Game Design Theory

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