Elements of game design, part one: from Pong to next-gen…

I’m back again and this week’s blog is all about game design. Come to think about it though could I really sum up game design in one blog?

Wikipedia defines it as “the process of designing the content, background and rules of a game.”

 

But what does that actually mean, to me that sounds like a little bit of everything crammed into one. That surely can’t be one person’s job or can it. I mean to come up with a game in the first place needs an idea and I have ton’s of ideas but I don’t know the first thing about game design.

 

So allow me to analyse some research I conducted.

 

Struggling to understand what I’m supposed to do I turned to Google, “what is game design?” scrolling through useless links I came across a recent article of an interview with Paul Barnett , the senior creative director at Bioware/Mythic.

 

Mr Paul Barnett himself.

 

It opens with the best quote ever, describing exactly how I feel when presented with this same question...

 

What is game design?

 

“Oh, dear, crikey. If I knew that, then I’d be rich. I’m with Stephen King. It’s probably telepathy. I thought that was the greatest answer to what is story writing is telepathy. Game design is probably telepathy.”

                                                    I see.... a .. game.. no a video?

 

So if an industry specialist finds it difficult to put his thumb on it how can I, a first year game art student, tackle the task? Well simple really it must mean that game design isn’t any one thing it is an amalgamation of things. The process of design is decision making, I know that from my teachings in graphic design. So for a game to be designed it must mean that decisions have to be made on what goes into a game. If I were to think off the top of my head what goes into an average game then I would automatically cover a number of job fields within the industry. There’s the story the art and the music for a game, now I can’t speak much on story writing and music production but I do know any piece of art/design work I do has a starting point. The brief. Not the idea the brief; I can dream up ideas in seconds but those idea’s arent all neccesarily coherent, I am doing them for the sake. The brief is more refinined and structured. It dictates the constraints of my decision making for a specific purpose i.e. a side scrolling game.

                                            This is a small dot of what my imagination looks like


The interesting thing is though a brief in itself is a decision the decision to take an idea or concept from one’s mind to paper. If I were to think about the briefs I have been given in the past they all have similar structures. The main idea is outlined then the time constraints and  budget estimates. That’s how its written but in my opinion it more like “this is a wicked idea, how do we make it, that will take time, time is money, money makes the world go round so we need to get a return on investment”, the reason I say that is because in my opinion the budget is the biggest constraint of all. When the decision is made to write the brief the size of the budget comes into the thought process, when that brief is then distributed to the artists it dictates what the artists can and cannot come up with, that in turn shapes the very existence of the game and assuming there are no setbacks what the final product is.

                                     Where every company wants to see their game end up.
                                                  

If we look back at what I just said it shows that game design doesn’t really stop at any stage. When I design something there’s a decision what that decision shapes dictates the final outcome. That is exactly the same in the pipeline for the game itself; the brief (decides), the art (shapes), the production (dictates) and the game on the shelf (the final outcome).

That means although a game designer may write the brief that does not mean the process of the games design stops, it continued though to shipment as an important part of any game.

                                                                      The design pyramid
  

Based on my understanding of design pipelines and backed with research one could actually say it is the most important part of a game, regardless of its genre. I say this because the very genre itself is outlined in its design. An fps is an fps because it follows certain design traits, just like a chair is called a chair because it has the traits of a chair. Yes you can inter mix genres in various ways to different effect but that is still done as a consequence of the brief’s conception. Picture a tree , the root of the tree is its starting point the tree then grows from that until it is the tree everyone see’s, that does not mean the roots are gone in fact the roots dictate how high a tree can grow. It is the beginning. The brief, the design document starts the ball rolling.

                                                             The tree of inspiration.

 

Now these are the internal aspects that shape a games design, but there are some external ones like user interactivity. Its one thing to say multiplayer game play in the design document but what the users want may sway favour in certain areas. Beta testing is one example it allows the developer to iron out bugs and glitches but also get feedback and thoughts on game play. I say game play like its one particular thing but like game design it’s a lot of different things that attribute to one aspect, of the many aspects of a game; nice and simple right. What I am trying to say is it takes many create and thus affect gameplay. In its basic sense a game is one user, one task, one reward. This is why one could see Pac man, as the same as halo, and halo the same a monopoly the principle of a game remains the same, those characteristics define it.

