All a question of control

Being more of a pc orientated good ol' keyboard and mouse kinda chap there weren't many console pads I thought I had sampled but giving it a few mins thought made me realise how many I’ve come into contact with over the years and they all seemed to leave some kind of lasting impression on me, I still maintain the best pad ever was the original megadrive pad, it followed the D-pad on the left, face buttons on the right mantra originally devised by Nintendo's NES controller something of a missing link to past controllers which before it were simply a mish-mash of buttons crammed onto a pcb squezzing buttons in wherever there was space, ergonomics being a Swedish armchair manufacturer or something then.

I think as games became generally longer and people began investing more and more time into them, the design and functionality of the controllers became more important would the original super Mario be quite as good if it wouldn’t on the NES' standard setting controller? If making the fat plumber jump over Piranha Pete was too hard, would the game be as popular as it was and still is? A console pad links the player to the onscreen protagonist be it a soldier in ww2 or a high speed dragster if the game controls difficultly because of a poorly designed console pad the game will ultimately suffer, a controller has always been about making a design so streamlined and unrestrictive to a players thoughts and reactions to any given situation that his or her reactions and decisions are displayed instantly without them having to look down and remember the controls.

That’s why I think Nintendo's Wii is trying a more adventurous route, forget the fact there trying to target a wider audience by making it look less like a scary console, a console pad has always been translating a players thoughts and reactions to the screen. Pressing a button is far too mechanical for emulating the swinging of a sword, having the player actually physically swing his/her 'sword' makes it far more real and visceral than merely pressing a button. it should be a real test for more bizarre methods of control to see it the wii and its unique style of control will succeed, judging by the ridiculous levels of preorders worldwide I think merely having a new way of playing games is increasing the hype more than anything else.

Storytelling in games

Unlike other popular media where the story acts as a train for a series of events, scenes or chapters games can be detached sometimes to the point where a storyline is not even necessary to some games. Because of the repetitive nature of games, all games can be broken down into a series of tasks and activities; you shoot this, jump there etc a story is for the most part simply a brief explanation as to why you’re hurtling through space or killing mafia goons.

However as games become increasingly more complex mirroring movies not only in terms of cinematic effects and angles but in storytelling games are increasingly being judged by the quality of there storylines alone, with specialist storywriter’s stories are fast morphing from something which was shoehorned in last thing in development to briefly explain why the player was in a given situation to being fleshed out and revised at the very start of development, defining all visual and aural aspects of the game.

Unlike the film industry where telling a story has always been key games have found themselves with this burden of not only telling a competent story but tying together gameplay as well, did Space Invaders ever need a story? There were aliens coming down the screen what were you expect to do but shoot them, you didn’t need a story for that. But people now need explanations as to why there in a given situation even games clearly completely devoid of a storyline such as death match games now somehow need a shoddily constructed story purely to justify to the nit-picky reviewer there existence.

As games further diversify along there different genre paths types of storyline and the way in which there told is also changing, an fps such as Half Life 2 would be an epic albeit completely linear experience with events in the story closely mimicking and complementing the environments – you’ve gotta break someone out of a creaky converted Russian gulag? Fine then along you go! If HL2 or any other shooter was presented purely as a series of corridors, would it be such a good game? Do people even consider most games storylines when there in the thick of a game for the most part cut scenes are used to illustrate and expand upon the story, a non-interactive element of what should be a completely interactive experience ‘sit down, shut up and I’ll try and explain why you’re here’ the games seem to say.

Actually because of there interactive nature, can a games storyline differ as you progress? Rather than follow the same storyline with the same events placed in place months, sometimes years ago shouldn’t the player be able to forge and create his own story? We’ve already got sandbox gaming where events or motions can be discovered by the player that wouldn’t necessarily have been thought of by the developers surely a games overall storyline could be altered by the actions of the player rather than simply bumping along a story path much like the linear gameplay, taking a tangent at key opportunities.

