The Game Critique

A year and a fortnight ago I started this site from the idea that I wanted to critique games, as one would do to a book or movie, looking at what they mean. It is hard to believe that it has been a full year. In that time I’ve learned about the larger spheres of critical communities: the brainysphere, the iris network, the border house and their overlaps. I like to think I’ve made some friends in that time and haven’t totally ticked anyone off with my constant need to argue and debate.

I’ve learned more about the nature of criticism from these astute people, many of them amateurs, than I have from my entire schooling. So to all the people to the right in the ludodidecahedron, this is my thanks to you. For teaching me and putting up with me.

I’ve just gone back over the last year and what has happened on this blog, a lot of it connected to what happened in the critical circles and the gaming culture at large. I don’t know if it is coincidence or not, but I’ve actually played less games this year, the first year I began critiquing them in any ordered manner, than in the previous years. And most of the games I’ve played were not from this year, but what I did do I have to say I am really proud of.

I know anything I could say about the nature of my being a critic I already covered earlier this year. So I wont go into any manifesto talk, but rather talk about some of my better writing this year.

In looking back over my game essays I realized more ink was spilled over Prince of Persia than any other game. A game I ostensibly disliked and felt insulted by, you can read here. My other game essays this year that I am proud of were on Beyond Good & Evil, again can be read here and a post on Flower with it’s twin linked in the post.

Of course I also wrote about the goings on around gaming sphere, throwing my two cents in where I thought necessary. Like on the Citizen Kane issue that erupted into a meme almost overnight. I asked where all the war games were and wrote an epic length response to Danc’s three false constraints. (I swear I’ll figure out that IP issue.)

While QWERTY may be dead, he did leave a legacy. Ok, not so much a legacy, more of a lot of WTF moments. But he had at least one or two good posts. And I always give credit where credit is due. Originally it was supposed to be a weekly feature on the blog, something to anchor it to some sort of schedule. Several months after QWERTY’s demise I started the Indie Game Spotlight. Though it has been sporadic for now, at least it has been more favorably received.

Despite some horrendous setbacks and some annoying setbacks I think I didn’t do too badly for an inaugural year. In looking over my categories, and this has more to do on my end that yours, while most are self explanatory others need clarification. Game Essays, Critical Responses, External Sources are self-explanatory. Recent Posts is the way my system orders the posts correctly on the front page. I got knocked a few times for posts labeled under Thoughts being not as well thought out or being wastes of time. In part I think that’s because of their schizophrenic nature. Some are just meandering thoughts about games in general that came to mind and I wrote down, while others are full fledged essays. In the New Year I am going to fix that. Thoughts will be the quick posts dashed off, while those that are more essay like, not tied to a specific title will be under a new category. I’m thinking of calling it Game Issues.

Finally there is my writing itself. While improving quality is a forever ongoing process that can be seen even over this blogs short existence, content is another matter. As of the time of writing this in 2009 I’ve posted only 43 times. With more time on my hands and presumably more disposable income I will try to write more on games, especially more game essays. Also, while there is nothing wrong with looking back and critiquing old titles, I will try and stay more in the current conversation. I will also try to keep to the plan in the new year of getting Indie Game Spotlight to be a weekly feature. It will be better for the blog and me as a gamer. And I’ve been telling a lot of people of a series of posts on the issue of formalism in gaming; I will try and keep to that as well.

In short, great year mostly spent on the old stuff. A good first year, but hopefully more content and better content in the next year and the next decade. Speaking of which, I’m putting off my decade list until the decade is actually over and I’ve gotten the chance to play some of the contenders I’ve missed. Next post will be my Game of the Year and then I’ll take off a week to actually game.

I’ve been playing Battlefield 1943 a lot lately. It’s the first shooter I’ve played in a long time. I am usually a single player game kind of guy and usually shun multiplayer modes, unless the person is sitting right next to me. But I tried out the demo and I was hooked in the free half hour it gave me and immediately bought the unlocked game. Playing it lead me to a realization.

The game is great, I have to say it is the most intricate and detailed game of checkers I’ve ever played.

What I mean by that, if you read the title of the post, is that it is not a war game in feel or purpose, but really is a complex game of checkers where three interchangeable classes, literally if you find a fallen backpack, fight over five strategic points on a map. Dying is only a momentary annoyance, but it would be worse if it were anything else in a multiplayer game. I like the game don’t get me wrong, but that is all it is, a game.