 

                                                                    Gott'a love Halo 4

However that is a slightly dull way to describe such a wondrous industry. There are many ways in which people have experimented with that formula to create some unique games, yeah there may be saturated genres or a lot of product imitations but the gameplay , the game design , the sound quality are one. Each game has a different mix despite their basal similarities; to me this determines if I find a game a good game.

 

                   Hexagon is an ingenious little puzzle game on the Ios that i'd reccomend anyne give a go.

Yeah I have areas I like the most like visual design but I have experienced great looking games that had a lack of success due to the way the game played. The way a game makes me feel is what I find important, not that that’s an easy task, but to trigger bravado or just plain enjoyment is what I think gaming is all about.

Wow it’s been a long time.

*Arnold Schwarzenegger voice* “I’m back.”

What better way to dust off my blog than with a new entry. This week’s blog is a personal review of Mortal Kombat 9.



Cover Art



 

I have never played MK before this one; all I knew is it’s a franchise famous for its fatalities, I can’t really compare and contrast this game with its predecessors, but isn’t it amazing that after 9 iterations it can still gain new fans.

I have just bought this game in 2013 and yet I’m already engrossed. But before I talk about how I feel now let’s go back a bit. From the moment I bought the game my eagerness to play increased as I got closer to home. Like when you buy anything really something about that *new* smell, that *new* feel gets you all excited. I had already seen some of the game-play on YouTube and dared not try single player straight away so I took it to the dojo. From the moment I threw the first punch a malicious grin stretched across my face. It wasn’t much of a combo but the satisfactory noise of knuckles contacting a cheek bone, dipped in bass made me feel like a boss. It wasn’t long before I learnt a few key commands and felt quite confident.

                                             Scorpion and Sub-Zero brutally batlle it out.

It’s easy punching something that doesn’t fight back isn’t it?

As soon as I turned the AI on my combos were blocked and countered, I began frantically bashing buttons to escape the impending death. This didn’t work; my characters body was subject to an array of body deforming blows each irritating me more than the last. In frustration I turned off the AI and feeling the urge to let my PS3 depart through the nearest window. As crazy as it sounds that is one of the things I like about mortal Kombat it requires u to be surgical with your key commands. It is not too hard to learn the correct moves and when you do it allows you to dish out a flurry of damage dealing combos. However if u aren’t fast enough or fail to block, you are punished with receiving them. That is the concept behind all fighting games but few are as gruesomely rewarding. I mean what other game allows you to abuse the opponents body in an X-ray attack? See the insides bruise and break at your hands? I can’t think of any.

                                                               The definition of ouch.                              

It’s not just bone crunching which makes this game appeal to me. Anyone can make a game gory but when the game also has good visual design I am sold. Mortal Kombat’s roster features a number of characters each with their own slick uniform. To me that’s important because I’m going to beat you I want to look like a bad ass doing it. The environments you fight in should also be praised. Although the characters are limited to side-scrolling when fighting, the background and foreground play a part in the action. The background has a depth of field so it doesn’t look like your fighting on a rigid platform and the foreground is used for additional effects just to spice up the screen.

                                                               Glowy ball to the face.

How could I forget about blood after all it is mortal Kombat?  If it’s one thing it has a lot of, is blood, to the point where entire sections of a characters body is completely covered in red. However there are more subtle effects. The garments tear during combat increasing as the damage inflicted increases. Characters like Sub-Zero have elemental abilities like ice, so he has chill effect around him similar to when you open the freezer. All those little things don’t seem like much in the heat of the battle but you do take it in and it adds dimension to the game.

Having said that the visual design for the women is a little unsophisticated. Certain characters like Sonya are butch to the point of looking like a man; other characters are so sexualised the outfit they wear would make their breasts fall out at the slightest move.

