Game Design Theory

Following the overwhelming success of arcade machines and their equally popular titles, what was next in the history of video games? If you were an active gamer between the years 1978 and 1983, there were an endless array of doors, paths, and quests that became readily available to you. Titles like Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, and Tetris quickly became staples of everyday households and families as more and more video games continued to sweep the globe. In today’s day and age though, people tend to forget the foundations that made these titles the nostalgic masterpieces that they are, and instead opt for efficiency or profit over memorability. This week, I wanted to take the time to analyze the more technical aspects of these popular titles, and examine exactly what it was about these games that resonated so powerfully with their audiences.

The most obvious change within the computational capabilities of machines in those times was the advancement to arcade cabinets, with full color displays and dramatic sound playback to name a few others. No longer did the regular Joe have to settle for relying on imagination to warp simple diode displays, oscilloscope graphs and other rudimentary technology into their personal fantasies. Now they could actually see, hear, and personally interact with the–albeit still simplistic–models of humans, monsters, giant apes with a bloodlust for rolling barrels down slanted pieces of slotted metal, anything and everything the player could imagine was either right there at their fingertips or on the way from up and coming game developers. People were so encapsulated by these graphics and the rugged smoothness in animation that was seen as futuristic at the time, that pouring garbage bags full of quarters into once machine quite literally became just another Tuesday in their everyday lives.

A great game isn’t made up of just how snappy, flashy, or realistic the graphics may look. In their youth, the sky was just one of many starting points–way past the proverbial limit–for ideas, concepts, and characters. As I noted above, anything was a step up from simple light displays that depended on the user’s suspension of disbelief and heightened imagination. With the graphical limitations and barriers shattered, producers, developers, and players alike now had the opportunity to expand their horizons to even greater heights. Barring any controversial out-lash for the sake of the narrative, titles like Street Fighter, Space Invaders, and even the Legend of Zelda provided this generation of gamers the first opportunity to insert their personas into a virtual world; one that was not plagued with the same banal reality as ours is. And for a time, this increased flow of strange ideas sustained the titanic engine, so to speak, that powered this new virtual movement for years to come.

I hope you enjoyed today’s entry into the history of video games. Within the next few days, I would like to explore this “Golden Age of Video Games” era a bit further, and possibly talk about specific titles like the very first Mario Bros as well as Tron. Until then, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Cheers,

Ethan

For a number of us, video games have been a staple of our past. There was nothing more satisfying than mopping the floor with a sibling or friend in a competitive beat-em-up game, or watching your vehicle rush past your “ghost” (a transparent computer routing your best time that’s saved on that specific level) and achieving a new high score in popular racing games. For awhile growing up the local arcades, bowling alleys, and carnivals were the only place we could experience these types of arcade machines; unless you were one of the few rich and lucky enough to buy your own system. But for a majority of us, that was a dream for our adult lives, though in those moments, we worked with what we had. With the release of games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man–games that revolved around setting the highest score possible–a whole new slew of players rose from out of their caves, and into the spotlight. In a surge of Y2K-like mania, players rushed to complete as many levels in Pac-Man as possible to try to be the first to achieve the infamous “kill screen”. This kill screen was actually an error in the system’s memory, however. When the player reached level 256 (to put this into perspective, around six to seven hours of constant play), the game would attempt to load a nonexistent level; resulting in half the screen corrupting into a jumbled mess. For one man, the infamous King of Kong Billy Mitchell, that jumbled, pixelated screen sparked inspiration; a goal to reach before anyone else. Unfortunately for the constitution of the nature of legality, adherence to the rules was never a strong suit of his.

Early in the race for the highest of scores, there arose a mediator, of sorts. A hub where all submitted scores would be judged and ranked accordingly. In simple terms, the video game’s version of the Guinness Book of World Records surfaced under the name Twin Galaxies. the referees and members of this records community set clear and defined regulations for how records should be submitted, dividing them into two main categories: Records achieved using a traditional arcade cabinet, and those that were achieved using an emulation program; the most popular being MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). This division was put in place for one main reason: a component within MAME allowed a user to create “save states”, or points within the game they could reload to after a failed run; this allowed players to keep saving the game until a high enough score was reached. Any player that was caught manipulating save states in this way to pass off an edited run as an original cabinet one was often stripped of their scores, but indefinitely banned from any further submissions to the archives.