Going back to stories in general a story seems useless if the characters it contains are not cared or feared for by the player, characters present a reason for the player to continue playing if people can find themselves emotionally attached somehow to a given character in a 2 hour film surely games should be able to do it in 10? So called ‘digital actors’ high polygon, naturalised models with personalised details such as ripped jeans and other details create a sense of the model standing in front of the player is a real person or at the very least a collection of pre-recorded lines and dialogue following a predefined path throughout the game that makes the player believe that there following a real genuine person.

Looking at games where perhaps the characters and the situations they may find themselves have already been defined often in the form of books or film tie-ins, such as Reservoir Dogs that was demoed today, its even harder to not only follow the original storyline and ethos of the source material appeasing both publishers and fans alike but to create an actual game around it as well. This is one of the reasons I believe games of films are often so poor, despite the incentive to rush it out of the door publishers and the film studio’s being overly protective of there material massively hinders the creativity of the development studio.

Art direction

An art director’s job is essentially the head of the entire art team for any given project; he alone decides the games art style and direction, ensuring all artistic standards gel throughout the entire game. This usually happens at the very start of a projects formation and ideally would take around 3 to 6 months although for the most part pre production takes place around 3 to 6 weeks during this time a games entire visual ‘personality’ is created including characters, environments, weapon designs anything that would make up the game visually is first drawn and conceived during this time. Without the correct standards; for example texture resolution, polycount etc elements of the game will look widely different to other elements - part of an art directors job is to reign in individual members and ensure all elements of the game not only suits the game style and plot but looks consistently professional throughout.

Take for example, Half Life 2 - the main Art Director, Viktor Antonov this person essentailly had to decide the games overall look and feel creating several stunning images - seriously look at the site, to give the various modellers, texture artists and various other specialist artists to produce a consistent enviroement both to his original vision and one that valve ould be proud of.

The art director also acts as the head for the entire art team, deciding whether a teams artistic goal is possible within a specified time and money budget, an average game simply for the art and design budget is around 3 million pounds (CHECK THIS!) so it is vital the art director can decide whether or not the design team can produce the work if not time and more importantly money is lost pursuing an over budget over time game.
Additionally technical specifications are written for sections of the game these documents detail the average poly count of a typical prop its texture resolution as well as any other elements that will determine the technical background of a game - the end specification of the console or pc it will end up running on is also considered - this is where the technical specifications come into there own a model can look stunning but if its too high poly for the end machine its useless.

For this the art director typically goes back and forth between the design team and the programmers ensuring there vision is possible and mapping out any limitations or drawbacks to the system it will be supporting

Being an art director means a person must be able to tie together an artistic vision bereft of technical limitations with a strict polygon and time limit of a modern game, the person must balance an artistic vision and allow every team member to envision this vision, there is little opportunity for individuality in the working environment, the art director ensuring all members are working to a similar goal. Unlike a number of jobs in the games sector which are individual to the sector, an art director’s job seems interchangeable with a number of other popular media's including TV and films.

Infect as games become increasingly more complex and the resulting art direction in turn becomes more complex wouldn’t it be possible for a person previously worked on the art direction for a number of major films to transfer to games? Well, not really - for the most part an art directors position in TV and films seems to be a more managerial position determining if a team can produce an artistic vision within a specified time limit - a games art director does this and more having to take into account the technical limitations of the games and the target platform

'One of the hardest things as a Art director is to get everyone to see your vision' - Rick Hath, Former Art director for Codemasters

But is it fun?

There has been some lengthy discussion over the years of what separates the medium of games apart from other older forms of entertainment, they both share the storylines and intricate plot details of modern films while following a specific set of rules, similar to the rules of a board game or any other traditional game. These rules essentially create the framework of a game and when used collectively can be referred to as gameplay.

These rules and specifically the overall game plan is evident in all games, regardless of how badly it plays as a final product or its apparent simplicity, taking Minesweeper as an example. The player must clear a grid of numbered squares and not set off the various bombs hidden inside, if the player clicks a grid and there is no mine present one of two things occur (1) A number appears indicating the number of adjacent (including diagonally-adjacent) squares containing mines, or (2) no number appears; in which case the game automatically clears those squares adjacent to the empty square (since they cannot contain mines). Squares so cleared which themselves are empty (do not contain a number of adjacent mines) have their neighbours recursively cleared as well. The game is won when all squares that do not contain a mine are cleared.

