Game Design Theory

In the wake of the first major crash–in both financial and social terms–within the video game development community, a majority of the leading companies crumbled. The Atari 2600, and its far-less successful heir (the 5200), laid in ruin. Their swan song, the widely criticized ET: the Extra Terrestrial, was the leading cause for the drop; the one feather to come floating down, only to collapse the unsteady empire beneath it. For a few long years, the industry remained silent. No turning gears, no new rumors floated down the mill. It had seemed that video games and visual home entertainment had come and gone; a failure like the rest. But from this barren, decrepit world, a new challenger would emerge to claim the title of Champion. To purge through the pessimistic views toward video games the world had bore after results of the crash, this hero would rise. And though its challengers would come and go, there stood one above the rest that would prove to be the hero’s ultimate nemesis. This is the story of the first Console War in video game history; the war between the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and the Sega Genesis.

The Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES for short, was by all counts the sole contributor to the revival of the video game industry in the waking years past the first worldwide crash. It revitalized the visual enamor with stunning 8-Bit graphics (something the world had not yet seen at the time), an updated processor, and a design that ultimately helped soar the home entertainment genre skyward. Its most popular titles–the Mario Bros. series, the Legend of Zelda series, and the Megaman series to name a few–helped restore the faith in game developers and the realm of game design as a whole.

The Genesis was ultimately Sega’s response to this conundrum. Their take was to amp the graphics even further, to the illustrious 16-bit. Through the waves of mania and visual craze, this new department successfully established a foothold in the newly revitalized yet still highly competitive ring of game development. The genesis’s most popular titles include the Sonic the Hedgehog series, Disney’s Aladdin, and the Street Fighter series, among others.

The complex marketing strategy of the Sega Genesis alone wedged the public into two distinct dominions: those loyal to Nintendo, and those devoted to Sega. Their core advertisement was to showcase the aspects and features of what the Genesis was capable of handling, while simultaneously stating Nintendo’s lack of reciprocity. As stated before this wedge in mentalities and opinions shifted the equilibrium of public opinion for one of the first times in video game history; at least to this high of a magnitude. Many times after this feud will have been repeated–the Xbox vs Playstation debate, almost every dual Pokémon game release, even the Gamecube vs Playstation II debate–but none have been as impacting and profound as the the war that restarted it all.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s entry into the history of game design. Later this week I hope to analyze some of these two console’s best sold titles, as well as their overall impact on the public. Until then, and as always, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Cheers,

Ethan

A short time after the collapse and dissolution of Atari and their two systems–the Atari 2600 and the 5200–video game consoles had devolved into rumors of legend, more or less. What was once a booming industry, releasing millions of new and exciting titles, had now been shelved; with little to no remembrance until the next garage sale came about. Unsold titles were scrapped and buried within forgotten landfills across the country, companies were sold and bought off to be later liquefied as a last-ditch effort to making any amount of money back. A few years of this new age had passed before any amount of substantial spark was brought back to the decaying industry. The proverbial iceberg that was ET the Extra Terrestrial bore through the Titan’s hull, and its support washed away from the flow and the current of time; it would take a miracle to revitalize it. Luckily for the public of these times, there were two. In today’s entry, I would like to talk about two of the most prominent posts in the foundation of this new era of video games, and why each one was successful in their own right: the illustrious Tron, re-imagined from the ever popular theatrical release, and the gilded Mario, unknown plumber turned adventurer on a galactic scale.

Set within the digitized bounds of code, the story of Tron takes place inside a computer program where you, the User, are tasked with navigating through four “Digital Arenas”–their take on levels–in order to escape and beat the game. It was based off the widely popular film released under the same name in 1982; published by Disney. Its levels were highly stylized, often with bright neon, grid-like designs–often with angles and vectors–as it was meant to exhibit the aspects of computer code. This alone wildly subverted the expectations of the public during its initial release; compared to the banal and ordinary visual entertainment had been suppressed into for so long. Midway, the developers behind the arcade title, increased the realistic immersion even further by adding those same lit-neon effects to the arcade cabinets released to the public. In addition, it was a stroke of genius to implement a replay feature within the game, so once the player had beaten the levels they would go through them again at a higher difficulty.

Through the pipeline of video game’s history however, another hero had emerged. While unofficially making his debut in the original Donkey Kong cabinets as Jumpman (the character under the player’s control), the developers at Nintendo recreated this character into the popular Mario from the original Mario Bros, released in 1983; though still donning a swapped color palette than the typical blue jeans, red hat and overalls. The goal of this game was to score the highest amount of points by clearing various levels and defeating every enemy during each phase. Atypical of the platforms of that time, Mario Bros utilized a unique style of gameplay called wraparound; every sprite that travels through one edge of the screen reappears at the start of the opposite end, but only horizontally. With only a mindset of clearing phases, there was no need to implement a definitive end to the game; just repeat the same levels and increase the difficulty until the max score is reached or the player runs out of lives.

Though titans in their own right, both of these titles served as foundation blocks for the latent obelisk the video game industry had yet to become. But that, is a story for another time. I hope you enjoyed this week’s entries into the history of video games. Next week, I plan to tackle the first console war between the first two rival companies; Sega and Nintendo. Until then, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

As always, cheers.