Despite the incessant lies, coercion, and cover-ups in the current day, the notorious King was not always the laughable pariah his efforts have painted him to be. In fact his first few records–the very first highest score of over eight hundred thousand on Donkey Kong, the first to achieve the Pac-Man “kill screen” and subsequent three million point high score, and the later high score recapture in Donkey Kong of over nine hundred thousand–were achieved through legitimate means on genuine arcade cabinets. In his early days, he truly could have been considered a top contender for the royal title, so to speak. But alas as it tends to go for the power hungry, these accolades were not enough. Whether it was because of a constant pull of the rug underneath him from fellow gamer Steve Wiebe as he surpassed Mitchell’s scores or simply seeking recognition for recognition’s sake, his true intentions were never quite deduced. Regardless, the Kid had fallen to greed, and no amount of carefully constructed monologues or flashy american flag ties could help pull him out of this pit.

The first publicly known misstep was the falsified creation of media showcasing Mitchell’s first world record within the original Donkey Kong arcade game. Due to the limits of technology during the Golden Age of video games (where arcades saw the most light), successfully capturing clear evidence and proof of a player achieving a high score was naught but a dreadful challenge, in most cases. This led to communities coming together to a single area to watch the contestant attempt for a higher score. In this era, the simplest way to convince the public of your achievement was to have a large majority present during said achievement; its much harder to deny the same claim from thousands of people than it is from just one man. Despite this mentality however, Mitchell insisted on producing a recording of his first million-point-run, but there were a myriad of errors and inconsistencies within the tape itself. Random screen flashes/tearing over the score, shoddy cut ins and outs of audio throughout the clip, just to name a few, and yet not ten minutes after the video’s submission, Billy Mitchell’s first fabricated score was scribed into record by Twin Galaxies. The second misstep–coincidentally following similar events–was the successful submission of another fabricated score in Donkey Kong’s successor: Donkey Kong Jr. Brought about from the same jealous greed as the original Donkey Kong had given him, Mitchell’s lust for attention and recognition had continued to drive him further and further away from the road to redemption.

The biggest, and arguably most heinous set of missteps made from Billy Mitchell were the lies, cover-ups, and backroom connections he had made over the years with those both inside of and those who contributed to Twin Galaxies. During his time within the gaming records community, Mitchell had made several ties to influential and powerful members within Twin Galaxies. One of which, a referee by the name of Todd Rogers, was actually the definitive referee for both of Billy Mitchell’s high scores in Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. Furthermore, the financial infrastructure that had kept Twin Galaxies soaring past the competition during its heyday was heavily funded and supported by the King of Thieves himself. You know what they say I suppose, why risk losing investment when you can just bet with house money?

Due to several failed lawsuits on Mitchell’s end as well as a collective cavalcade of evidence piled against him, it seems the only fitting end for this erroneous King is to sit alone upon his stolen throne, to look back on achievements that were not ever his to claim, to live in a world where every single plan this supposed mastermind had concocted had failed. And on that note, I would just like to say I really hope you enjoyed this week’s first entry into the history of game design. These posts will typically end up being longer than the rest due to their very nature of being categorized as stories. Regardless, I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I look forward to speaking again this Thursday!

Until then, cheers.

-Ethan

This week, I wanted to forego the usual singular game analysis and instead focus on a different aspect of video game’s history: the stories behind the first arcade machines, and how they were popularized (or rather modernized) into the sort of nostalgic household memory that they are today. As a whole, the arcade scene was an ingenious startup for developing the home-game world we currently live in; it was a way to test the waters to see if and who would occupy themselves with this new form of visual media. Now the games developed for these systems were never designed to be too complex like today’s open-world RPG’s, but instead designed with intense, instant action, to draw the players in with a hook, and present visually stunning images while their quarter cups became lighter and lighter.

The first of these revolutionary arcade games sprung from the creative minds of Larry Rosenthal from MIT and Cinematronics, a popular titan in the arcade-game development industry: Space Wars. Due to its unique vector-display capabilities, this game produced a compelling display, despite it only loading mono-chromatically. The game revolved around a simple premise: you and one other player control two spaceships with five different buttons–one to rotate left, one to rotate right, one to engage thrusters, one to fire a round or shell, and one to enter hyperspace–and the goal was to see who could destroy the others’ ship the most within a given time period. The most unique aspect surrounding this game that really made it stand out was the fact that the play time was completely dependent on how much money the players inserted into the machine; where each quarter bought a minute and a half, and a full ten dollar roll of quarters bought a non-stop hour.