Not saying that is such a bad thing....

But as an aspiring character designer I feel they could have done more with the female designs. More slick, sexy and sophistique* as opposed to stereotypical same.

A game wouldn’t be much if they were silent. Even games on the SNES had their little 8-bit soundtracks. The sound effects in mortal Kombat are crisp clean and mean. When a punch is thrown or a bone is broken, that crunch, that meaty sound reinforces the visual image.

There are extra’s too. Where most fighting games have the main story mode and a few versus modes Mortal Kombat has a variety of mini games such as the challenge tower. The main story mode is quite long in itself, but to add to this each character also has their own story to be completed

                                                Test your might, break those boards.

One thing I do have to complain about is the story mode and ladder modes have characters like Goro and Shao Khan who are too hard to beat, yes I beat them but I died multiple times as the com uses some rather dirty tactics to win. So I just spammed back. I wish I didn’t have to do that though as it ruins the fun of playing and stops the fluidity of the game.

 

 Every activity you do within the game earns you in game currency which can in turn be used to buy additional content; these are things like more fatalities, concept art and alternate costumes. This adds an element of replay value to the game.

 

                       FINISH THEM

 

In conclusion mortal Kombat is a fun game to play. It’s over the top violence and crazy moves make the game just what it is. A game. That coupled with the graphics, sounds and story make it one to stay on my shelf.

I give it a NGN (Naim’s Gaming News) rating of

4 out of 5

Now why don’t you try it?

 

 

 

*Ps. I know this isn’t a word but in my experience adding –ique to a word makes it sound all cool and posh.

New Gaming Journalism

So for this blog entry I have been tasked with evaluating new gaming journalism.

I genuinely didn’t realise how much stress it is for a magazine journalist. I mean I’ve seen ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ and ‘Ugly Betty’, they are always stressed and running about, but I thought it was a dramatisation to make good television. After reading Kieron Gillen's manifestos I see that the programmes are not so farfetched.

Good o'l ugly betty

Kieron Gillen states that within the workplace an average magazine is written within 20 or so days. This doesn’t offer a lot of time for the reviewers to coherently write reviews. He also states that “We’re not perfect, because we haven’t time to be perfect.” I think that’s rubbish. Less time to write a game review would surely mean that what is written doesn’t make sense. But it does, the copy make sense, however the reviews seem to follow a pattern. Big up the games that invest a lot of money into marketing, mediocre review everything else.

Gillen used to work for pc gamer, its still a cool magazine and starcraft 2 is an epic game.

 

Granted there isn’t some formula you can apply to all reviews that show this pattern and there are always exceptions to the rule. But generally from my personal perspective that’s how reviews are going. For example the classic big up is Call of Duty (Sorryyy I know I know I’ll leave it alone. Eventually) that game hasn’t changed much since Call of Duty modern warfare. Granted they changed the packaging and made it a bit shinier but the core of the game is the same. Yet every single gaming review gives it a high rating. Why? Because that bad boy pumps so much money into marketing. Think about it. They had the biggest entertainment launch in history with modern warfare 2. They have actual actors for voices in game and fully fledged over the top action adverts on television. Halo 4 is  a magnificent game which I love dearly but that game doesn’t get off scot free either, there marketing budget alone was an estimated $30 million. That’s a lot of money man.

We're at war but i gott'a look cool. You gott'a look cool.

 

 Now I don’t know how much Brink’s marketing budget was but contrast that games success with the previous two and I bet it wasn’t as much. The game didn’t sell all that well and It got mediocre reviews. I think the game was an interesting idea and actual fun to play.But in its infancy it had flaws.What killed it is that too many people were sceptical about it and couldn’t adapt to game play that wasn’t call of duty based. That plus when a game gets a review of 5 or 6, it means gamers on the fence lose interest. Despite 5 being a halfway point of 10. People just don’t look for ok. One of the concept artist’s that came in to talk to us said “people have become hooked on hyper reality, HDTV’s and lens flares” and that sums up what I’m saying really. Once the audience has been exposed to ‘awesome’ they don’t really care for anything else.