Even in this simple game there are various rules which tie the game together and creates a fair challenge to the player, the location of the mines are randomly generated each time so the game can be played an infinite amount of times although there are limited strategies to use each time. Looking at a modern game, this element of maintaining a set of rules and creating a fair challenge to the player still exists; nobody wants to be shot by an all powerful omnipotent sniper each time, the game instead creating opportunities for the player to win in a fair way each time.

As games do get more complex, developers seem to be shoe-horning more and more gameplay features into a given game and simply bloating it out with unnecessary junk, just like graphical gimmicks such as lens flare in the mid 90’s features like over zealous use of bullet time and recharging shields are copied, ripped off and emulated constantly, does every third person shooter need bullet time? It only ticks another box on the grab bag of features most developers cram into any modern game.

Simplicity is key to creating decent gameplay I think, course I could ( probably am ) wrong but most players don’t want to be overburdened with too many rules or restricting features its all very well creating hundreds of rules and restrictions but if the game isn’t fun after all the features added its useless.

A classic example is MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, a huge multiplayer game taking place over the Star Wars universe the game promised the world but delivered very little – plagued by a promised feature set that was simply too big many of these features were dropped while those that actually managed to get through were broken from day one and even to this day despite major patches from SOE attempting to fix them the game still feels like many as a beta version.

Taking this simplicity vs. complexity study further, two multiplayer death match games one is Quake 3 the other Unreal Tournament 2004, both are high speed ‘twitch shooter’ games based on various popular modes of play originally spread through Quake 1. Unreal Tournament 2004 features 10 game modes and even features vehicles, it’s important to note that at the time having vehicles in an fps shooter regardless of plot or setting was the current fad, see bullet time for an explanation of this. The game was also built using the then newish Unreal 2 engine with the maps, arguably the single most important element in a game involving high speed competitive shooter, merely graphical showcases for the engine with very little consideration given to the layout and flow of each map the game was also littered with pointless powerups and unbalanced weapons. Quake 3 on the other hand had just 4 modes of play all of which were perfect carbon copies of death match or capture the flag people used to play on every other multiplayer title at the time, the game had no vehicles instead restricting the game to a series of self contained maps, these maps while graphically inferior to the UT2004 offerings played perfectly and firm favourites were soon found. The weapons themselves were perfectly balanced no weapon dominated the entire map instead each one became a specialist tool for specific instances, with even the most powerful weapons having major weak points

This is an example of feature bloat with a developer adding in more and more unnecessary features as well as graphics wining over gameplay during development time.

Gameplay could also be intepreted as methods of control, if your control scheme dosen't work the game is useless - more deeply not only can a decent control layout fuse the interactions of the player with his or her onscreen persona it can also create and enhance the game experience, Resident Evil 4 a third person horror game unlike any other game using a similair control method does not have a strafe action, this slows the game right down and make the action all the more frantic as the player positions themsleves in a position to kill the onslaught of spanish people ( not zombies this time ). The player can also not run and gun and instead must be standing still to use any weapons another element that adds to the overall tension of the game

In the end I think developers need to find a good mix of gameplay and graphics marrying the two with perfectly balanced controls and stop simply emulating the current market fad and chucking in every gameplay feature to make a competitively made game

Criticising the critics

Reviewers mean critics and critics ultimately mean opinions or rather there opinion, I despise critics purely for this reason even there name annoys me 'critics' to criticise something sometimes constructively sometimes not.

But unlike film reviwers, arguably the most elitist bunch in a pot of snobbery - games reviews are something different. Unlike films, predefined linear experiences games are different, for the most part they share similair atributes with there filmic cousins there still tied together with an engrossing plot and mulidimensional charaecters but theres something thats different from film - gameplay.

What makes a decent game? Its not its storyline or the detailed back story of its charecters although this does sometimes help, its how well the little fat italian man jumps along your screen or that lest level boss - gameplay is what makes a decent game amazing, how do you review this, is there any formualic theory that reviwers follow?