Regardless of a few fleeting moments it ends up being a games of checkers and wack-a-mole. In fact I think I can extend that to any game purporting to be about war. As noted over at Experience Points, and HitSelfDestruct there is an absence in civilians that would engender certain consideration on a real battlefield. Beyond that I find that a majority of games with a war backdrop put you in the position of an Ubermench, a super soldier that would put Captain America to shame. You take over entire enemy bases, kill entire divisions and disrupt the manufacture of war machines that could turn the tide of battles.

For power fantasies like those that try to emulate 80s action films that’s fine and expected, but most of these games have their influence in real life conflicts (eg. World War II games) or base their fictional conflict on the machinations of real conflicts (eg. Killzone 2 being World War II in Space).

Medal of Honor: Frontline, a classic in the World War II shooter sub genre, hold to a realistic depiction of the war with the first few levels with the storming of the Normandy beaches and assault on the bunkers, but once that is over the game sends you on a number of solo missions to disrupt major military instillation behind enemy lines.

I wonder if it is possible to have a reasonable war game that puts you in the shoes of a real soldier. With the constraints that the player has to be able to succeed and for something to be happening on screen at all times that the player can have an effect on, it seems unlikely.

In narrative games, the player has to win. Any losses are experienced through cutscenes after the player has achieved victory in the game itself. The reason there is no game where you play a Nazi is less to do with the moral ambiguity of the premise and more to do with the fact that they LOST THE WAR. A player doesn’t play to lose, so they cannot play the losing side of a conflict unless you are going to allow them to play with the facts of history like some RTSs do or have that loss portrayed in an end of game cutscene to show despite all their efforts they still lost.

Also, the concept that the player has to have an effect on the game world is not an unreasonable one; it is the basis of the entire medium. In a firefight, for example, it is very reasonable to have the player shooting enemies, have an effect on the outcome of the firefight. But in a war game that tries to be about the conflict itself, it seems to translate that the individual player, a normal soldier, having an effect on the outcome of the war. I can understand how that might work in a strategy game where you are taking the role of a Commander or General, but it is far fetched to think that an individual private’s efforts will determine the outcome of the sociopolitical sphere of the western world.

Then there is the fact that in a medium about interaction. War, at first glance, seems like a great place to set the game, until you realize what war actually is. War is long bouts of boredom interrupted by a few moments of sheer terror.  Are you going to have long bouts of boredom in a video game? No. The game has to cherry pick the moments of action a soldier would feel and we understand that as the nature of the medium. Therefore it is about how those moments are portrayed. Unfortunately, with regularity, war video games are an extension of the power fantasy video games. They put military actions up on a pedestal and glorify war. The glory to be had isn’t even in the vein of the Homeric epic where it is in death and being immortalized that glory is gained, but in the vein of Hollywood bad asses where it is earned from victory and being able to laugh in the distance at their fallen foes.

To put it simplistically, war video games are more The Green Berets, than All Quiet on the Western Front or Platoon or Apocalypse Now. Hell I’d even take the Saving Private Ryan version of a war video game. I would like to see something that recognizes or acknowledges the horrors and realizations of war rather than glorifying it.

I put it to designers like this: a soldier has few tools and uses them as trained when deployed, it is up to intelligent men to deploy the soldier intelligently. Or to put it in terms of video games, the player has few tools and will use them and it is up to the designers to set the situation and tone of the game. The message can be delivered and like everything else in video games it is going to be from the presentation.

So, yes I will continue to play my game of virtual World War II checkers, but I don’t want to be one of the few people left that realize war is hell before going into battle. There is more anti-war media in every other medium for a reason. War is not pleasant, war is not fun and I worry that if video games don’t find a way to deal with it beyond mechanical interface that we will be left behind.

Gaming Made Me started with the crew over at RocksPaperShotgun and the various designers they asked, and then others in the middle circle have taken up the question of which video games have made them who they are. Michael McBride talked about how discussing such information will have your audience better understand who you are and where you’re coming from when they read your analysis. I’m willing to one step further and say it’s an excellent method of self-examination so you can understand yourself better, see any biases you might have and write better critique in the long run. I figured it was my turn after last post’s self-searching nature, plus it felt like a good exercise

So here we go.

