Arcade games were the evolution of the Pinball machines that had been a fixture of most pubs and college hang-outs. Many pinball companies, seeing the success of Pong, promptly released Pong-clones. Atari responded by forming a company called Kee Games in order to get around distribution problems. Atari kept it’s ownership of Kee Games secret until it produced the next big-hit in 1974 - a two player game called Tank. Tank featured two tanks, which had to navigate a maze and then shoot each other. The game was noteworthy as it was the first to use IC-based ROM chips to store graphical data - the upshot of which the things on the screen weren’t just blocks or collections of dots. It looked good, and everyone wanted it. Kee Games and Atari merged, and distributor exclusivity was over.

While the former pinball companies were churning out clones and getting nowhere, Atari was steaming ahead with innovative ideas. They turned out the first four-player game and the first pursuit-in-a-maze game in 1973, the first driving game in 1974, and the first first-person driving game in 1976 - which also allowed the player to sit down in the arcade booth.

In 1975 they produced Breakout, another classic and highly popular game that became an instant phenomenon. At this time there was one other company in America that took video games seriously: Bally/Midway Manufacturing. Midway brought the Japanese influence into American video games as they worked closely with a Japanese developer called Taito. Midway released Taito’s games in America, and Taito released Midway’s games in Japan.

In 1978 Midway began distributing a Taito developed game called Space Invaders. Space Invaders was a smash-hit. Like Pong, Space Invaders left behind a massive pop-culture legacy. It was different, and crucially it didn’t end after a time limit, but allowed players to go for as long as their skill could take them. It also introduced the concept of the High Score. This was the key in games competitive addictiveness, Space Invaders arcade machines found their way into pizza joints, Laundromats, airports, and anywhere people might have a quarter and a spare ten minutes. Taito was a success, Bally/Midway was a success, and Atari was a success.

There are many games we can point to now. Space Invaders ushered in the Golden Age of Gaming. Various companies got involved, including Namco, Konami, SNK, Capcom, Amstar, Irem… there were space war games, driving games, football games, puzzle games, shooters. There were side-scrolling, vertical-scrolling, isometric. From shooting aliens, games soon moved onto shooting people. Some designers protested at the violence - and one of these designers went on to create Pac-Man.

Sex, guns, and alien invasions sell, right? Not as well as games about eating. Pac-Man sold better than Space Invaders, it sold better than Pong, and yet another video game left it’s iconic legacy all over pop culture.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this golden era of gaming is that so many games were produced by one or two people. Anybody with some programming skills and a backer had the potential to produce the next ‘big thing’. There were many notable successes, and most of the older generation of gamers will be able to look back at this period and point to Donkey Kong, or Frogger, or Joust and say: this was the game where it all began. It was a new media, and as such was completely open. Genre’s were invented, defined, and polished. Anything could happen.

So far we have focused mainly on arcade games. This is where most games were released, and where most made their money. However, the games console industry grew alongside the arcade games. I briefly talked about the “Brown Box”, or the Magnavox Odyssey, which sold poorly but kept itself going via lawsuits. The Odyssey 100, the next console, which was focused mainly on Pong, sold reasonably well. There were many more game-specific consoles sold, that focused mainly on Pong and Pong-clones. A company called Fairchild released the first cartridge based console in 1976, and Atari followed suit. In 1980, Atari released a dedicated Space Invaders console, and secured themselves as top-dogs in the home console market. Other companies tried, and failed, to match them.

This brings us to 1983. Everyone was making games. Most of those games were clones of successful ones. Everyone was making games consoles. Those consoles were dedicated to playing the clones. The market was saturated with poor-quality knock-offs. Worse, in 1977 the home computer had entered the market. By the early 80’s, the home computer was competing directly with games consoles. Investors withdrew from the console market. In 1982 the Commodore 64 – a personal computer – was released, and sold 17 million units. There was no competition - the home computer had more memory, better graphics, could play games and run software like word processors.

Meanwhile, in the video game industry, developers were leaving companies like Atari to found their own start-ups - taking their knowledge of the systems with them. The big name companies were refusing to credit their developers, and the developers responded by selling secrets about the systems they had worked on. Hyped up games were rushed to market, and then failed dismally. Most notoriously was Atari’s E.T. tie-in, which had less than six weeks development, cost them a fortune for the rights, was rushed to market in time for Christmas, and which ended up as landfill.