For the most part there isnt, they simply review current games by way of comparison with whatever the current genre topper is, this is all well and good for generic shooter 4 or Sims expansion 4431 - 'Recruitment centre fun!' determining how many boxes it ticks to fill in with every other title on the market but if its a new game or one that dosen't neccesarly follow the norm, more often than not several things happen:

1. Graphics are scrutinised, Does the game feature visceral amounts of blood and gore? If yes, congratulations! Your instantly a mature game and any question of simplistic gameplay is washed aside in a flurry of headshots and apprecitative teenagers

2. If the game features somehow cartonny or stylised graphics, the gameplay is instatly a moot point regardless of depth of play, especially to GTA chasing 14 yr olds - Look at most peoples perception of Nintendo's games for example, although thankfully this is changing

3. Does the game feature insaney beautiful graphics but severly lacks in gameplay options? This will still garner an above reasonable score especially on a new or just released console as reviewers are washed into the hype of said machine offering better and faster everything over the competitions previous offerings - im betting quite a few of the ps3's release games are merely graphical updates of the last games for example.

4. If the game somehow differs from the norm, be it plot, charecters or any other detail, the game is criticised for being too weird, as if following the norm guarentee's a good game. One of many reasons why criminally underated games like Beyond good and evil and Farenheit were completely over looked on release

Certainly there are others who have a genuine insight and knowledge of games and can deliver it in a proffesional journalistic manner but any console specific magazine is generally absolute dross, targetting whatever target audience the consoles themselves target and delivering any platform bias news by way of low brow sexist comments, and idiotic jokes.

Welcome to world of tomorrow !

Future of games eh? Well like any multi faceted industry this is almost impossible to predict, according to certain ‘industry professionals’ in the car industry by now were all supposed to be being driven around by autonomous flying cars and seeing as how games are now the fastest growing entertainment medium its doubly hard to reasonably predict gamings future over an entire industry, today’s big break through can become tomorrows fad and yesterdays classic becomes today’s has been.

Maybe its reflective of the age games as a whole, sure they’ve been around in some shape or form for around 60 years but it wasn’t until much later they began to take a huge global impact, around 1985 I think that by my games to humans anthropomorphic personification process would make the games industry a sprightly 21yr old, short attention span jumping from idea to idea still trying to get to grips with being a ‘big boy’ constantly trying to impress its older stale brother dressed in its new suit of ‘immersive gameplay’ and hat of ‘digital actors’. Course there was a time, not so long ago when you consider the evolution of other entertainment media, when a boy in his room armed with just a idea for a game and an inquisitive nature could create a commercial hit, course like any start up industry essentially made up of enthusiasts more than capable with a bit of code but not too great at marketing and ever escalating development costs the suits closed in – in this instance dressed as publishers.

The premise was simple the people would develop the new games and the bespoke publisher would advertise and package the final product creating shelf space for it in spectrum world or wherever you kids went then. This has essentially been the blue print ever since, developers propose a game to a respective developer and they decide whether or not it’s worth making.

At the start there wasn’t a problem, games were still cheap enough to develop for a publisher to take a few commercial failures before the developers had there breakthrough and created there smash hit clawing back the dosh, new genres were being created almost every month with the likes of Dune heralding in the RTS genre and Wolfenstein properly introducing the world to the FPS perspective (that Ultima game doesn’t count – was technically 2d just used a scrolling panel)

*Went a bit wacky with me tense here – basically your in the future 2010, got somewhat confused writing it for some reason*

Fast forward to 2010 and what do you find? Still no flying cars but games are now huge the largest fastest growing entertainment medium and publishers have warped into the game equivalent of film studio’s commanding billions in assets but playing the entire industry as just that, an industry with opportunities for profit not new gameplay opportunities or interests in pushing the industry forward. A modern game can now take roughly 50 million dollars to produce, not factoring in advertising and packaging costs why should the publishers who still provide the money for the development houses to produce these games provide the money if there not guaranteed a return on there investment?