Ask anyone you know the first arcade game that comes to their mind, and more often than not the average answer would be either Space Invaders or Pac-Man; or rather Pac-Man and MS. Pac-Man, if they’re really unfamiliar with the video game environment. For the most part though, these are the two most common games that come to mind, and for good reason. The first, Space Invaders, centered around a single player piloting a spaceship to fend off an array of alien ships that descended in a gradually increasing S-like formation down the screen. To progress to the next level, the player would have to eliminate every one of the alien ships by hoping their shots connect before the array reaches their forts; game over. To keep things interesting (and to keep the players hooked) sometimes a ship would drop an upgrade, allowing the player control over another ship and giving them a better change to achieve a higher score.

Finally the narratively acclaimed King of Arcade Games, Pac-Man (and later the Queen, Mrs. Pac-Man), who overwhelmed early video game arcades and later the pockets of their players since its release in 1980. When most people think of video games, they think of this: a yellow half-circle floating around a screen gobbling up little white pellets, all while trying to avoid four different colored ghosts that chase it endlessly as the game goes on. For nearly forty years after, Pac-Man Mania had swept the globe; from several off-brand spin-offs to the eventual official sequel, as well as a boom in sales for physical arcade machines.

These games, they started a revolution in visual entertainment. For the first time since its budding release, the public could view video games in a much more casual light, rather than something to trudge through in education; boring modules and low-res biological presentations. Now the player–us, we as humans–had a chance to insert ourselves into these characters. To live out a life different than our own. Sure it was pixelated, horribly paced and often focused more on getting that extra quarter from you, but for those brief moments in time where you were immersed into the game. You had your hands on the controls, your mind shifted into gear; it was your moment. And it still continues to be, even with more and more advanced technology being released every year.

I really hope you enjoyed this week’s entries into my narrative retelling of the history of video games. Tune in next week where I begin to cover some of the most popular stories, scandals, and controversies that have come about due to the rise in video and arcade video games. Until then, I hope you enjoy your night and have a great rest of your weekend!

Cheers,

Ethan

Given the light they have been shown in through various media channels these days, its no secret that video games and other visual media are often regarded as “violent” or “too mature” for today’s youth. While I will agree in some cases some games are too violent, but no more harmful than a rated-R movie a young child deviously stayed up past their parents’ bedtimes to watch ends up giving them nightmares for the next week. The two biggest takeaways here are that one, screens and other forms of electronic media should not serve as a child’s only source of entertainment, and two, that history has been repeating itself because this exact problem regarding the proper censorship of video games has been occurring since Exidy’s controversial release of Death Race, all the way back in 1976.

The burning question that seems to be plaguing everyone’s minds as of late is just exactly how or what is it that makes video games too violent for modern consumption. An overall amount of violent content within a specific game–take popular First Person Shooters like Call of Duty or Battlefield for example, where the main goal is to eliminate and kill everyone else on the enemy team–can and very well might project a negative message or mentality. While this is true, again, it all boils down to the correct or limited amount of exposure to this more mature form of media. Just as you wouldn’t (normally, hopefully) take your seven year old child to a violently graphic horror movie, a responsible and mature parent or guardian should not expose their children to said media until a specific age. For awhile I had shared this mentality. I thought it was simple logic to stray away from things that were too intense, until I remembered times as a kid, growing up. Of course with the mischievousness of being a kid and wanting to bend the rules as much as possible, it was certain that I’d have a friend or several whose parents are not as strict. Humans in general are curious beings, we always have been; for a mind that has not seen or experienced the severity of consequences as much as you might have, said curiosity burns even brighter. So of course they’re going to lie about what games they played at a friend’s house, they might sneak a copy or two underneath their pillow and only play it at night, who knows. In that case however, allow me to amend my previous statement. It all boils down to two things: correct and proper exposure to said violent or mature content, and open and honest communication with both parties regarding why the material isn’t suited for their age, or what exactly makes it so violent for them. Almost every discrepancy in ideals can be addressed and even sometimes resolved through proper portrayal and honest, genuine communication. A moment where both parties can bear their feelings, their thoughts and their emotions towards a specific topic without fear of judgement, then allow time for the other party to do the same. After that, address the discrepancies in your thoughts respectfully. Obviously there poses a clear challenge with communicating complex ideas and mentalities to an adolescent child, but fear should not be the primary motivator to convincing someone to your side.