And so, the golden era ended.

At this point, the market is flooded with cheap spin-offs, crap movie tie-ins, and the same-old games with a few pixels moved around. The Atari was traded in for a Commodore. The Commodore was used for doing taxes and homework. The novelty had worn off. Sure, some people still played games, but it was nothing like the mania that had greeted Pong or Space Invaders. The companies themselves, over-confident, had blown their budgets on producing these mediocre games. In addition, games consoles tend to decline in their fifth year - one of the reasons behind the “Next Gen” consoles.

Stores can’t cope with the sheer number of releases - they don’t have the shelf space, and they return unwanted products to the manufacturers. These companies couldn’t afford to refund the retailers. Hundreds of games companies went into bankruptcy. Retailers decided the “video game fad” was over, and refused to carry any at all.

Even in this dark time there was one outstanding success. Dragon’s Lair, the first video game to be produced on laser disk, and the first game to have “movie quality” animated cut scenes - courtesy of Disney. In the arcades, Dragon’s Lair cost twice as much as a regular game. Did the punters pay? Yes, they most certainly did.

For most American companies however, the game was well and truly over, no sequels and no comebacks.

Did it affect the gamer? This is a more debatable question. Certainly, businesses lost money. But there were still games - cheap games - and personal computers were on the rise. For two years the market floundered in bargain bins and garage sales. Then, in 1985, Mario arrived.

Or rather, the NES arrived. Initially Nintendo wanted to release it via Atari, but Atari - perhaps wary of a console market that had gone to ruin - declined. So Nintendo did it themselves, releasing the NES alongside eighteen new games. (For Europe and Australia, the NES came a few years later — and never sold anywhere near as well as it did in Japan and North America.)

Hello Super Mario Bros.

Hello to the side-scrolling platform game, and to Japan. Super Mario Bros was the best selling game ever. By far. Check out the wikipedia list of best-selling games. See Super Mario Bros? Astounding figure, and definitely puts Halo 3 into perspective.

The plumber, the princess, the brother and King Koopa. What did this game have? Every aspect has been praised: the precision controls, the huge worlds, the storyline! In an article at IGN it says the storyline came first, and the game was designed around it. This is an important thing to remember. Story matters. Characters matter.

What else does the IGN article say? Well, it says Mario’s iconic look was created by graphical limitations. That Shigeru came up with such original ideas because he wasn’t a gamer, and he wasn’t confined by the limits of what people ‘expected’ from games.

If there is one thing we can learn from the crash, and the subsequent Nintendo success it is this: derivative, lazy, over-produced games suck, and creative, outside-the-box games rock. Whodathunkit?

The games industry was saved. Hurrah! But Japan was the source of our best games - and Japan’s influence would remain a huge part of gaming culture.

At around the same time as Mario’s successful debut, a Russian named Alexey Pajitnov was working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He created a game he named Tetris.

Tetris was very addictive. Like Space Invaders, it was a potentially never-ending game. Players have racked up 12 hour sessions on a single game. Like Pong it was incredibly simple - no back story, characters, or complex controls to remember. The basics could be picked up in seconds, but it was challenging enough that experienced players would stay hooked - always aiming for a higher score. It appealed to everyone.

It was immediately recognized as a winner - and a fair few people started selling the game without purchasing the rights to it. A British company called Andromeda picked it up, and, before finalizing any deals with Pajitnov, sold the license to Spectrum HoloByte, a US developer that had been set up in 1983 (demonstrating that not everybody believed that 1983 was the end of video games…). Much bickering ensued, and lawsuits passed back and forth. Various versions were made and then pulled, sometimes before even hitting the shop shelves.

Nintendo ended up with the rights, after it went through the courts. They made a handsome profit - and Pajitnov made very little. It was the time that the video game corporations came into their own. Nintendo had strict licensing laws, that forbade any game that appeared on the NES to appear elsewhere. In North America, the NES was easily the most popular console. Elsewhere, in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, it was the Sega Master System. The Atari was bowing out of the console market with its Atari 7800.

Nintendo emerged as the clear winner of this generation of consoles, Mario helping to push over 60 million consoles, while the Sega Master System trailed with only 13 million sold. With the fourth generation, however, Sega unleashed a new weapon with its spiky blue mascot. Sonic the Hedgehog was aggressively marketed. Mascots and franchises became the name of the game. Many long-running and much-revered series were created at this time - Metroid, Zelda, Sonic, Final Fantasy, and Street Fighter.