Publishers and the entire industry to a certain extent are now stuck in an inescapable circle – forged at the very start of modern gaming. As games become more and more complex requiring more time and money to develop publishers are less likely to take risks instead relying on sequels and expansion packs to tried and tested formulas. Where before new genres were being created constantly now the same tired idea’s and game types are trotted out year after year – Any sports game identical to last years but with this years stats copied and pasted into, whatever time period every single fps shooter suddenly decides to visit bouncing along humanities timeline like a space hopper ad infinitum, countless expansion packs revisiting the originals gameplay dynamics but in a slightly different social setting, I’m looking at you Sims. Add on to this the strict development times publishers command of there developers and the end product is a clone of every other game on the market, merely emulating gameplay style rather than creating new ones – revolution rather than evolution.

But developers are fighting back, with the advent of high speed world wide internet around 2000 and the introduction of pioneer content delivery systems like Steam it’s now simply not viable to have a publisher create a hard copy of what is originally in a digital format easily transferable and copied, then placed on a DVD and physically placed on shop shelves for the customer to come and buy something that could have been easily and quickly downloaded directly to his/her computer by the time it takes them to walk to the shops. With Developers starting up secure download services for customers to quickly download the games, publishers are taken out of the picture in one swoop now developers can concentrate on making new games exploring new gameplay techniques and not worry about excessive time limits or having there intellectual properties held to ransom over the money required to develop them, this also combats a spiralling problem and one that ran in parallel to the overall cost of a game, piracy.

For every game sold, 4 people have downloaded it free. Once a publisher factors in this dynamic a game has to be incredibly successful for any chance of a developer hoping to create a sequel.

Especially in the PC sector piracy was rife every apparently ‘copy secure’ disc publishers trotted out a few days later the game would be freely available online stripped of its copy protection, unlike the music and film industries who instead of embracing the internet and its high speed content delivery have tried and constantly failed to ban the transference of film and music. Games on the other hand at one with the emergence of the internet and its worldwide explosion have offered secure content delivery – a specific account bound to a customer’s name and credit card details ensuring unless someone is willing to share credit card details with someone online piracy is pretty much wiped out. However games are still getting progressively more and more complex with costs ever spiralling, instead of developers throwing more and more money at it like the previous publishers developers concentrate on streamlining there development process factoring in content creation to AI in one single pipeline ensuring games are produced much more quickly and to a generally cheaper budget.

On the hardware side consoles are still just that, consoles. Every new generation and there apparent move to a more PC architecture always heralds the apparent death knell for the PC. It never comes – however much people say consoles are becoming more and more like PC’s there simply not. A hard drive does not make a pc, consoles are prefabricated boxes technological snapshots of whatever the cutting edge was on there day of creation you cannot upgrade a console to the same extent you can a PC sure you might be able to upgrade the hard drive increasing the storage capacity but I can do that with my digital camera.

There huge modular nature and the fact all new graphics and processing technologies are tested first on the pc as well as all games being developed on the pc regardless of the games final destination ensure the PC will always be at the cutting edge. Actually that’s a good point if modern consoles are supposed to be like PC’s why don’t we see developers actually creating the games on them? It’s not a case of control a keyboard and mouse can easily be connected but of distribution and networking if individual developers can’t share assets it’s useless.

As for the entire industry getting bigger – new target demographics are being sought with new control methods and means of presentation , as started by Nintendo in the early 2000’s once the apparent play thing of the nerdy teenage boy games are now enjoyed by most age groups. Once games were seen as ‘murder simulators’ shallow two dimensional play things there now seen as equal to film or literature, simply telling a story – the same genres exist but the opportunities for expansion by way of the explosion in audience ensure new methods of gameplay.

This could essentially be seen as the renaissance for the games industry

'arghdfdf!!11' Dead bird in face: or why games are scarier than film

Saw saw 3 yesterday ( tee hee! saw saw! like a inverted see-saw or rather ) wow what a silly film, horror films always brings out the sceptic in me and this one was a doozy, full of 'arrghhhh yes look in the cupoard when theres obviously someone behind you' or 'How 'bout using that fork lift truck you've been suspended from for the past half hour to i dunno maybe break down that flimsy chain link fence and uh escape?'