As the message goes with the news and other social media outlets, fear-mongering and group-hate, for lack of a better word, is the norm; the only way to address conflict is by presenting the worst case scenario as the only option, unless drastic, mostly unrealistic measures are taken. This was the case with what could be considered the first “violent” video game: Exidy’s “Death Race”. Back in 1976, a small game development company scrounged up the resources to develop a P-ROM (Programmable Read-Only Memory) in where players of this game drive a weaponized vehicle around the game screen to run over pixelated “gremlins” to score points. At its core, it sounds like just another video game adaptation from a scene off a popular science fiction novel or movie. Even the splash art on the front and sides of the console depicted the Grim Reaper/Death alongside gravestones, with the instructions labeled “Hit Gremlins For Points”. But critics and journalists were quick as vultures to pry the corpse, so to speak, and were the first to cast the red painted stones at this budding genre. At the time, most video games were either purely educational (Tennis For Two), or existed solely to entertain (Pong). The idea or exploration of mortal violence was only lightly touched on in Space Invaders, and even then it was easier to distance the human from the pixels on screen. To say that what you’re shooting at is simply an alien, or a gremlin, it takes away from the morality of a human taking the life of another human. Again though, one cannot sell a good story in this society without a good fear factor; no pun intended. But what effect did this have on the managers and owners of Exidy? Exactly the opposite than what you’d expect, apparently. Instead of running back home counting the last of their change left over from a terrible investment, their coffers filled to the brim almost overnight. What was once a casual mention in a fleeting bar conversation quickly turned into the scoop of the era with every popular news channel covering this “blasphemous excuse of a game”. Soon everyone had heard of the controversial Death Race, and a stark divide between the fearful and the devoted quickly materialized.

Why though? Why all the animosity and hate towards a daring new venture? Because it defies the preset societal expectations of what constitutes mature entertainment? Would it simply be easier to brand the pixelated NPC’s as aliens, to rid the players of the humanity of killing another? These are but a few questions that popular media either seems to avoid or intentionally seeks to misconstrue the truth behind to fit the popular narrative. At the end of the day, history should be viewed through a carefully constructed, unbiased lens. The interpretations of cold hard facts, so to speak, can have personal interjections and feelings attached to them, but to deny a point of history is to deny a point of fact. I hope that at least in some way, I’ve sparked your interest or curiosity toward the morality behind some of the first popular video games. Tune in this Thursday where I begin to uncover the mysteries and allure of the first arcade machines, and their first public perception. Until then, I apologize for the late entry, and hope that you have a great rest of your night!

Cheers,

Ethan

Welcome back to Game Design Theory! In today’s entry we’re going to address two fundamental cornerstones of the early video game world–William Higinbotham’s “Tennis For Two” and Atari’s “Pong”, and how both titles help shaped the first public opinions regarding video games and visual entertainment media. From science experiments to revolutionary business pitches, it would not be too far-fetched to say the world of video games today owes their existence and strong foothold in the hearts of the modern society to the founding titans of the industry: William Higinbotham and the father of all video games, Ralph Baer.

As its been mentioned earlier in this blog, Tennis for Two is known as the first visual media game ever created, but not the first to be released to the public. Built with an oscilloscope display, each player could control an electron beam (projected from a cathode ray) with a push of a button as it travels across the electronic display–over onto the other player’s “field”, allowing the other player to reciprocate. The only drawback to this simplistic design was the fact that there was no way to keep score on the screen; seeing as how the entire game was displayed with two lines and a dot. Players would have needed to keep track of their scores in another way, perhaps by pen and paper or a third party referee. Regardless, this simulation was never meant to be released to the public in any other light but as a science experiment and therefore, the original copy of this game has been long lost or destroyed due to the vast passage of time. In the minimal light this simulation did receive however, it was widely positive. William Higinbotham’s goal with creating Tennis For Two was simply to liven up the banal and straightforward mentalities science fairs and other gathers tended to have, even still to this day. With interactive and entertaining exhibits, it sparks a fire of interest within the visitors–both young and old, given the right trigger–and leaves a lasting impression within them long after the activity or faire has ended. It’s a shame the original version of the game was lost to time, but luckily as the saying goes, great minds think alike.