 

This is reflected in how reviewers review games. At the end of the day the boss is paying the reviewers wage. To pay wages you need money. To get money you need to results. In order to get results you need to know what’s selling. And what’s selling are the games everyone is talking about. Online magazines also cover everything that printed magazines cover without things like cost of print. That cost is money, the boss needs to justify that spend otherwise they’ll start cutting jobs to save costs. If we chuck that back into the cycle you can see where I’m going with it.

Edge magazine is a fairly regular purchase of mine.

This is why I think new game journalism is a little biased. Ultimately editors will be looking to keep their jobs. To do that they need to have their magazines sell and make the boss happy. To do that, they need to encourage people with reasons to buy the magazine like exclusive content. That cycle probably, adjusts; reviews to entice games to allow the exclusive accessibility. I could be completely wrong; I have no actual experience inside a publishing organisation so my opinion is from the outside looking in as opposed to inside speaking out. Maybe it’s easier to speak about something being biased when you have no idea what it’s like?

 

To be honest I don’t really want to know what it’s like. I’m not a huge fan of writing. I prefer the language of tone and form.  And I think it’s difficult to be objective about something that is subjective. A review is a personal experience. When I play Halo 4 the experience is different, my Spartan is different. But there are certain key elements of wow or disappointment that resonate with other players. Finding those details must be hard as u become drawn between fact and opinion. The number 9.8 out of 10 is a fact yet the reasoning behind it is effectively an opinion. If in my opinion Halo is rubbish and I rate it a 4 it can’t just so happen that all other game reviewers rate it low, or can it? I mean game reviewers must look at each other’s reviews and think hmm, should we change ours a little. Or if an editor thinks a game is brilliant, he’ll tell all his other editor buddies at different magazines. Thus fudging the figures slightly.

 

So that concludes my thought on new games journalism.

 

Thanks for reading my rambling.

Week Of Waiting

So this week I have been waiting in anticipation for my first semester results. Brilliant! Or so I would have thought. Instead this week has allowed me to slowly become paranoid about what results I will get. I’m confident that my 2d work is to a good standard, but I have only learnt 3d since being here I’m not sure how good it is.

If I reflect on my first semester here I am actually amazed my head hasn’t swollen from all the information it’s taken in. 

This is how my head feels

I mean from struggling to make a cube in 3ds max, to creating fully rendered and textured houses is amazing. Especially when you think how I have learnt it in 2 and a bit months. That little bit of knowledge has already changed how I look at games. Before starting this course I was like “I wonder how they made that, it’s so cool, look at all the dents and stuff how’d they do that?” Now I say “oh that’s probably a normal map with specular lighting”. Granted there is still some stuff I don’t know, ok a lot stuff I don’t know, but if I think of the rate at which my knowledge is progressing, the fact that 3^rd years can produce such stunning pieces isn’t as daunting.

The funny thing is though I’m starting to see 3ds max as second nature. I opened the program in the library to quickly check my house loaded and all my friends were like “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?! Mate that looks so complicated, how do you know what you’re doing? There’s too many buttons man!” I found it so weird hearing people say that again. Now when I open the program my overall feel for the software has changed, rather than seeing gibberish I know where to navigate the interface to create what I need. Like when I draw and the pencil listens to where I want it to go, 3ds is listening to me, a bit. It’s still a stubborn piece of sh...oftware when it’s ready.

 

That’s not to say that only my 3d skills have improved, thanks to my tutors my understanding of fundamental elements within drawing have been reinforced. Since being here I have been to some interesting places. I particularly liked Bradgate Park; though the weather can be unreliable I like that sense of calm. Being in natural open spaces relaxes me for some reason, I hate landscape drawings though. Too much bushes and bushes are so uninteresting to me, I prefer the elegance of human form. I haven’t been given the task of any life drawing yet but I still enjoy visual design regardless. I particularly liked drawing the Lotus Evora as I got a chance to visit the Stratstone dealership. when I walked in they asked what I’d like to buy, I felt so rich and slick. Then I told them I came to draw and reality depressingly came back to me.