Streets of Rage 2 – Sega Genesis – 1992

This was the first console title I ever owned for the first console I ever owned. It came packaged in and as soon as I opened it I plugged it in and immediately began playing. I remember on my first try though I picked Max, because he was the toughest and buffest looking character of the choices. I got the three-button control scheme pretty quickly and soon succumbed to a Game Over screen before I had even beaten the first section of the first level. My next major memory of the game was in co-op and how a friend and I learned the lesson of friendly fire and collateral damage. We divided up the screen; he would take the top and I would take the bottom. We also divided the health and money as evenly as the game would allow. We could never agree on weapons if there was only one. Finally my last major memory of that era was late one Sunday evening when I finally made it to the 8th stage again and after much effort and bad beats I finally finished off the last boss and got that stage clear. I cheered and hollered and jumped up and down. After the closing cut scenes and credits I was presented with the top scores board and then the Press Start to Play screen.

A while back I located, setup and plugged in that game and found none of it had left me. I still understood the tricks to beating certain bosses. I still remembered the timing to do infinite punches and most importantly I still remembered where most of the secret 1up items were. There are few games I know as well as I know Streets of Rage 2. Thanks to the Genesis collection I can play it whenever I want and in HD. I get excited whenever I hear the “dun dun duh duh de dun duhh eh eh” 80s style riff of the opening level.

In looking back what I find interesting was my initial reaction to the game. Or rather how I responded to what it presented me. The opening that sets the scene is done in showing a pixilated NYCish city in the background and a text scrawl that is the story ala Star Wars. It ends with an evil mastermind’s face and hands appearing like a puppet master over the city. I ignored the text. I ignored the story. I had no idea what was going on and who I was. All I knew I learned from the gameplay. I was the good guy and everyone else was the bad guy. That’s all you really need to know as the entire game plays out like an extended final fight scene in an 80s action movie with all the first and second acts that would take up screen time done in the opening crawl. Later play-throughs I would skip that text crawl section entirely, until I beat the game that first time. The next time I sat down to play I stopped and read the whole thing. I didn’t fully understand, I was 8, but I actually cared about the story after having seen the ending and wondering who that extra character was they rescued. I saw the resolution and then I wanted to know exactly what was resolved. Even as fantastical and unbelievable the story sometimes seemed to be getting, the details in setting forced the player to fill in the blanks about what was going on. More than any other game Streets of Rage 2 introduced me to the concept of video games as a narrative medium. I didn’t understand it like that back in, but from then on I always wanted to know why I could or was doing something rather than just what could I do.

Goldeneye – N64 – 1997

Arguably the best movie to video game adaptation ever made, this set the original standard for FPSs on the consoles and where nearly all of my video game hours during middle school went. I beat the game on easy and then spent years trying to beat the levels on the higher difficulties. I would use the train level as others use a stress ball after a bad day at school. However, that is not where most of my time went. Most of it went to the multiplayer. Because of its multiplayer this is probably the game I have sunk more hours into than any other. Three friends and myself would all sit in front of the same screen shooting the hell out of each other at my house, at a friend’s house or at the local youth center. I like many others got the N64 blister working that analog stick.

Many games have had same screen multiplayer. What did I gain from this one in particular? I could call it a version of emergent storytelling. The same four people would play over and over. Eventually we developed favorite levels and favorite weapon stocks.  Soon we found our favorite match: proximity mines in the Aztec Temple with no time or kill limit. Beyond that we began choosing the same avatars and for every kill some of us supplied our own catch phrases. “I spit on your corpse” and “I am the lion in the jungle” were two of them. We had our own personalities in these death matches. We never got bored of playing essentially the same match over and over, because it would never be the same match.

The moment that remains in my mind to this day is where the game had been going on for a long time; I’d like to say an hour or so. The entire map has been littered with mines and if the game had destructible environments it would not be standing anymore. I stocked up on proximity mines in the large upper hall, planted a few more around and then realized I could not move without dying. I couldn’t go forward because of the mines I just planted and I couldn’t go backwards because of mines planted by others maybe 20 minutes ago. I saw one of the doors open on the far side and silently said ‘no.’ He entered and was instantly killed by the explosion. That explosion was followed by another and another and another. He had set off a chain reaction that crossed the entire hall. Just before it hit me I tried to escape and died a fiery death. That sort of thing cannot be planned and have the same effect. We were amazed and then kept on playing.

