User:Nick Bagnall/Sandbox

The scope of video games

Like other games, video games have a clearly defined goal and are bound by rules, but unlike other games, those rules are rarely fully and explicitly stated. Rules in board and card games are abstract; little to nothing indicates them to the player. Video games, however, are represented by virtual worlds that usually imply at least some of their rules. Their visual representation, or graphics, a changing and changeable display, is one factor that distinguishes video games from other types of games. The other distinguishing factor is their algorithmic logic. If a game were governed by database computer logic, a DVD screen menu could qualify as a video game if someone decided to create rules for it. The algorithm is a program containing the set of procedures controlling the game's graphics and sound, the input and output engaging the players, and the behavior of the computer-controlled players within the game.

The commonalities between video games ends there. There is a bewildering variety of video games. The dissimilarities between Dance Dance Revolution, which requires players to physically input dance steps on a pressure-sensitive playmat, and a word puzzle game on a mobile phone, seem far more obvious than the similarities. Thus, the need for categorization into both genre and platform.

Genres

Like other media, video games are sorted according to genre, but unlike film or literature they are usually classified independent of their theme or setting. Instead, gameplay is the main criterion for categorizing games. An action game is an action game, regardless of whether it takes place in a fantasy world or outer space. Within game studies there are no universally accepted, formal definitions for game genres, some being more observed than others. For a comprehensive list, see video game genres.

The emergence, evolution, and success of video game genres depends on both technology and the congenital behavior of producers and consumers. Companies naturally want to minimize risk, and it is safer to imitate a successful platform game or shooter than to attempt something different and risk commercial and critical failure. Consumers, likewise, tend towards what they know, rather than chance wasting their time and money on something they know nothing about. Game genres develop as technology progresses but innovation is moderated by commercial constraints and by the conditioned opinions and expectations of players.

Platforms

Though numerous, video game genres are rivaled in number by the systems, or platforms, that video games are available for, which include home consoles, personal computers, arcade boards, and handheld systems such as handheld game consoles, PDAs, and mobile phones. Each type of platform has advantages and disadvantages. Handheld systems offer portability at the expense of larger screen size and better graphics and sound. Arcades are generally technologically superior to consoles but they are not designed for home use. Personal computers may be extensively customized to suit the player's preferences, but cutting-edge computer hardware is expensive and the vast number of options can baffle inexperienced computer users.

Due to these advantages and disadvantages, some genres are better suited to one kind of machine than another. Real-time strategy (RTS) games, for example, are well suited to the PC because of the mouse. Historical advantages also explain why some genres flourished or continue to flourish on one kind of machine--for example, platformers on consoles, since computers did not smoothly scroll horizontally at the same time that the NES did. handhelds for short games like puzzle games.

Platform prominently factors into the question of scope. In 1958, William Higinbotham designed Tennis For Two, an electronic game which simulated a tennis match on an oscilloscope. Years later, his testimony was called upon during legal attempts to break the Magnavox video game patent obtained through their development of the Odyssey, the first home video game console. The court ruled that Tennis For Two did not use video signals and so did not qualify as a video game. As a result, every company that entered the video game market was forced to pay a settlement to Sanders Associates, the company that supplied Ralph Baer, the "Father of the Video Game," with a team to develop the Odyssey.

A history of video games

(should incorporate not only dates and inventions and trends, but also social and geopolitical contexts.)

For a comprehensive history of video games, see History of video games

Magnavox may have enjoyed legal status as the creator of the first video game, but a less technical definition of of the medium includes a handful of older efforts, beginning with a patent for a "Cathode-ray Tube Amusement Device" filed in 1947. Although game enthusiasts, journalists, and historians disagree on what the first video game was, a clear contender for the title emerged in 1961 as MIT students Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Witaenem created Spacewar! on a DEC PDP-1 mini-computer.

Spacewar! was adapted by Nolan Bushnell, a fellow MIT regular, into Computer Space, one of the first commercial, coin-operated video games. The game flopped and Bushnell blamed his employer, Nutting Associates, for mismarketing the product. He quit Nutting Associates and founded a garage startup called Atari. "From this unlikely marriage—the computer lab and the carnival—the video game industry was born." Bushnell asked his company's first full-time engineer, Al Alcorn, to design a simple game of table tennis; they called it Pong. Bushnell and Alcorn installed it in a local bar, where it became an immediate success as a coin-operated game. Atari geared up to manufacture arcade consoles in volume, creating a new industry while also attracting competitors.

