even provoke rage.
If the video game crash never happened than we could’ve been lost. Especially if companies never learned the lesson about copying and posting (bootlegging) games. We would still have a high influx of bad game over topping the good one. We also, might have never had such a design ideal like with Shigeru Miyamoto’s design of teaching the player through experience instead of boring the player with tutorials, also by avoiding trends in games.
“It’s a trend. And I try to avoid all trends.” (Shigeru Miyamoto, 1988) There was always a philosophy to follow, but those philosophys change over time and get replaced by new ones. Those philosophys having to follow todays modern society of children/adults and to adapt to change.
The main argument in question is the repeating of history. Much like the past, games are being copied by the masses and are pumping out newer games each year (The only difference was copying the games illegally.). Most disregarding design philosophy's and going straight for big sales over
the players enjoyment. For example, Star Wars Battlefront published and made by EA games in November of 2015; struct a lot of hate from fans. The game focused more on visuals instead of game philosophy and EA paid harshly for that.
The game was buggy and didn’t have many maps to play on. Most of which you would have to pay for to get. EA didn’t learn a lesson and published Battlefront 2 in November of 2017. In that game you would have to pay $2100 for a game that costs $16.88 or spend around 950 hours into Battlefront 2, or 238 per class (TweakTown, 2017.). This is mostly caused to pump as much money as possible. While at the same time the players enjoyment.
The video game crash may repeat again, but with a bigger lasting effect. “it’s amazing to realize how one of today’s wildly successful technology industries stumbled so badly in its formative years.” (Boyed A., 2016). The business world has many risks to partake in, and the wrong choices may lead to the business's downfall.
The Atari shock or video game crash of 1983 helped to create the building blocks to game design and advertisements. If the video game crash never happened than we may have some old game companies still in business, but slower game development and ideas. If the video game crash ever repeated itself than we may lose many fundamental companies and many game design philosophys. We would go backwards instead of forwards, because we won't know how to go forward when we have many major companies gone.
Especially the ones that set the rules for design and redesigning old designs. The
game industry would be lost and could (in extreme cases) be gone forever. Will the video crash ever repeat? “No. It is highly unlikely that we will experience anything like that again. The games industry is too large and diversified now.” (Skuller C., 2018). Video games is a pop culture landmark and it won’t go anywhere, anytime soon.
We made videos games excellent, before we created more modern technology. It’s not easy to create a video game and it might not be, ever. At least we can rest assure that videos are a staple in pop culture.
References
- Garreffa A. (2017) Star Wars: Battlefront II costs $2100 to unlock everything
- https://www.tweaktown.com/news/59856/star-wars-battlefront-ii-costs-2100-unlock-everything/index.html
- Neurosci F. (2017) Music-Evoked Emotions—Current Studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5705548/
- BrookhavenLab (2008) The First Video Game? https://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php
- Boyd A. (2016) THE VIDEO GAME CRASH OF 1983 https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi3038.html
- Skuller C. (2018) Is it likely that there will be another crash in the video game industry like the 1983 video game crash?
- https://www.quora.com/Is-it-likely-that-there-will-be-another-crash-in-the-video-game-industry-like-the-1983-video-game-crash
- SCHOOL OF GAME DESIGN (2017) HOW SHIGERU MIYAMOTO DESIGNS A VIDEO GAMEhttps://schoolofgamedesign.com/project/shigeru-miyamoto-video-game-design/