From the minds of Nolan Bushnell, Bruno Bonnell, and Ted Dabney, the Atari was born in 1972. While it took a couple of decades to catch up with the minds of Higginbotham, their entry into the iconic system, Pong, even further revolutionized the video game society and industry. Eventually, Pong reached a level of success that required two different versions; the arcade brand, and the home-system variety. The arcade version of Pong was often regarded as one of the first arcade systems to require a quarter for entry, rather than a simple penny back in the day (imagine what the creators of Pong or Tennis For Two would think about full priced, $60 AAA quality games…). Unlike other arcade systems, there was no other written instructions before the introduction or on any of the sides of the physical machine except the words “avoid missing ball for high score” written before the title screen. As revolutionary of an idea as it was thought to be however, that sentiment was not shared with everyone. Upper management at Bally Manufacturing Corporation were the first to reject the initial premise of Pong and disbelieve its supposed profit margins from one machine in just a few weeks within a bar. The producers of Pong, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, initially sought to introduce Pong to the home entertainment system by allowing players to experience the game through a television screen, but for whatever reason, the manufacturing company refused. Regardless, the two retreated back into brainstorming and through several years and a string of lawsuits from the company Atari later, the game Pong was a fully realized, licensed, and produced game on the Atari home entertainment systems in 1972.

I really hope you enjoyed this weeks inclusions into the history of game design. Tune in next week where I continue to address some of the first public opinions regarding video games and visual media, as well as travel further through the scope of technical history. Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Cheers,

Ethan

It seems in the everyday lives of this modern day and age, the amount of families that have seen at least one video game console pass through their homes has skyrocketed exponentially. Even with mobile gaming–apps like Temple Run, Pocket God, and Puzzle and Dragons–today’s youth has no shortage of opportunities when it comes to these kinds of enlightening experiences. As hard as it is to believe though, this wasn’t always the case. Back in the early 1950s–back before the Game Boys and the Console Wars, the NES and Sega Genesis–the only use visual technology really had was for dissertation research or a one-time demonstration for an annual visitor’s day. The very conception of electronically visual entertainment was only ever delved into for works in science fiction and fantasy and yet, people like A.S. Douglas (creator of OXO) and William Higinbotham (creator of Tennis for Two) walked so authors and publishers today could stride. That brings us to our topic today: how exactly did video games and visual media transfer from the realms of experimental science to everyday home entertainment, and how was this trend marketed to sell more to the general public?

Often and rightfully regarded as the “father of video games”, Ralph Baer was instrumental in the creation of what he called the “Brown Box”, later rebranded as the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. This system was designed with a vacuum-tube circuit, which allowed for the use of an electronic display. This feat alone revolutionized the ease of accessibility to and comprehension of the modern video game, and allowed systems like the Atari 2600 and Famicom (Japan’s version of the Nintendo Entertainment System) to begin their arduous and impressive takeover of the practical entertainment method. The evolution of an electronic display through vacuum tube circuits was not the only growth in this endeavor, however. Implementations of handheld controllers and joysticks paired with an electronic screen–most often that of a television–helped open up avenues for co-operational game play; opportunities for siblings and partners to work together to achieve the same common goal. At that point in time, those ventures were seldom seen in any other media but the tabletop.

Perhaps the most vital (and most effective) marketing method for early video game systems was their appeal to family and home entertainment. As a parent, one of the most laborious and comically difficult duties is the constant fulfillment of entertainment. Whether its running in the backyard pretending to be an astronaut that week or dragging their parents around the town like an indolent cat on a leash, the imagination and demand for stimulation within an active adolescent could not be rivaled. Therefore, to market a piece of machinery as an end-all, be-all, deus ex-machina for this demand was simply ingenious. Even a majority of the same adolescents that grew up on these systems’ original releases still might actively go back through their old saves and experiences at times in their life. To be able to relive a moment of your childhood with the knowledge and experience you have as an adult is one of the most powerful feelings a person can experience, and the release and evolution of these popular systems has only served as an increasingly more reliable conduit for this nostalgic reaction.

At the end of the day, we as people have an ingrained, insatiable desire for entertainment; to escape the humdrum banality of our everyday routines. To live a life different than the one we feel we’re stuck with, to feel for even just a moment that our actions and feelings really do impact the world around us in a significant manner. Most of all, these systems have– throughout their initial conception and continued existence–taught its players and users profound lessons in life, morality, and the human condition of existence. Because of men like Ralph Baer, A.S. Douglas, and William Higinbotham, these unique and creative lessons have help evolved the game development into the titanic powerhouse that it is today.

