The First Generation (1972-1977)

Technological Innovations:

-This was the era of home dedicated consoles.

-These consoles could only play a limited number of games, which often lacked sound and colour. Most of the games were built into the console.

-Limited Power: discrete circuits with no microprocessors (Until the Nintendo Colour TV-Game 6 in 1977)

Consoles of the time were: Magnavox Odyssey (1972), Home Pong (1975), Nintendo Colour TV-Game 6 (1977)

Game Development:

-Developers were restricted by hardware limitations.

-Most games were often variations of sports games.

Player Experience:

Gameplay was confined to simple mechanics, and players interacted with games in a minimalistic way.

The Second Generation (1976-1983)

Technological Innovations:

-Around this time was when the ROM cartridges were being introduced.

-Hardware featured microprocessors and rudimentary graphical displays!

-Consoles could now run multiple games, assisting the concept of expandable game libraries.

Game Development:

-Cartridges allowed developers to store game data externally. Games also became more complex with better visuals and simple AI.

-This time also saw the rise of Third-Party developers. A great example of this being Activision, which rose from 4 developers who left Atari because they were displeased with the treatment they were receiving at Atari.

Player Experience:

-Players gained more choice, control, and variety in games, adding up to 500 total games to choose from.

-We also saw beloved arcade style games being developed for home consoles!

We could also see the first movement stick with a button as a controller for the Atari 2600

     

 

The Third Generation (1983-1990)

This was the start of the soft rivalry between Sega and Nintendo, which would later emerge into the console wars. International releases of the Famicon they had to change the console to be labelled as an “entertainment system” so that audiences didn’t link it to the bad fame of the Atari 2600. And thus, the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) was born!

Technological Innovations:

Game Development:

-Developers could now create larger, more detailed worlds. Scrolling, multi-level platformers.

-The Nintendo Seal of Quality ensured that Third Party game developers had produced quality games, to set it aside from the Atari 2600’s fame of having many lackluster and often copy pasted games.

-The development costs also started to rise during this time.

Player Experience:

-Games became more engaging and interactive, with more storytelling and adventure focused games releasing (Such as Mario Bros. Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy.)

-Home consoles started competing with arcades in terms of quality.

(This advertisement also shows that multiplayer and overall quality of their software was one of the main drivers for Nintendo to promote their console to their audiences.)

The User Interface (UI) That we see in the original Legend of Zelda (1986) was one of the first steps in the industry to display information to the player such as your Life and Items.

A good example of the technological advancements for this generation would be Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988) and Final Fantasy II (1988), with their scrolling background allowing the player to feel like they’re progressing through the level as well as the complexity of various numbers appearing on screen such as HP bars as well as the damage inflicted to the bosses.

Another game that I would like to mention is Mega Man 2 (1988), Specifically in this boss fight we see that the boss is significantly bigger than Mega Man. This is actually a genius play from Capcom since the hardware limitations wouldn’t allow for bosses to be much bigger than the player characters. So as a work around, they made the background pitch black and made the boss a part of the background, which would only work if the background was black. This “feature” was so beloved by fans, that games like Shovel Knight use this nowadays as a “call back” to this revolutionary feature.

The Fourth Generation (1987-1994)

Technological Advancements:

-Transition to the 16-bit microprocessors.

-Better graphics and audio, which allowed for more colours, sprites, and multi-layer scrolling backgrounds.

-Introduction to Mode 7 (Nintendo’s scaling and rotation graphics mode, creating many levels of depth with the scenery.)

-Introduction of handheld devices such as the Gameboy.

Game Development:

-Games featured richer, more immersive environments.

-Game design evolved with more intricate level designs, character development, and strategic gameplay.

-Mode 7 allowed developers to simulate 3D environments.

Player Experience:

-Players experienced more immersive worlds and sophisticated narratives.

-More complex control schemes added depth to the gameplay.

-This also started the “console wars”

   

The Fifth Generation (1994-2001)

Technological Innovations:

-Transition from 2D to 3D gaming. A huge emphasis on 3D polygons.

-Introduction of optical discs (CD-ROM) for greater storage, leading to longer, more detailed games.

-Analogue controls for smoother 3D movement (Super Mario 64)

-Consoles that were made more than just gaming consoles, such as the PlayStation 1.

Game Development:

-3D Environments and open-world design became a reality.

-The larger storage capacity of CDs allowed developers to add full-motion video (FMV), CD quality soundtracks and voice acting (a great example of this would be SquareSoft/SquareEnix with Final Fantasy 7)

-Larger development costs and teams.