But apart from me clearly being head smarts when it comes to a horror situation, the other thing that washed straight over my head was the gore, im not saying im some kind of gore fanatic and truth be told i get a lot more scared at more mundane things in life 'oh crap my keys are inside how am i going to get back in?' sending more chills down my spine at recollection than any horror scene. In fact the scariest thing was the dawning that Jigsaw the films anti hero bares an uncanny resemblance to Gary Glitter

But i just ended up mentaling counting each grisly scene and mentally ticking it off where i've seen it in a game, point blank shotgun to face? Soldier of fortune 2, Acid burns? Prey Dismembrement by ways of fancy saw blades? Quake 4. Being bathed in fetid pig guts? Again Quake 4 and damnit we went all the way and used people.
Apart from the chain bit which again they just ripped off the original hell raiser and the rib bit which they heavily borrowed from the 'blood angel' the vikings used to do to the pesky Christians there was nothing i had'nt seen before.

Theres only so many things you can do to a body before it comes boring or worse comic, thats why i think games certainly in the horror genre are finally moving away from film. Its our oldest emotion and one that games have always been damn good at raising, pretty much every game, ok not sports one and no not that driving one your holding, use horror in one way or another. Developers have to learn to pace themselves otherwise you end up with just a closet jumper like Doom3 a typical film is an hour and a half long a typical first person shooter lasts for around 8 hours this presents much more oppurtunity for the developers to suggest horror or something ajar instead of jumping straight into the blood and guts routine.

The scariest piece of media i ever experienced was the Cradle level in Thief3 good god, that made me forget what century it was let alone i was staring at a screen. A huge labyrinth level set in a partly destroyed orphanage/insane asylum. Relying upon the player to piece together the clues and create the monsters in there own imagination, its not until almost the very end you even see a monster but theres always the anticipation that just around this corner is that monster your imagining.

Im gonna explore games as horror devices later in alot more detail, me thinks got the ol' noggin a turnin

Im sure i saw a monday around here somewhere

Well, my alarm went off today got up 5 minutes before im meant to be in my lecture then stopped, wait i told myself, the clocks have gone back you've gained an hour matey, go back to bed! So i did again to wake at 5 to 10, got up and rushed to Fletcher - increasing the pace as i realised i might end up in the animation lounge again *shudder* with people talking about fantastical things like some 'maya' or rather.
Got in the lift, usual routine with the damn fashion students only ever going up one floor, honestly i've only been here a few weeks and i want to kill them god knows how Micheal feels....
Anywho so i stepped out of the lift, Floor 9 10:00 really 9:00 and what do i see? Some illicit drug cartel that Micheals been running? Ghosts playing Call of Duty? A unicorn?

No, i see a locked door and the lights switched off with none of the computers powered on and me feeling like an idiot - i checked all the parameters the time, the location and slowly realised, i was on my own remember, that maybe it wasnt tuesday but monday. Scew people going 'cool! i've gained an hour, back to bed!' through my own stupidity i've gained an entire day, hah beat that!

Gaming keg of fun

Well god i thought i already did this, um i guess i can pad out the middle bit a litle.
After Quake i discovered Unreal Tournament although it was rendered in treacle vision due to my comp barely meeting the minimum spec at the time, 200mhz and 32megs of ram baby!