Yes the game’s graphics don’t hold up that well, but it was a milestone and everything else about the game does. Last year my friends and I went back to the game and dumped a few more hours into it. We tried a few new modes and weapons. It was still as good and as fun as ever.

Baldur’s Gate – PC – 1998

This is the grand daddy of them all. This is my all-time favorite game. It is also the best video game RPG ever made. But this about influence not quality. I dumped a lot of hours into this game as well, the big difference being that I’ve never beaten it, nor even come close. The game has so much content that I had to go off the beaten path and explore every section into the farthest wiles and deepest depths of danger and death. I went to the absolute limits of the map boarders. I went through every nook and cranny exploring every part of every map. I would uncover dangers I could not handle, run away or reload and come back, when I was ready so I could continue. This is the first video game to create such a complete world, one that seems to live and breath with so many unique characters. Even the repeatable no name citizens seem to adequately fill the world. What I love is unlike so many others are that the story allows such exploration. There is no immanent end of the world. The story is epic, but it is very personal. People are after you and you have to hide from them/fight them. Only you and your party care and some of the party members don’t even care about you and are there just for their own agendas. No one else in this world is invested in you. They have their own problem and their own lives. There are also references to an even wider world that extends the very large boarders of the world to locals like Amn, Waterdeep and Neverwinter. I was pulled into this world like no other game before it.

In part I think it may have to do that the game is based of the Forgotten Realms campaign world. The Sword Coast was already heavily detailed and much of the history, culture, and important world building were already in place. The game took the license and did everything it could to it. Over the years I had to restart the game due to bad saving choices, computer changes and faulty installs. Each time I played those first few chapters I find even more details and content that somehow escaped me on those previous ventures. For example, in one instance you meet an inane half naked idiot talking and one of the responses is as follows:

“Ok, I’ve just about had my FILL of riddle asking, quest assigning, insult throwing, pun hurling, hostage taking, iron mongering, smart arsed fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, patience! If you’ve got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I’m going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it lengthwise into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells themselves wouldn’t touch it with a twenty-foot rusty halberd! Have I MADE myself perfectly CLEAR?!”

After reading that there was no way I could not choose it. It’s a line that I make a point to keep memorized. The old man’s response went along the lines of: “Well if that’s how you’re going to be.” He went on to give one last fact that made utterly no sense. Until I read some book on a random shelf and what he said clicked. It sent a chill through me. It is that kind of interconnectivity that you just don’t find just anywhere or I think even anywhere else. Nevermind that the dialogue choice is itself the best critique of the RPG and fantasy genres ever. I often find myself wondering why a game doesn’t try a morose and utterly depressing character choice? Why isn’t there a character who isn’t happy to see adventurers? Why isn’t there a quest that solves itself while you look on? Why does everyone have to know you are the hero and not some shulb? Or a quest where the quest giver doesn’t want you to complete it for non malevolent reason? And then each time I come up with something I stop and realize whatever example I was lamenting about had already been done in Baldur’s Gate. It was just so big and full in my eyes that despite any problems I felt like there was a world there I could live in if I could crawl into the screen.

I scoured my memories trying to figure out what games effected me in some way. The ones that influenced the way I react to them or even those that shaped my current tastes. I remember games lost to time. I remember games that probably wont show up anywhere on the internet if you do a search. I thought I knew what the first video game I played was, but going further and further back I realized how long video games have actually been apart of my life. I remember Win 95, I remember the autumn leaves wallpaper of Win 3.11 that I could only get to through a DOS command. I remember my Genesis, I remember my Game Gear, I remember my earliest electronic tutors and yes even my family’s Apple II in all its black and green glory. From King’s Quest VI to Myst to Doom to Wolfenstein 3D to Pixelart to Reading Rabbet. I remembered so many games I’d forgotten about and the time spent with them. It was wonderful sitting down to figure out which games stuck with me, which ones my mind thought deserved to be remembered and which ones Made Me.

Usually I take the criticism silently and appreciatively and I still do, but after more than seven months I’m still getting the same comment. “I can’t wait to see where your going with your blog.” It is a little annoying that after all this time my blog still feels schizophrenic enough that I haven’t fallen into any sort of groove yet. I felt that I had to spend some time examining my thoughts and my opinions of critiquing in a way I have never done so before and probably should have done in the first place. I sat down and thought about what exactly where I want to go with this site. First I want to clear up something that for the most part isn’t a problem, but I think in some cases it is causing some subconscious determinations about me. It will make sense in minute.