Player Experience:

-Players Engaged with more immersive 3D worlds and experienced greater freedom in exploration.

-Optical Discs allowed more storage, paving the way for cinematic storytelling.

Controllers were also a hot topic. With Sony’s PlayStation 1 controller mimicking the simplicity of the SNES and NES controller but allowing for more user comfortability with handles for players with bigger hands allowed for hours of gameplay without your hands getting cramped (Thank you!). However, Nintendo’s N64 controller continues the trend of serving its purpose, but having a weird feel to it. Despite the analogue stick being amazing for games such as Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the controller does feel a bit off to use for long play sessions.

In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), the developers thought of a genus and revolutionary idea for an action packed game with many enemies on the field. The Z button on the N64 controller was used to lock into specific targets to be able to focus your attention and direct your attacks to, or even guard with your shield at specific angles to avoid enemy attacks!

Half way through the fifth generation, Nintendo and Sony did a revision of their controllers, with Nintendo’s questionable Rumble Pack aiming to have even more of an immersive feel to the game, and Sony’s controller now having two joysticks (which will become a staple for years to come) which allowed users to move even more freely within the 3D environments.

Alien Resurrection (2001) was a game who’s developers knew how to take advantage of the revisited PS1 controller, with movement done with the left analogue stick and now being able to move the camera with the right analogue stick. This game was critised for being too complicated because of the controls. However, nowadays, this is also viewed as a staple in games which allow players to move the camera (Just because it’s criticized doesn’t mean it’s bad!)

Origins of Games:

Senet:

-Senet is a game that has been found to have originated around 2686-2613 BC in Egypt. Senet is a game that required both skill and chance.

It is speculated that Senet’s status changed overtime, from a pastime to an activity with potent symbolism and with great religious significance.

The Royal Game of “Ur”:

-Around the same time of Senet, in Mesopotamia, a game with dice elements known as Ur was also being played.

It’s clear that games, apart from serving ritual functions, they were also used to entertain in social interactions.

Go:

-Go has been played since 200 BC.

The Olympic Games (700 BC):

-The beginning of the Olympic Games were held around 776 BC, which were formed and compromised by carefully framed rules, assigning scores to participants.

The Olympic Games of then, like early known board games show us a basic human behavior-to create games, even if it means creating the most “noncreational thing” into a game.

-Dice has been used in games of chance from the seventh century BC.

-At the time of the first Olympic Games, there was a version of Chess called “Chaturanga”, which was a sanskrit term referring to a “battle formation”

Chaturanga is quite similar to contemporary Chess, a “King” of sorts being the all powerful piece, as well as different pieces having different “powers”, however, it wasn’t until the tenth century, where the game of Chaturanga that was present within some Arab luggage, that it had arrived to Europe and Africa. And it wasn’t until the fifteenth century that it started to undergo a standardization process.

Card games would undergo a similar experience around this time (They have only been in Europe for about 2 centuries at this point), which were now given “Standardized card suits”.

Mid Eighteenth Cen:

Similar to Senet, playing cards took on symbolic/mystical functions, as they were employed in the service of fortune telling.

1842/1843:

-In this year, the Idea of making a board game based on “actual real-world activities” flourished. Made by Prussian Lieutenant, George Von Reisswitz was the game known as “Kriegsspiel”, this strategy game which offered a wide range of situations, became popular with Prussian army personnel.

-In 1843, the game known as The Mansion of Happiness became the first commercially produced game in the US. This board game offered a simplistic vision of the world, where good deeds were rewarded and bad ones were punished.

1930’s, Monopoly:

-In the Mid 1930’s, the game of Monopoly, published by Parker Brothers would be released. This title was based on a previous board game called “The Landlord’s Game” as well as other so-called “descendants” however, these didn’t achieve the fame of Monopoly.

-Monopoly doesn’t attempt to put on an act about awarding in-game niceties, the game combines strategic thinking of the player’s drive for dominating a fictional real estate world with the factor of chance. The game rewards nothing better than bold capitalist perseverance, which directly challenges the cultural values and values of its players, which is why it became such a success with younger audiences of the time, allowing it to sell over 200 million copies worldwide. Thanks to its success, it allowed for board games to be established as a foundational family activity for all ages.

WW’s:

-During the aftermath of WWII, electronic games were struggling to flourish. In the 1950’s, we would see the publications of various strategic war games, including the games “Risk” and “Diplomacy”

The complexity of “Kriegsspiel” does bleed into many of these war games. However, Diplomacy barely relies on rule sets. Players battle for domination in a WW1 Europe, and Negotiations as well as Interpersonal Scheming are crucial for this goal, creating a Layered Machiavellian experience despite the simplicity of the rules.