Ah well.

It’s been an interesting ride so far but I’m definitely enjoying myself. I just hope that my skill and enthusiasm pay dividends in my marks.

My personal gaming history

So we finally arrive to the part of gaming history where I am conceived and have picked up my first gaming pad.

Original SSX cover art

This would be around about November in 2000. That’s when SSX the original was released and it was one of the first games I ever played. SSX for those who don’t know is a snowboarding game that allows you to pull off insane manoeuvres, in unrealistic ways to score points. I loved that game, I would spend hours playing it trying to bust the ‘phatest’ trick and achieve the highest score on the scoreboards. But the franchise lost its way over the years and it died for me at SSX 3. However the latest instalment went back to the roots of the game to dig out what made it good and made it better. It’s a little poetic how the newest version of the franchise coincided with my enrolment on this course. Maybe it’s a sign that this is where I’m supposed to be?

The new SSX cover. Incidentally 'Mac' is the character in both versions. look at the progress in 12 years.

I mean if I think about it in the space of 12 years I have grown from wanting to be part of the games industry, to being on a games industry accredited design course. If I think back to what gave me the urge to be part of the industry it would be SSX, not just because of its fluid and addictive gameplay but because of how it made me feel to play it. If you liked the creativity of music, it was there. If you liked good visual aesthetic, it was there. If you just liked to have outrageous fun and enjoy a game for being a game, it was there. You could bust a crazy trick, the music would fade and filter to the movements of your character, who in turn would blur into this complex form of colour and motion; and before you even touch your board back on the snow again you think to yourself. WOW. That seamless infusion of creativity produced such a memorable experience for me.

Try this in reality.

Being part of the industry means I will be able to help shape the directions video games take in the future. But at the same time the future is undefined and things like technology will advance in ways that I cannot imagine. I want things go like Star Trek and for ‘Holodecks’ to become a reality. That to me would add another aspect to video games and what u can do to them. For example let’s take halo 4. I am a big halo fan, love the visual design and concepts of the world. I know when the designers come up with ideas they think to themselves, ok how would this fit in the world , what atmosphere does this place have, how does this gun handle, what protection and mobility can this armour provide. However as the player there is only so much interaction you can have through a screen. 3D brings us closer to the game but it is still a screen. Imagine being able to hold that signature battle rifle, hear the growl of a warthogs engine beneath your feet, smell the air of a Forerunner installation , see an actual elite de-cloak with his energy sword and piss yourself. All these things add dynamism to the game. And I would love to play games in such a personal way.

                                                                         I feel so high

Yes being a Spartan is bad-ass but how does the armour feel on you is it tight is it loose does the heat irritate the skin and make your concentration falter. That would add emotional aspects to a game, if you’re in a cold world alone you really want to leave that planet and get home. Then again that deep connection to a game could cause problems, people would lose sense between what is and is not real. I mean how does it feel to actually take a life, alien or not the psychological repercussions could cause people insomnia. When time comes to actually work for your fortune 500 employer all you can see is that pinnacle moment when u broke that Jackal’s neck. When a colleague starts stressing you out and being confrontational about it, you remember the moves to take down a Jackal and the urge to apply them to the person stood in front of you is there. Would that mean that we start teaching people to be soldiers, footballers, street fighters? That’s a scary thought.

                                                             Heres your damn sales report

Ah well let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, till then I want to enjoy a form of entertainment that engages me and impresses my eyes. Peace.

                                               My halo reach spartan.I wonder what its like in there.

                                                          

Video Game History Part Tres : 2000's

Wa’hey finally we have reached the 2000’s. My generation. I have actually played the games of this time and on consoles that don’t have freakishly weird names. Enough about my personal gaming history I’ll get to that later. The 2000’s to me represent a time of technological and financial advancement. Granted video games have continuously evolved since its original conception in the 1950’s, but I wasn’t alive to witness them.