The name of the site is what it is, because when I was setting up everything I needed a site name and URL. I couldn’t come up with anything decent that wasn’t already in use. A friend of mine, who coincidentally is also the man who set up most of the behind the scenes infrastructure and my editor over at the CreativeFluff design blog, suggested GameCritique.com. A straight to the point name and almost a mission statement unto itself. It was taken. TheGameCritique.com was not. I laughed at the time that the name made me sound overly pretentious and I even wrote, when introducing it elsewhere, that you could not find a more pretentious name. Recently after a talk with Corvus Elrod on IRC some months ago that rather than the name be ridiculed or chuckled at as I thought it would be, I was being taken more seriously and it seemed more was expected because of the name than I was delivering or could. In other words to some people the name of the site made them think I had the answers. I’m sure most of you think that that isn’t the case, but I think the name is subconsciously affecting the people I discuss and debate with.

Which in the most roundabout way to lead me to my point. I do not know everything or really much of anything. If you second-guess me, then you can be sure that I am second guessing myself. I am learning on the job as it were. Back in November I could not have argued the thematic relevance in Prince of Persia, in January when I wrote that post I could not have argued and defended my theory of populous power in Beyond Good and Evil and when I wrote that one I’m sure I could not argue whatever is coming up next. I am continuing to evolve, so yes it may always be ‘I can’t wait to see where it goes.’ Doesn’t make it any less annoying that it’s always about where I’m going and never arriving.

However, I do take criticism and I like to think I take it well. I am going to address a few of criticism of my site.

QWERTY is now on indefinite hiatus. While previous entries had some point behind them, mostly ridiculing the argument of the week. Though this was lost on a lot of people, as he never gave context or back information for the satire, a problem in itself. And at the end of his run he wasn’t even trying and wasting my time as well as yours. I said at the beginning it was an experiment and was on a trial basis. The trial is over and QWERTY is done.

I have been told I have a fear that some bloggers have of giving specific examples. This has mainly to do with the fear of spoiling stories for people. I don’t like it to happen to me and I transmit that desire to others. When talking directly to a single person I can limit myself to what is necessary, because I either know or can ask if they’ve played a game and/or how far they’ve gotten. On the internet, however, anyone can read it and understandably it causes more fear of spoiling anything. It’s never been brought to my attention that I was doing this, so yes I will make an effort to stop doing that.

Finally the comment that made me think the most, and gets at the heart of what I want this post to express. I was told I don’t cover design aspects of a game when talking about them. This comment to me was saying that somehow I was doing it wrong. That my criticism was weak or invalid for not talking about them. Two things, one in certain arguments the design may have nothing to do with the argument. Secondly I rarely do arguments that have to do with design. I don’t feel I know not enough about it to discuss it intelligently.  Plus, when I do focus on it, I have an agreement that such posts go to CreativeFluff.com.

Which leaves me to explain what is left for this site. I said before I am an English major, that is how I will approach TheGameCritique. I look at video games as cultural artifacts. I look at them from the culture and creator that produced them. I look at the work to see what it is saying about the world and culture around it. Video games are the next art medium that is a fact. What that means or what it will look like when it comes to pass is another matter and another discussion entirely. My critique is not about is it good or bad, but what and why.

It is important to know where a critic is coming from when they critique otherwise they’re just sound bites. Critics do come from somewhere and look at things in certain ways. If anything I think I focus on Animist and Iconoclast nature of criticism. That will loosely associate with the bottom right and top right respectively in the graph above. I leave Classicist and Formalist readings to others.

Thank you for putting up with me for the last thousand or so words. I needed to get that out of the way before I can continue on and get back to work. If it got a little too ivory tower there at the end I apologize, but links to the various terms are provided if needed.

Yesterday over at Kotaku they had an article discussing the idea of a Video Game hall of fame. Where would this museum be? Ottumwa Iowa. Now before you go, ‘what the hell is Ottumwa?’ it does have some semblance of legitimacy for the honor. That city is known as the Video Game Capital of the World. The title of course is self induced, but the reason for it is back in the 1980s Ottumwa held an enormous gathering of the best arcade gamers in the world, including Billy Mitchel. They got on the cover of Time magazine and everything. It also was the former home of the Twin Galaxies arcade, now closed because of the Video Game Crash of ’83, but still in business as the organization responsible for issuing and keeping track of all video game world records, arcade and otherwise.You can read the article here: http://kotaku.com/5196471/a-claim-to-fame-in-the-dodge-city-of-video-games

The reason I bring this up is because it symbolizes a greater effort to combat the problems video games face as a growing medium. The idea of a Video Game Hall of Fame offers some idea of legitimacy to our culture as a whole. This along with viable criticism towards their cultural significance, the numbers now being posted by companies, and a new set of developers that have grown up with them are all factors towards the medium growing to its full potential.