As Nintendo and Sega clashed, blood was shed. Virtual blood, that is. Nintendo censored the gore in their port of Mortal Kombat. Sega didn’t. Sega won that round - and in the future, violence was increasingly part of a game’s marketing strategy… a fact that holds true right up to the Grand Theft Auto series.

It is worth stepping aside for a moment, and considering the global market. Japan and North America have tended to be the global heavyweights when it comes to designing, developing and consuming games. This was partly because Japan and North America were both on the NTSC format, whilst Europe, et al, were PAL. (Strangely, when DVD’s were invented and given regions, Japan and the UK were linked together). The UK, Australia and New Zealand were somewhat lucky in that English games required no translation. Europe, however, very much received the short-end of the stick. Russia, as we’ve seen, was the country from which Tetris emerged - but otherwise would appear to have made little dent into the industry. For most of the world, video games were interesting only to psychologists, computer engineers, and scientists. Of course, imports existed. Indie games and consoles existed. But the release of games was half-hearted, and for the most part the industry trailed behind Japan and North America. The Sega was most people’s best bet - and I (being from the UK) have personally always favored the Sega over the Nintendo in my nostalgia dreams of yester-year.

It was around this time that imports began to pick up. Several high-profile games made it off the beaten path and into the video game wilderness. New markets were found.

The next generation of consoles sees the Playstation enter the ring. Suddenly Nintendo is on shaky ground. The Nintendo 64 continued to use cartridge based games, whilst the Playstation used CDs. CD’s were cheaper, and contained far more data.

The corporations strove constantly to out-do each other. The next-gen rolled around with clockwork timing - the Playstation 2 combating the Gamecube, while Sega cut their losses and moved onto the Dreamcast.

Meanwhile, the PC had been advancing in leaps and bounds. Graphics cards, memory, you name it. With the consoles warring against each other, the PC quietly benefited from emulation software, from indie developers who produced shareware and demo-levels of episodic games, and from the birth of a genre in which it undoubtedly ruled - the RTS.

These years are probably the most familiar to the people reading this article. This was the time when innovative new ideas gave way to graphics, marketing and name recognition. It was a time when licensing laws were hammered into stone, when lawsuits were almost constant, when graphics became the gold-standard and merchandise started to become part and parcel of the industry. Merchandise filled a double role - it made money and it marketed the game. The games themselves were used to sell the consoles - the headline acts were locked to one or another. The PC, interestingly, was the most adaptable gaming machine - and also the platform for many of the smaller, more interesting genres.

The game that everyone remembers as being the first RTS was Westwood’s Dune II. Certainly Dune II did the most to establish the format, and its success meant that people began seeing the RTS games as a lucrative genre. Previous to Dune II, however, was Stonkers, a bug-plagued game published in 1983 by Imagine Software for the ZX Spectrum. Simplistic, it allowed you to move various units around, which would deplete their energy. To refill, you had to move supply units to the same location. Supply units could be replenished by entering a port. (Source)

After Stonkers came The Ancient Art of War, a ‘battlefield simulation’ based on the classic book The Art of War. There were three kinds of units: Knights, Archers and Barbarians, which had a circular ‘paper-rock-scissors’ type of balancing. Outside factors, such as hunger, terrain and morale all impacted the outcome of a battle. (Source)

Then, thirdly, there was Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis. Herzog Zwei focused on a main command unit, which could switch from an aircraft to a land unit, and was the only unit you could directly control. The rest was there for support only. The objective was to destroy your enemies base. Like the RTS games to follow, everything cost money, and managing fuel and resources was a major part of the game.

So there were the three forerunners, experimenting with different things. Dune II then stormed onto the scene in 1992. Developed by Westwood Studios, the game was the first to allow players to control their units with a mouse. It was based on Dune the movie, which in turn was based on Dune the book, the popular science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. It had a plot well-suited to the genre, with huge cartels competing over the harvesting of the spice known as melange. The established fanbase may have helped make the game successful, but the game was also very high quality - introducing many of the features that became synonymous with RTS games, including the world map, technology trees, resource gathering, and mobile units that can deploy as buildings. Each faction has unique units and structures, and completing missions gave access to higher technology, culminating in extremely powerful superweapons.