I really hope you enjoyed this week’s history topic. Join us this Thursday (10/9), where I plan to explore and talk about the first real wave of visual media through video games, including popular titles such as Pong and Tennis for Two. Until then, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Cheers,

Ethan

In today’s technological enlightenment, it’s often incredibly difficult to remember a day when our lives weren’t completely pinned and immersed into this telephonic-based society. Not even a little over a decade ago, I still remember as a child walking over to my next door neighbor’s house and ask the parents of my friend if we could go run around the neighborhood, and today entire engagements can be arranged by simply twiddling your thumbs on a reactive glass screen and waiting for the other person to do the same with theirs.This mentality, this rise in communal technology is even more prevalent in video games and other visual related media today. But what exactly was it that contributed to the rise of AAA studios and breathtaking three-dimensional rendering? Moreover, why are these changes in design and process important as well as their impact on today’s society. Today, I would like to set the foundation for both the topic of this week’s blog entry, as well as for a clear definition of what a quote/unquote “game” is; at least in terms of visual media.

Ask anyone what they think the first game to have been created was, and more often than not the general consensus would probably be chess or Pong. In terms of both electronic and traditional/tabletop media, both answers would be incorrect. For the sake of coherence, I’ll first address the common misconception of chess.

While chess has always been wildly glamorized in big-budget, “ancient-times” Hollywood movies and romanticized in mysterious/detective fiction, the first recorded game known to man was called Senet. It was played by those that lived in Prehistoric Egypt all the way back in 3100 BC. The concept and goal of the game was relatively simple–to move each of your five pieces (or “houses”) across each tile and off the Senet board in a snake-like fashion before the other player does. The Senet board itself was arranged in a grid–ten tiles wide by three tiles tall–and movement of each piece was determined by the outcome of how you threw the four Senet sticks. Due to the extreme span of time between its creation and the modern day, the exact rules of the game have been lost, but two historians, Timothy Kendall and R. C. Bell managed to build their own recreations of the game based on fragments and mentions throughout several ancient texts. Since the outcome of this game was determined mostly by luck, how the players threw the Senet sticks, those that won were often said to have been blessed with the favor of the gods; and to think less than a millennia later their descendants would unleash unholy hellfire for losing a kill to very similar RNG (Random Number Generator)-based luck. It really puts things into perspective when you think of it that way, I suppose.

While it’s true that Pong is widely considered one of, if not the first commercially available video game, the very first visually/graphically-displayable game created to be filed under “electronic media” was the oscilloscope-based “Tennis For Two”. I plan to talk about this in more detail on Thursday, but for now I’ll give you a short summary. Tennis For Two was designed by William Higinbotham in 1958 to be run off an oscilloscope, an instrument used to display electronic signals in the form of a graph. The physical display for the game was actually nothing more than two lines and a dot; one line for the court, one for the net, and the dot for the tennis ball. It was the brilliance of human ingenuity and creativity that brought about the rise of video games and visual media. To put it into perspective, the most common oscilloscope-deviant that’s used today is an electrocardiogram; you know, the things that beep to let you know the person’s heart is still beating. Someone looked at that and thought, “yeah, that could be a tennis ball bouncing back and forth across the screen,” had the knowledge and resources to build the machine, and started an optically technological revolution in home entertainment. While Tennis For Two never got the chance to see the light of the public eye for quite some time, it walked so games like Pong and Space Invaders could run.

Knowing what we know now about the earliest mechanisms of video games and visual media, we can begin to answer the question I began to address at the start of this entry: What exactly constitutes a quote/unquote “game?” In my experience, a game could be anything: kick the can, tag, stealing every wooden plate I find in an RPG, counting the amount of yellow cars that drive by in an hour, the possibilities truly are endless. A game is nothing more than an activity with a captive and engaging audience. So in that sense in order to be a game, the specific activity must have a set and achievable goal in place for its players to reach. In a symbolic sense, games are an experience, and those can either be shared with a group, or personalized to the individual. That’s why there’s such a diversity between the types of games available to the public; from solitaire to monopoly, there’s something for everyone. But the most important component to the apparatus of a game is the educational roadblocks each player is bound to face. In its very nature, a game is confrontational; it looks to the player wanting to progress, and says, “No, but here’s an over-leveled creature and its swarms of minions to trap you in a death maze. Good luck.” But within every conflict, a silver lining can be found, a lesson can be learned. And its quite often these lessons that carry through to more important aspects in life. Like for example saving in-game currency to exchange for a unique but expensive mount you’ve had your eye on for months to help you put aside portions of your real paycheck for financial bills and the like. So at the end of the day, a game must have three things: An engaging audience, a clear and achievable goal, and some form of reward or moral lesson at the end of the journey.

I hope you all enjoyed today’s entry in the Examination of the History of Game Design. This Thursday we’ll take a closer look at the aforementioned Tennis For Two, and how its graphical applications helped lay a secure foundation for the technological behemoth that video games and visual media stands as today.

Until then, Cheers.

-Ethan