Much of the major title releases right now are settling into stagnant formulas and it is getting difficult to tell the difference between them. There seems to be little variety not just in genre, but in the notes that developers are willing to hit. Deeper meaning in video games, both story-wise and with mechanics, are in their infancy and complexity seems within eyesight, but just out of reach.

A hall of fame isn’t the solution, but it is significant towards a larger movement to legitimize video games in the larger culture. Of course all of this is in the minority. The best we can do is push ahead and some day change the backward thinking that has seeped into our stagnant niche culture.

I try to be civil. I try to be nice and understanding to everyone. In other words it takes a lot to piss me off. Thank you to the asshole that broke into my room and stole my PlayStation 3. Thank you for making me have to take time out of my already packed and less than bright day to file a report and remove all credit information from my account. Thank you for changing my view of the world and making me feel no longer safe in my own room. Thank you for actually going out of your way to figure out which closed door was unlocked and which one contained an empty room so you could steal their stuff. Believe me this is one of those times I really wished I got back early so I could pound your face in. And most of all thank you for teaching me what has to happen, what a person has to do to make me hate them. Asshole, my friend, you have accomplished a rare feat in the world. You have managed to make me hate another human being. A feat that many of my friends sometimes don’t think is possible. I was going to put a real post up today. I was planning on getting one out every day this week. I had more than enough material. But somehow it doesn’t seem worth it anymore. I’ve had a busy day that wasn’t over yet and thanks to you got completely derailed. 5 hours later I find myself in an increasing state of pissed off and writing this instead of everything else I could be doing and should be doing. This was a bad day for me already, so thank you asshole for making it even worse. So I will put this in a way you can understand me. You want the police to find you, because you don’t want me to find you. I have enough stress without having to wonder if I’ll get what’s mine back and having to wonder if I have deal with this shit ever again. I don’t like having to lock my door just to go to the bathroom for 5 minutes. I’m not even sure I can get another one. They don’t make the 60 gig model anymore and even if they did, I don’t have the money. The hard work I poured into doesn’t matter anymore, my saves, my money, my time and now my critical effort. My only consolation is that a lot of my profile’s stuff is online and not on the machine.

To any readers I might have picked up I will finish up whatever work and game essays I still have. I might post a piece on what little PC gaming I own or DS gaming, but the fact of the matter is, most of the work I had coming up was on the PlayStation. Time will tell if I’ll even bother anymore.

Oh and one last thing.

Thanks asshole and FUCK YOU!

A few weeks ago I talked about games in their console generational context and received the internet equivalent of blank stares. After a little clarification I mentioned I had a post idea to define the generations and explain my own unique ways of dividing the history of video games. Someone said they liked the idea and so here we are.

For anyone to really understand the evolving state of an art form or medium must understand where it came from. Though video games have only been around for around 30 years it has a very long and detailed history, mostly thanks to the nature of technology. Of course the differences are more than just technological. There is a mentality change in the designers and the audience. We are presently in the 7th generation of consoles. Simultaneously we are in the Second Age of gaming and the 4th Era. Some may not know the details of the first, fewer of the second and I can almost guarantee no one had a clue about the third.

Something worth mentioning: this is the cliff notes version of video game history. My intention is to give a quick breakdown and explain the concepts. If I don’t mention your favorite obscure console, I don’t care. Some of the generations have upwards of 30 consoles I’ve never heard of and that never captured a market share.