Think about it, it’s now coming to the end of 2012 and so much has happened. In just over a decade we have transitioned from regular coloured television, to HDTV and then 3D HDTV’s.  We have had multiple console releases and upgrades. Video game titles have broken record heights for both sales and financial investment. Celebrities have both endorsed and acted in video games. The lines between film and games have subtly blurred. But even greater still, is the fact that the video game industry has overtaken the film industry as the largest form of entertainment. How amazing is that.

Let’s rewind a bit though and look at each of those points a bit more in depth. It is coming to the end of 2012 and if superstition is correct, the end of the world. If this is the case I need not bother with this blog entry really...

I a first year aswell FML

Ha if only. Anyway I remember when the first HDTV’s hit the market. I would wander through John Lewis and look at the insane prices. Contrast £5,000 with the £200 you can pick one up for at Tesco’s today and it really makes the first guy look like a sucker. But price aside HDTV offered video games the chance to be created in high definition. However that’s only one half of what it takes to play games. The release of seventh generation consoles meant that the technical constraints of previous iterations could now be bypassed.  This allowed games like Halo franchise to be fully realised. Speaking of which the new halo 4 came out a few weeks ago, it hit $220 million sales on launch day, that topped its predecessors release sales of $170 million.  Not too shabby considering it took $60 million to produce. But that’s nothing, if you know and love GTA, the 4^th instalment cost a total of $100 million to produce. Considering the game has sold 22,000,000 units, if we imagine they sold at $40 each that’s, *gets out calculator* $ 8,800,000,000, basically 8 BILLION! Dollars. I think it’s still the most expensive game created but I’m not sure, it was at some point.

The Big Boys

Another high grossing game was Killzone 2. It cost $45 million to produce and remains one of my favourite games. It successor however wasn’t as good, I still like it but it lacked the ‘je ne sais quoi’ of its predecessor. What’s interesting is how the technological changes between 2 and 3 affected the gameplay. The original Killzone was released in 2004 on the Playstation 2. The graphics were good at that time and it had moderate success.  Killzone 2 was released in 2009 on the Playstation 3. The advancement in graphic capabilities from PS2 to PS3 is clearly visible and all made better by the fairly new HDTV’s. Another 2 years later and Killzone 3 is released along with the ‘new’ (such a relative term) 3D TV’s. The visual palette of the game is stunning; add that to the capabilities of a 3D television and you end up with a gorgeous looking game that is embellished with particles flying in your face and small embers gracefully flowing down the screen. That shows how the technology available helps shape the limitations of video games. Almost like a symbiotic relationship they affect each other in many subtle ways.

>> Link To The 10 Most Expensive Games Created<<

It’s not only the technology that has changed; the popularity of games has increased as well. Video games started out as something a few programmers would do. Then it grew to underground subculture. Then it was something frowned upon “aww you play video games, you don’t go out and have a life”. Now the very celebrities that people brainlessly obsess over endorse it, and that makes everything “cool”. All jokes aside video games have become more popular than ever and I think that’s because games have tried to broaden their target market. The launch of the Wii marks the involvement of whole families playing together.  Portable gaming has grown especially with the App-store’s launch. The idea that the old quick time killing games like snake could turn into the interesting ones on the app store is something I find rather cool. Take angry birds for example a simple concept; a basic story line and clean vector graphics turn into one of the most successful mobile games so far. Infinity Blade is another mobile game, completely antithetical to Angry Birds the game is all about “look at me”. The graphics push the boundaries on what a small 115 mm by 59 mm piece of hardware can process. Those are two completely different approaches to mobile games, both successful in their own right.

Good O'l Angry Birds

Infinity Blade In Action

Another great fact is that VIDEO GAMES are BIGGER than FILMS! Yes that’s right it’s been official for a while since about 2009/10 or so but it still makes me feel part of something great.

FTW ! FTW! FTW! FTW!