The first home console arrived in the bulky form of the grandiosely named Odyssey, a soundless, primitive machine powered by batteries and sold with translucent plastic overlays that players could place on their television screen to simulate color graphics. It was also sold with dice, poker chips, and score sheets to help keep score in the manner of a traditional board game.

The Odyssey sold 250,000 units worldwide; its sales, while respectable, were a fraction of the ballooning arcade market's earnings, buoyed by releases like Taito's Space Invaders and Atari's Asteroids. By the late 1970s, though, computer technology and programmer know-how had advanced to the point that home video games began approximating the features of arcade games. Fairchild Semiconductor's Video Entertainment System, released in 1976 and later called Channel F, was a first for home video game consoles in three ways: It used a microprocessor, it permitted computer-controlled characters, and its games were stored on removable media (cartridges) rather than the console itself. These revolutionary advances were popularized by one of Channel F's competitors, Atari's Video Computer System. As video games moved out of bars and arcades and into homes, their design shifted in response. Arcade games exist to consume quarters; their short levels and rapidly increasing difficulty levels are profitable design. Home video games, however, yield no additional revenue once in the hands of consumers; consumers choose home video games based on, among other measurable values, their potential hours of play, so games became longer and developed a narrative ending.

Early game conventions and genres, however, were most defined by technical constraints. Programmers for Atari's VCS had to write an entire game, complete with graphics, gameplay, sound effects, and all the scoring in four kilobytes, the data equivalent of two typewritten pages.Pitfall! designer David Crane remarked that "a lot of the game features then were not what you could think of, but what you could actually achieve." For example, players' avatars were often simple geometrical figures because the limited number of display pixels severely restricted smooth animation. No more than two such animated figures could share the same screen space, rendering the cartridge adaptation of the arcade smash hit Pac-Man nearly unplayable. The game's disastrous reception heralded the coming crash of the home video game market. By 1984, the media had declared video games a fad and computers, which began making headway in 1982 thanks to their expanding features and falling prices, completed their takeover of the market.

Computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 offered equal gaming ability and since their simple design allowed games to take complete command of the hardware after power-on, they were nearly as simple to start playing with as consoles. Game designers took advantage of the greater flexibility of computers to explore new game genres, often inspired by complex paper-and-pencil role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, various board games, and Crowther’s Adventure. Interactive fiction was a particularly successful format on personal computers. Other games—such as the King’s Quest series by Sierra On-Line (1983), military simulations and role-playing games published by Strategic Simulations Incorporated (founded in 1979), Richard Garriott’s Akalabeth/Ultima series (1979), and the sports and multimedia titles of Electronic Arts (founded in 1982)—extended the simulation and storytelling capacity of computer games. "The promotion and availability of cheap computers in the UK in the 1980s strongly influnced the growth of the PC games market and wider development industry there." (The business and culture of digital games 18)

Meanwhile, Atari's decline had opened the market to new competition. Namely, Nintendo. "The success of microelectronics, manga, and animated films in Japan provided an important foundation for Japan's digital games industry as well as important social legitimization." (The business and culture of digital games, p 18). (and so it was that Japan came into its own as a huge force for and exporter of video games..Japan exported its culture along with its video games) The home console market rebounded with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System and its flagship title, Super Mario Bros. Mario's phenomenal success is partly attributable to its smooth scrolling, courtesy of the Nintendo Entertainment System's picture processing unit. Its graphics exceeded the capabilities of personal computers. More important, Nintendo introduced battery-powered storage cartridges that enabled players to save games in progress. Games such as Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, as well as Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy series, fully exploited the ability to save games in progress; they used it to provide deeper game experiences, flexible character development, and complex interactive environments. These qualities encouraged comparisons between video games and other narrative media such as cinema.

Like other computers, video game hardware technology has generally obeyed a laymen's formulation of Moore's Law: The capabilities of electronic devices--such as processing speed and memory capacity--improve at exponential rates every two years. Advances in hardware technology have led to roughly proportional increases in the representational power of video games. Increased representational power, in turn, has given rise to new genres and a third dimension. The 1993 release of Doom on personal computers was a breakthrough in 3D graphics, and Nintendo's Super Mario 64, released in 1996, became "the blueprint for navigating 3D space in video games." The faster graphics accelerators and improving CPU technology have resulted in ever-increasing levels of realism and complexity that characterize much of contemporary gaming.