Anywho i pretty much converted to that and then continued to play that religiously - i loved the variation in map designs how you could jump from an ancient castle to a space station to some kind of hybrid space castle thing floating on is own exclusive lump'O rock in the middle of nowhere. I eventually got my computer upgraded to something approaching decent for the time and was capable of running modern games, before i had been lagging behind but now i could run with the big boi's! Ahem...yes a 450mhz P2 and a 32 meg tnt2 worked wonders at the time when shaders were something you'd uh um do something humourous with. Anywho i continued on this first person shooter ride sampling some Mortyr here, blururghh to some Unreal there, odd really never got that game. But it was Quake 3 that well changed my life i suppose - lame and cliched as it sounds it probaly did if unreal tounrnament captivated me in terms of its variations in map designs quake 3 dazzled me with its pure gameplay brilliance yes it was just deathmatch to people who were'nt watching it closely but everyting from the way in which the doorways were constructed to allow people to fly through propelled by rockets to the timings of the powerups and the placement of the weapons or the specific stats of each weapon that ensured that even with the most powerful weapon a player could never dominate the map on just firepower.
Quake 3 pretty much taught me about how games were made - i learnt how maps were made with its map editor and even today can pretty much map out a room with my eyes closed, woo thats a party trick right there, i learnt about textures and there specific resolutions light placement, optimization and triggers to me it was a huge keg of pretty much undocumented wonder.
After that i was firmly cemented in the fps genre of games i played online games like everyone else sampled some mods and you basically end up at the last section of hte previous segment of this.
Hope this has been inteesting but i keep gicing myself aheadache thinking back this far

Growing pains

The ‘middle ages’ or the periods between the 1980’s to 1990’s saw a huge leap in games with a shift away from traditional arcades to home-centric consoles and the introduction of now familiar companies and genres.
It was Atari, Nolan Bushells company one of the key players during the initial rise of consoles during the late 70’s that gained the most popularity during the early 80’s with the introduction of the Atari 2600 this went up against its competitors the Colecovision and Mattels first entry into the competitive console market the Intellivision. All consoles gained popularity with there perfect reprsentation of popular arcade games, in fact this emulation of arcade games was probably one of the main reasons the consoles proved to be most popular, ‘why waste dozens of quarters/ten pence in a grotty arcade with snotty kids when you can play all these games for free as many times as you like in the comfort of your own home?’ they seemed to ask, it was Atari following from there tradition of copying games from there copyright infringing copy of space invaders that was the clear cut winner due to the release of "major" titles for the machine, including rushed home ports of arcade hits Asteroids and Defender, as well as original titles such as Adventure and Haunted House. The 2600 was the clear-cut winner of the race, but would also suffer a bit because of Atari's poor business decisions. When the time came to get a home port of Pac-Man licensed, Atari released it to much fanfare, before fans realized just how big of a loser it was. The entire formula was tweaked with, and the arcade experience just never came through. Regardless of this Atari became a house hold name and was the spokes-company for the entire industry, like any other huge corporation in a popular position Atari cocked up, big time.

On the back of Steven Spielberg’s supremely popular E.T the extra terrestrial Atari decided it would develop the licensed game, even though the details of the transaction were never fully divulged it was widely reported that Atari had paid US$20–25 million for the rights—an abnormally high figure for video game licensing at the time and one that would take until the late 90’s to become the norm. Due to the extended length and the high number of delays in agreeing to the licence Atari only had only five weeks in order to meet the September 1 deadline necessary to ship in time for Christmas shopping season. By comparison previous Atari games, Yar’s revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark, each took around 4 to 7 months to complete. An arcade game based on the E.T. property had also been planned, but this was deemed to be impossible given the short deadline. Warsaw who had previously worked on the fore mentioned games accepted the assignment, and was reportedly offered 200,000 USD as well as an prepaid Hawaiian holiday. This to me just shows Atari’s ignorance at the time, if something didn’t work or someone was under pressure they simply threw money at it until it solved the problem, a 2 million dollar bonus and a luxury holiday does not make a good game. Due to the extreme time limit involved the game was rushed throughout all stages of its development - the game play plan for example took just two days to create and testing was skipped completely.

Unsurprisingly the game was a complete failure, Atari bolstered by its previous success on earlier releases forced retailers to accept one year orders in advance for the entire year. At that time, Atari had dominated the software and hardware market, and Atari was routinely unable to fill orders because of this. At first, retailers responded by placing orders for more supplies than they actually expected to sell, but gradually, as new competitors began to enter the market and word of mouth spread about the quality of the game, Atari started receiving an increasing number of order cancellations for which the company was simply not prepared eventually Atari had a huge surplus of surplus cartridges, these cartridges numbering over 2 million in number were eventually buried in a landfill in new Mexico.
E.T. is seen by many as the death knell for Atari and is widely regarded as one of the worst games ever produced as well as one of the biggest commercial failures in videogame history. A major contributing factor to Atari's demise, the game's failure epitomizes the video game crash of 1983.