Mid 20’ TH Century:

-Around the mid twentieth century, commercially produced games were an established part of cultures around the globe. We played games of chance, games of strategy and war, as well as games that simulate aspects of the real world/of real life.

-In 1954, J.R.R Tolkein published The Lord of The Rings, which would completely revolutionise the landscape of literature and introduce the world to the fantasy genre.The world wide success would cause more authors to recreate their own worlds such as mediaeval or mythical worlds which would be stacked with magic, dragons and heroes. Despite this spur of authors, none had reached the success of J.R.R Tolkein’s tale, which catered to many hungry readers and ultimately created the many fantasy fans which continue to thrive nowadays.

-The 1960’s saw the rapid increase of war games, strategic tabletop games where maps, dice, and figures (which would be used to simulate battles), which were used to recreate historical conflicts.

-Around the 1970’s, the “pen and paper RPGs” would be developed thanks to popular convergence as well as popular trends around the time.

-War games and Fantasy games found a primary audience of young/teenage males, so it was only a question of time for both genres to merge. The best example of these would be war games with a fantasy aesthetic/theme, which would usually star elves and orcs which replaced the armies formed by the European empires.

-The mother of all RPG games, Dungeons and Dragons (Created by Dave Arneson and Gary Gyax in 1974), is directly based on a fantasy war game called Chainmail. When it originally came out, D&D was selling around 7,000 copies a month. By 1979, it had “spawned” a multitude of sequels as well as numerous gamers to become game designers, this was because of the game’s complex rules which seemed to be a magnet for aspiring designers, who went on record to adapt D&D’s several rules into their own fantasy worlds.

-After the success of D&D, RPG games seemed to grow in popularity exponentially. Some of them aimed to simplify complicated rules whilst maintaining a fantasy setting. In 1976, Runequest was released, which was set in a fictional world during the bronze age; its rules have been praised as the beginning of modern RPG.

Other games introduced new universes and settings, such as 1977’s Traveller, a science fiction game.

-However, by the end of the 1970’s, the media news media spread a “concern” about the hobby of Role-playing, as they connected the fact that youth cases of suicide or criminal activity.behaviour were related to role-playing games. This was enhanced further with the general public not really appreciating the pastime of allowing young people sit in their living rooms, discussing mediaeval weapons or slaughtering monsters, as this struck some parents to be morbid or unhealthy for their children. (Page 65) Role-playing games were also labelled as “Blasphemous” by religious cycles. These controversies have also occurred to their video-game counterparts, which have eclipsed their table-top counterparts drastically in world wide sales.

MUD and History In VG’s:

-MUD is a Multi User Dungeon which is a system for virtual role playing (usually found in chat rooms)

-Video-games have removed the need for a “Dungeon Master”

-Tabletop games have inspired MUD and text adventures, which slowly turned into the MMO’s we know nowadays.

-The history of games doesn’t fall into categories that easily, so it’s easier to categorise it by decades.

-Regardless of the project, the importance of history is prominent as history does tend to repeat itself.

-Sometimes history is very important, games such as WoW have direct history with MUD such as copying the communication interface from MUD.

PG 67:

-It isn’t clear as to what the first videogame was.

-In 1949 Cambridge, UK, scientists managed to start operating a very early computer (EDSAC), however it wasn’t until 3 years later that a PHD student got a single player version of tic tac toe to run on it.

-In brookhaven laboratory, visitors were under-impressed by the massive mainframes on display. As an effort to impress the public, “tennis for two” was made. Despite being electronic, it ran on analogue equipment.

PG 68:

-In 1961, in MIT, three men developed “Spacewar!” on a friendly computer (of the time) to interest visitors of the lab since they were unimpressed by the tic tac toe

-Despite Spacewar! Probably being the first videogame, it was certainly not the first step in the process.

-Spacewar! Became an inspiration for game developers of the time, and because of its success, it was given a couple of updates with new features.

-The only other milestone in the 60’s, is that a TV engineer began the base development for the first “At home” game console, with the intention of being played on a Television.

-Despite many action games being developed, it wasn’t until “Magnavox” picked up the technology in a deal and included this technology in their TV sets.

PG 69:

-In 1970’s, video games grew extensively, marking the beginning of the gaming industry.

-Arcade games were played on dedicated coin operated machines.

-Atari was the most important game producer of the time, they created an unsuccessful copy of Spacewar!, which paved the way to create the game Pong, which was a commercial success and heavily impacted and created a new market in corporate America.

-The aforementioned Magnavox deal further developed into the Odyssey console.