A Lesson in History

The first generation could be explained as the cartridgeless generation. First the Odyssey, the home version of Pong, and others were machines with a single game programmed in and the later ones had two or three. The second generation saw the rise of Atari, and later ColecoVision. It was a great golden age of home console gaming that focused on bringing the arcade experience to the home TV. After the great video game crash of 1983, a new company came to American shores and brought the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES with them. Nintendo re-imagined the interest and became a powerhouse, meanwhile the last remnants of Atari, in the form of the Jaguar, died out as a hardware manufacturer. This is the 3rd generation, also known as the 8-bit era, named for the NES processing power. The 4th generation brought NES’ sequel, the Super NES and its competitor, the Sega Genesis. This is the 16-bit era. Lots of action between the companies as they battle for market dominance. Moving along to the 5th generation. Thanks to a betrayal and a few mistakes, Sony entered the fray with the original PlayStation. Nintendo stood fast with the N64 and Sega fumbled with the Sega Saturn. The 6th generation is where it gets a little complicated time wise. Sega made one last stand with the Dreamcast, giving it an early release, but was quickly overshadowed a year later by Sony and their PlayStation 2, which I believe is the most successful console of all time as I write this. Sega dropped out just in time for Nintendo to bring in the purple lunchbox, also known as the Gamecube. Finally, the first western competitor since Atari enters the fight, Microsoft and their Xbox. This generation is the first to see online capabilities to home consoles. Now we are in the 7th generation with two sequels, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and a reinvention, the Nintendo Wii. This way to view the timeline is defined by the technology of the console and companies upgrading their consoles.

I mentioned before that we are also in the Second Age of gaming. What do I mean by that? This refers to the industry behind the games or rather the infrastructure of the medium. This is a medium based on technology unlike any other before it. The First Age was one of American infrastructure. From the beginning all the way to the great crash is the first age. The Second Age is Japanese infrastructure; ignore Microsoft for a second, I’m generalizing here. It was Nintendo that pulled video games back from the dead and it has continued based on the groundwork they laid. Their business model was a reaction to what was generally considered the fall of the video game industry in 1983. They required 3rd parties to register with Nintendo, limited the amount of games and other draconian rules set down for their system so that the crash would not repeat itself. Now with more consumer awareness and the internet I doubt there will ever be another crash. Yes some companies are failing, but the entire industry wont have its existence in the balance like last time. Regardless, the Second Age structure is still in place.

Finally I labeled us in the 4th Era of gaming. I divide each era by a great change, advancement, or overhaul in the medium as an art form. Basically how the designers approach making games. The beginning, 1st generation, comprises the entirety of the 1st Era. Back then it was basic, rudimentary; each machine was a game unto itself. The 2nd Era of gaming began with the introduction of the exchangeable media and programmable architecture, namely cartridges. This Era was the entire 2nd generation of consoles. Back then only a single machine was needed and the games had to be purchases separately at a cheaper price. The 3rd Era of gaming began with the Second Age and 3rd generation. There was a huge leap in processing power, which would become the standard from generation to generation, but the jump here caused several unique changes. The first being recognizable, recurring characters. It also added rudimentary story telling in game, art style and color schemes. Finally we come to the 4th Era in gaming, which began in the 5th generation, the generation of the N64 and Playstation. The move from 2D to 3D was the greatest upgrade of the Era and is where designers have been working ever since.

The Future?

When I first conceived of this post several months ago I thought that we might have remained in the Second Age and 4th Era, but with the recent developments of the industry moving to digital distribution in DLC and services like Steam have me thinking that the infrastructure may change from the platform originally set up by Nintendo. And while we have been exploring the design space of 3D, I feel that we’ve reach a limit of technological innovation and now the focus will turn to more artistic innovation. Plus with the existence of the Wii there could be a permanent division between traditional controls and alternate controls. Either way we could be on the verge of the next Age and Era if we are not already there.

The Point

It’s the old saying that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. That is true on a small level, with game franchises like Tomb Raider never changing their formula or fixing what doesn’t work, but it also works on larger scale concepts like the design space and the industry. We are still feeling the effects of the video game crash of 1983. Previous to that game making was about what ever the designer could think of and thought would be good. After the crash, because of the hasty flop of E.T. and 3rd parties flooding the market with cheep shovelware, Nintendo reacted to prevent such a thing from happening again. Companies could only release a certain amount of titles every year to steam the flow of games to the market thereby confusing potential customers. They also created a system of quality control to make sure the customer never got too bad a game for their purchase, e.g. one that was free of game breaking bugs. This in combination with the qualities of the 3rd Era we have companies needing to make more money on fewer titles. They needed games that would sell and the fastest way to do this was with games that have already proven themselves to be successful. Thus the franchise was born. Even though some of the causes have faded, the mentality has led to the sequelitis of modern day gaming.