The RTS genre, unlike many others, can be directly linked to the current state of modern warfare. The focus on researching technology and building better and better units can be seen as a direct mirror of the cold war arms race, whilst the tensions and factions in many RTS games closely mirror the global conflicts of the times. The conflict over resources - whether melange, tiberium, oil or gold - can be linked to the battles fought today over oil, water and arable land.

Having said that, the next RTS game was pure fantasy. The recently formed Blizzard, impressed by the success of Dune II, and confused as to why nobody else had released an RTS game, decided that the first title from their company would be an RTS. The result was Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. It used many of the conventions begun by Dune II, had similar units on both sides, and was successful enough to let Blizzard begin work on a sequel (Source). Prior to Starcraft, however, came Command & Conquer, Westwood’s next release.

Command & Conquer did many things right. Firstly, it didn’t rely on an already successful storyline like Dune II. C&C had to stand on its own merits - and the story of C&C is vital to the game’s success, and to the success of the franchise. Set in the late 1990’s and early 21st century, it works as a kind of alternative history, detailing the introduction of Tiberium, an alien substance that quickly becomes an incredibly valuable substance. The conflict is between an ancient and mysterious society (Brotherhood of Nod) led by Kane and the GDI - a UN sanctioned Global Defense Initiative Task Force. The result is a fast escalating world war. I could write an entire essay on the story of C&C, but the net upshot was a game with real depth. The story is further highlighted by the inclusion of live action video. This was unusual, and has become associated with C&C. Few other games have followed suit.

Secondly, the gameplay was fantastic. It was easy to grasp, but could become very complex. Whilst both sides shared a similar tech tree, the unit specs differed and gave a different feel to the strategy for each. Mission goals varied, as did the strategy and resources you used to complete them. In short, the game rocked.

The combination of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and C&C: Tiberian Dawn meant that the RTS genre - and the PC - was entrenched within gaming culture. It also meant Blizzard was in business as a serious heavyweight. Blizzard’s reputation would be cemented with the release of Starcraft.

There is one more thing to note about Blizzard. It is one of the very few game developers that always kept mac users in mind. Every game was released for both PC and Mac, or was a game capable of running on both. Many game development companies, knowing that most gamers bought a PC, produced games for the PC. Which in turn meant most gamers bought the PC, because that’s where all the games were. When I turned 20, I switched from PC to a Mac, because in addition to being a gamer, I was also a graphic designer and artist of sorts. Blizzard hence became my favorite game developer. Never underestimate a niche market - PC gamers have been spoiled for choice, and it was much harder to get noticed in the crowd. Get your game into an Apple Store, on the other hand, and you would be one of a handful, in a store that tended to attract fairly wealthy customers with a well-known habit of developing brand loyalty. Whilst the difference between the Mac and the PC has blurred significantly in recent years, with Macs going intel and releasing Bootcamp, and EA releasing their back catalogue for them, the lesson remains: do not dismiss a group solely because everyone else does.

Anyway: Starcraft. A defining game that leapt away from the idea of similar units and tech trees for each side. Instead, Starcraft utilized three different races with widely differing approaches to battle. One race, the Zerg, gave the gaming world a new word to describe rush attacks, in which you seek to overwhelm the opponent through volume of numbers and speed. Games such as this are much harder to balance than games in which both sides are fairly similar. Starcraft was a masterpiece.

One other thing that started to become important at this time, was the internet. Multiplayer was a definite option for PC games, with online matches becoming common. There were many problems - people who hacked the games to cheat, slow internet connections, random disconnections. But this was the way of the future, and PC games led the charge.

The use of a PC as a gaming machine had a few important implications for video games. Firstly, a PC was more likely to have internet, which meant multiplayer became a viable option - very useful for FPS and RTS games, which were the games that leant themselves best to a PC. Multiplayer options extended the life of a video game almost indefinitely. By replacing AI opponents with real human opponents, the games became more complex, more competitive, and more addictive. There were negatives of course - cheating was more of a problem, ranking had to be introduced to ensure new players weren’t discouraged by battling against heavyweights. Disconnects, lag and technical problems were very frustrating, and with dial-up connections things had to be kept simple and minimal.