-Ethan

By now, we’ve read about innovative revolutions in visual entertainment history that stemmed from humble science fair beginnings. We’ve learned through research and reviews how certain titles fared over others, and how some shaped a fundamentally new era of advancement. As any creator will tell you with indulging in extended periods of extreme creative effort: burnout is inevitable. With strict timelines for creation, production, and shipment of new video game titles, several rounds of week-long crunches–mandatory overtime to oversee the final pushes of video game development–the very release of a new game is a gamble in and of itself. Several factors, investments, and other outside aspects coalesce into a single cartridge, and if the reviews continue to be poor–even outright terrible sometimes–the losses in all aspects continue to amass. This week, I would like to talk about one of the most tremendous failures in video game history that attributed to the collapse of Atari and their two in-home systems, as well as mark the end of the first Golden Era–expunging the console craze if only for a moment–the release of Atari’s ET the Extra Terrestrial.

Essentially this game was meant to be a simple, randomly-generated puzzle game, where the player would have to navigate through the in game assets to obtain an extraterrestrial telephone (get it? To phone home? Everyone else did, too). It had been green lit and licensed by Stephen Spielberg himself, and responsibility for development of this project was given to Howard Scott Warshaw, a former developer for Atari. With this much of a simple premise, a green light from Spielberg, and overwhelming support and adoration of the original film by the public, it had seemed every piece of the puzzle was about to fall perfectly into place. The heads at Atari had thought so too, claiming due to the success of Warshaw’s previous two titles (one including Raiders of the Lost Arc from Indiana Jones) and the success of console sales, this new title would only further boost the numbers.

Here we arrive at the oldest fundamental, most vital and yet often the most ignored caveat to developing video games: rushed development. Warshaw himself only had five weeks to conceptualize, plan, and code/develop the game, with the rest of the team having only a week to advertise the game, develop and ship the cartridges. It’s a fundamental fact of life that humans cannot concentrate under excessive stress for weeks at a time; at least not as efficiently as we can without said added stress. Due to this fact, Howard had overlooked a rudimentary flaw within the game’s code: map stability was almost non-existent, so the player would go through one warp zone and end up in a completely new location; going back through the same zone would transport the player to another random place. Along with a cavalcade of other minor glitches and errors, the game was shipped off. Upon initial release, the sales were overwhelming, clocking in at over a million copies worldwide. Though within a few months, public opinion about the game had completely shifted.

The public began to see and experience firsthand the broken code and rushed development of this title and quickly brought their copies back, often demanding justified refunds. This negative review surged through the Atari studio, and ushered in the start of the first severe video game crash of its history. Within a decade, two members of Atari had come and gone through ownership, recording bigger and bigger losses as the years passed. Their team dropped from a massive ten thousand to only a couple thousand within a few months. And ET the Extra Terrestrial, even today, is regarded as one of (if not the) worst video game ever produced. To its creator, the humbled Howard Scott Warshaw, however, the simple fact that his game is continued to be mentioned in discussions more than twenty years later, makes the game a success in its nature of entertainment.

I hope you enjoyed today’s entry into the history of video games. As always, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Cheers,

Ethan

With every branching path within the creative current of art, there will always exist some abnormalities. Whether if they branch off slightly or radically, whether their flow is more smooth or sporadic, or even if one stream connects with another at a later point, every created work brought about from our collective conscious flows within this unified current. To put this into the perspective of visual media: the one main channel (or goal) within game design is to create a compelling and interesting game that people want to play. Within this main stream, however, millions of diverse diversions begin to emerge. One company might branch off to create the next top horror genre; the next off for pixelated storytelling. No matter the idea, this stream is ever flowing, constantly replenished by the collective effort of every creator existing within it. And it’s with these thoughts in mind that I would like to present a ripple to this pond, so to speak: the existence of a Golden Age, or an era wherein the speed and flow of these channels is as its most rapid–its most efficient. It’s within this era that the public sees the most diversity within title releases, game concepts, and every other aspect within game design.

Within today’s timeline, a myriad of arguments can be made for exactly what time period this acclaimed “Golden Age” applies to. The claim most commonly heard of within the general public is that this age falls somewhere between the late eighty’s and early two-thousands. Along with several other aspects of everyday life, visual entertainment too saw a boom in vitality and enlightenment as creators around the world gathered the resources and motivation to create stunningly unique titles like Super Metroid, Mortal Kombat, Final Fantasy, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, among so many others. Others, however, claim this Golden Age occurred much later in the history of video games; toward the newest decade with the release of Virtual and (higher quality) Augmented Reality games–Just In Time Inc. and Pokemon GO as respective examples. While another shred of public opinion supports the claim that the Golden Age was long past, that it had occurred alongside the release and revamping of arcade cabinets and their best-selling titles.

If I may present a perspective that is admittedly rather unorthodox in nature: any history does not always have to be bound to only one Golden Age. Sure the advancements made with arcade cabinets were revolutionary for their time, and ushered in an all but unknown and new era for the public, but the first and second waves of three-dimensional rendering as well as the flood of augmented and virtual reality games had the same effect and pull to them. It’s foolish to deny the claim that any one age within its history was the best or brightest, but it is equally folly to assume the apex can be reached at only one point in a concept’s entire history.

I hope you enjoyed this shorter entry into the history of video games. Next time I hope to address two specific games I had made mention of in a post prior to this one: Tron and the very first Super Mario Bros. Until then, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

As always, cheers,

-Ethan

UPDATE: I sincerely apologize for the lack of updates in the past week or so. Due to the rigor and demand of the end of my seasonal job as well as midterms in college, I have not had enough time to dedicate toward this blog. However now that both roadblocks have been passed, I will be able to post more regularly. As as final note, I am moving the scheduled post dates from every Monday and Wednesday to every Tuesday and Thursday to better accommodate this new schedule. I apologize in advance for the abrupt shift, but I hope you continue to enjoy future content from this blog.

As always, cheers!

-Ethan