Following the crash of ‘83 personal computers took hold spurred on by companies such as IBM and Compaq these PC-clones of popular more expensive computers where equally as powerful as previous consoles 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.
However the PC’s reign was short lived with the introduction of the NES from Japanese newcomer Nintendo. Known to the western world as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it was bundled with Super Mario Bros. ( Cor I wonder how that did…) and was an over night success, retailers more than cautious of introducing another console system so soon after the crash of 83 simply placed it on there shelves with no advertising or market exposure regardless of this the NES was a colossal success in America while in other territories other newcomers were as successful including the Sega Master system in Europe and the PC Engine in Japan. This introduction also saw the advent of new methods of control with the old fashioned joystick of the arcades synonymous with the market crash of 83 replaced with console pads with many more buttons and a 8 way directional or D’ pad.
During this time many popular games where born although they would be unrecognizable from there current form, Squaresoft maker of the now supremely popular Final Fantasy was struggling and decided to make their final game, titled Final Fantasy (1987), a role-playing game modelled after the previously successful game Dragon Quest, the games success saved Squaresoft and the Final Fantasy series was born as a result going on to become one of the most successful RPG franchises . At around the same time, the Legend of Zelda series made its debut on the NES with The Legend of Zelda (1986). Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear series also made its debut with the release of Metal Gear (1987) on the MSX2 computer, giving birth to the stealth-based game genre. Metal Gear was ported to the NES shortly after. In 1989, Capcom released Sweet Home (1989) on the NES, which served as a precursor to the survival horror game genre, in particulaur the original Resident Evil.



Due to ever spiralling prices and market exposure the 90’s were about games maturing into a Hollywood-esque landscape of ever-increasing budgets and increasingly wary publishers. At this time, the wide variety of games that existed in the 1980s, traditional arcade game such as space invaders or missile command faded away, with the larger corporations desiring to maximize profitability and lower risk in the form of sequel after sequel to popular franchises.
The introduction of the 3d accelerator and the huge increase in size of cd-roms meant developers could squeeze more data into there games, at first developers were unsure of what to do with this seemingly infinite space relying on full motion video or FMV games to fill the space requirement, with the advent of 3d acellerators and higher resoltion textures and sounds the cd-rom's quickly filled up.
When the 16-bit and 32-bit in the form of the SNES and Playstation respectively consoles arrived offering superior graphics and sound to the arcades. By this time, video arcades had earned a reputation for being seedy, unsafe places. An increasing number of players would wait for popular arcade games to be ported to consoles rather than going out. Arcades had a last hurrah in the early 90s with Street Fighter II and the one-on-one fighting game genre, although arcades in Japan are still just as popular with many games getting arcade only releases amd a special culture developing over the fighting games, the best players even developing into minor celebrities. As patronage of arcades declined, many were forced to close down. Classic coin-operated games have become largely the province of dedicated hobbyists. The gap left by the old corner arcades was partly filled by large amusement centres dedicated to providing clean, safe environments and expensive game control systems not available to home users, although these have never been able to once draw in the crowds as much as the original arcades did.

1989-1994
At this time, America was dominated by the Sega Genesis, known to me as the Megadrive (woo!) Nintendo debuted there SNES console in 1991 running on the same naming conventions as the NES, but this one was a SUPER nintendo entertainment system kids. The two consoles battled for market supremacy with the two consoles acheiving roughly half the marketshare each. The NEC Turbografx 16 also debuted around this time but a lack of English supported games and poor advertising in the face of Sega and Nintendo ensured it nver achieved a foothold in America.
The high levels of competition between the 3 companies ensured the marketting plan was more than a ittle harsh thoroughout with Sega producing the slogan, 'Sega does what Nintendon't and bth companies flinging around buzz words and slogans informing the general public there console was ultimately better because of 'blast processing' or some crap.