That’s one of the pressures that the industry faces though. As there is such attention on games they have to perform. In order to perform they require investment and investors like to see return on their investment. That’s why the price of games is rising and rising. The consumers also desire for more, which means that games are released like rain left right and centre. That’s a lot of work stress to be put under, especially when the game title you’re working on can be squashed with little notice. Despite all these releases how many of them are genuinely different? Yes there will always be the standard genres like Beat-em ups and First Person Shooters, but I want games like REZ to also make it to the forefront not only the commercial waste of space’s like Call Of Duty. That’s a personal pressure I apply to video games. However there are other pressures from external sources like the increasing concern over violence and sexism within games.

So that pretty much sums up in my own little way games from then to now .You can see that a lot has happened and is still happening; and In two and a bit years time I will be part of what shapes the industries future.

Video Game History Part Deux : 1980's-1990's

After giving my brain a week’s rest from writing, I return to continue the story of video games history.

The 1980’s was when the “golden age of arcade games” finally reached its pinnacle. This age has resulted in many innovative, technological and genre-defining games. The Legend of Zelda, created in 1986, established the genre “Action-Adventure”. It was the first game to combine elements of from different genres and use new innovations like back up saving. If it wasn’t for this invention, 26 years later we would have to complete our games in one go. One death would result in starting the game from the beginning and I doubt people would have interest in such realistic games; I mean look at the success of Call of Duty.



Ah the old kill cam

As well as combining existing genres new genres spawned during the decade. One of my favourite genres, beat-em up’s, started with “Karateka” which was created in 1984. It paved the way for future side scrolling beat-em up’s. So in essence I have that game to thank for modern day kick-ass fighters like “Mortal Kombat”. That wasn’t the only good genre to appear, “Donkey Kong ” is considered the first platform game  and that was created in 1980. Who would have thought that in the space of 24 years platform games would evolve to the unique and innovative quality of games like “little big planet”.

Karateka Cover Art

Games have a way of evolving and changing in unpredictable ways. For me it has always been fun to play on your own and to immerse yourself but I personally enjoy the satisfaction of owning someone online. The 1980’s was the time when Dial-Up systems were created. They were still around when I was a child because I remember the ol’ dial-up noise and the screeching you would hear when picking up the phone. Maze War is considered one the first network games written. I’ve never heard of it before now but it seems like an early precursor to the modern online FPS game. 

                                          

                                          >>>>A Link To The Famous Dial-Up Noise <<<<

The Nintendo DS’s great, great, great granddad was also created in the 1980’s called the Game & Watch. It looks effectively the same as the DS just less powerful and has no 3D aspect. But that little box of joy spurred many other companies to make their own portable games. The Game Boy Color didn’t come out until a good few years later but that was my first gaming console. That little cartridge playing wonder started me on my journey towards game artist. So you can see the impact that game history has to this day. Despite my inspiration the Nintendo Game & Watch wasn’t the first handheld game, that was the Microvision. The handheld was released in 1979 but unlike the Game & Watch, it didn’t survive very long. This was due to lack of games, poor design and the video game crash of 1983.

                                                           The Nintendo Game&Watch

Speaking of which, the video game industry experienced a second crash at the end of 1983. This resulted in the bankruptcy of several companies that produced home computers and video games consoles. It also brought what was considered to be the second generation of console video gaming to an end.  The crash is believed to have been mainly caused by poorly designed games, amongst other things.

As we cross into the 1990’s the shift from the arcade to the home starts to occur. Gaming consoles were now reaching 16-bit and 32-bit processors. The level of graphics seen in arcade games was now matched at home. This meant that players started waiting for the arcade games to come to consoles rather than going out to play them. This is the times when the legendary third and fourth generation consoles were created. The NES and its successor the SNES are names that still resonate with the gamers of my generation. Raster graphics transitioned over to 3D graphics. Game publishers grew, design teams enlarged and the budget of games increased. Even mobile gaming started up in the 1990’s.

                                                                                      The SNES

 

These developments completely contrast the slow beginnings of the 1950’s. In the progress from 1980’ to the 1990’s, the industry grew to become a mainstream form of entertainment as opposed to the underground subculture it was. The games industry at this time was starting to bloom.

That’s it for my blog this week, until then. “To the Batmobile , let’s go”!