Prior to the internet, multiplayer gaming had existed - but it required either two or more people using one console or PC, either taking turns or playing split-screen, or it required computers to be networked together. The first online multi-player game was Islands of Kesmai. This was a turn-based combat game that involved moving from tile-to-tile, picking up items or fighting mobs. You could attack other players, but doing so changed your alignment, and impacted how welcoming towns would be. The most interesting class was the ‘thief’ class - played in character, you could appear lawful, steal from other players, and steal valuable items from monsters before the group killed it. As such, they were complained about, hated, and finally nerfed to the point of no return.

Following in the footsteps of Kesmai was Neverwinter Nights. This was released via AOL, in 1991, and shouldn’t be confused with the later Neverwinter Nights of 2002. NWN introduced the idea of clans and PVP (Player versus Player). The game spread virally, as people emailed their friends and asked them to join up. AOL was delighted, as at that time everyone paid for dial-up by the hour. Prior to that moment, most people just went online to check and send emails, and if AOL were lucky, do a quick bit of research for something. Now, people were logging in to play games! For hours at a time. So MMOs were big money from the start.

The next three games arrived almost simultaneously - The Realm Online, Meridian 59, and Furcadia. All three are still running today, suggesting that MMO’s are capable of generating immense loyalty in their player-base. They are all subscription based, a method of payment that is favorable to a game developer. It also allows for trial periods, which is favorable for the player - after all, few people want to spend money on a game they know nothing about. The notoriously addictive nature of MMOs means that free trials are very lucrative.

The second part was community. Early players benefited from having friends on their servers, to form parties with. So they would effectively ’sell’ the game for you, convincing their friends to sign-up. This marketing model is much more effective than splash advertising. After all, we are inundated with advertising; most of us can filter it out. But a viral game, one that people had a reason to persuade their friends to play, could sell itself much quicker and more effectively.

Ultima Online was released in 1997, a game that took the early success of the prior MMOs and turned them into a massive commercial undertaking. It peaked at around 750,000 subscribers, despite problems with lag. The result was groundbreaking: and it highlighted many of the issues MMOs would struggle with for a long time. Attempting to create a stable, balanced economy and ensure players had control without being out of control was a Herculean task. People were not predictable, they were good at exploiting bugs, and in-game events often made accidental history.

Asia became the MMO central - hundreds of games were released, all of them with an active player-base. Nexus, a US adaptation of Baramue Nara, a popular Korean MMO, was the first of many anime-styled games. Many of these games are free to play, including Maple Story and Ragnorak Online. RO, which is a franchised game and has both pay-to-play and free-to-play servers, actually boasts of more players than World of Warcraft.

The next big hit in the MMO world was EverQuest. It was released in 1999, and continues today. A sequel, EQII, was released in 2004. The sheer, runaway success of this game is hard to believe. Nicknamed ‘Evercrack’, it featured raiding guilds, many of which required 6-8 hours of gameplay everyday from its members. The slang that EQ players spoke quickly spread to other MMOs, the controversy around the sale of in-game items for real money sprang up, spammers appeared, friendships were generated and fell apart, people ebayed their high-level characters, and in short it was that MMO atmosphere we all know and love-to-hate.

After EQ, we had World of Warcraft. WoW built on three things: Blizzard’s own reputation as a quality game developer, the success of EQ, which had begun to attract a new breed of ‘casual gamers’, and incredibly polished, attractive content. Criticism about WoW is prevalent, but for the most part the game itself is an incredibly solid playing experience. At the much advertised figure of 9 million subscribers worldwide, the game is the largest MMO around, taking over 50% of the MMO market share. It is a behemoth of the online gaming world. It also brings us rather neatly to the end of our history, and propels us into the future.

Video games are now mainstream, they are grown-up, they are complex, and they can take more effort than most jobs. People are building businesses around selling in-game gold, high-level characters, and items. With games like The Sims, and Second Life, we have moved from games that focus on point-gathering to games that focus on mimicking ‘real life’. We have virtual economies, game worlds that have been compared to real countries in terms of the wealth they generate. We have accidental but incredibly realistic plagues. Gaming has become social experiment.

Gaming has also become entrenched in our culture and our lives. We play, even when it isn’t fun. We play, and we pay to play, at being someone else. Experts are comparing gaming to gambling; addictive, potentially socially destructive behavior. Whatever your own standpoint, games are going to driving debate for a long time yet.

Author: Keira Peney, author of Write the Game.

Source: amazines.com