Another Take on Video Game History

Ars Technica has a new article up on The evolution of gaming: computers, consoles, and arcade.

This one’s slightly different in that it takes individual genres and trace their history, screenshots and all.

The genres here are the slightly idiosyncratic Sports / Space Combat / MMORPG / Adventure / Driving / Turn-based strategy / Simulation / RPG / Platform / FPS / Real-time strategy.

As a European, the focus on Apple II and TRS-80 is weird as they hardly existed in these quarters – gaming history was Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and later Amiga / Atari ST (the latter especially in the UK I think).

Somebody needs to write the big global history at some point.

When People don’t Cooperate

The Nobel prize being awarded to Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann.

According to BBC online:

Professor Aumann’s work has centred on a different element of game theory, the question of whether co-operation increases if games are continually repeated.

He showed that co-operation is less likely when there are many participants, when interactions are infrequent, when the time horizon is short or when others’ actions cannot be clearly observed.

Does say a thing or two about online games, no?

Shuffling off these Retail Chains

After the rants about the problems of the game industry, Greg Costikyan is now forming a company with the goal of promoting indie games:

And its purpose, of course, will be to build what I’ve been talking about: a viable path to market for independent developers, and a more effective way of marketing and distributing niche PC game styles to gamers.

Manifesto Games.

Following what I have commented previously, I think a crucial part is building public awareness that there is a special set of unique, interesting experiences to be had from “indie” games. Players need to know that they want it.

Best of luck to Greg, who promises to blog the process.

The GameGame is Out!

Aki J?rvinen has released his game about games, the GameGame.

The GameGame is a crazily recursive idea of Aki’s, to make a game about game design, where the cards of the game represent ideas and components in the game design process. It does make sense, and I completely believe it can work as a teaching tool.

  • The objective of the game to collect cards which make up a design for a game.
  • The Best Design Wins!
  • The cards represent game elements, i.e. ingredients a game.
  • You as a player collect generic elements and improvise your own game based on them.

Hamlet – The Game

I used to think you’d never see it, but here it is: Hamlet as a text adventure.

It does sort of work as far as I’ve gotten, but probably because the juxtaposition between the play and the text adventure is so jarring as to be fun.

> n
Balcony
A ghost is here.
An exit leads south.

> tell ghost “hello”
“Hey Dad,” you say cheerily. “What’s up?”
“Hamlet,” says the old man after a sigh, “you remember how I was found mysteriously dead in the orchard a couple of weeks back? Well… it’s like this. Your uncle Claudius poisoned me so he could become king and marry your mother. I’d be awfully grateful if you could kill him for me.”
“All right,” you say, “I’ll do it!”
Your life suddenly seems to have purpose.

Update: The game has been relocated to http://rdouglasjohnson.com/hamlet/

The Lack of an Indie Aesthetic

Greg Costikyan presents a new rant at the Escapist.

The problem is that once something becomes technically feasible, the market demands it. Gamers themselves are partly to blame: Indie rock fans may prefer somewhat muddy sound over some lushly-orchestrated, producer-massaged score; indie film fans may prefer quirky, low-budget titles over big-budget special FX extravaganzas; but in gaming, we have no indie aesthetic, no group of people (of any size at least) who prize independent vision and creativity over production values.

And this I think is true – consumers share the blame … The game audience must mature in order for the game industry to mature.

No More WOW for you Today

Word is that the Chinese government is working on regulating MMOGs so anybody playing more than three hours in a row will be punished in-game.

BBC story.

The server administrators will be happy (less server load).

The scary thing is that because MMOGs are managed at central servers, they are also the ideal cultural form for any totalitarian state: The committee has decided that you will only play three hours per day, young one.

Imagine if the authorities could set time limits on your reading, listening to music, or anything else …

Windows Vista and OSX Intel: Threats to Gaming History

A sizable portion of video game history is going to be rendered inaccessible to the average user within the next few years:

According to Eweek, Windows Vista will not be able to run 16-bit programs, so Windows 3.1 programs, and many DOS programs (most? all?) will cease to work once you install upgrade to Vista.

Apple’s switch to Intel chips also means the end of OS 9 support, so all your pre-2001 Mac games are not going to work anymore.

We will still be able to play old games in the future by running various emulators and virtual machines, but it will be out of reach for most users.

11 years from the release of Windows’95 to not supporting Windows 3.1 is a very short time in culture, but 5 years from the release of OSX to not supporting OS9 is the blink of an eye.

These are corporate decisions that could be reversed. Somebody should stage a campaign. Any takers?