Game Design Theory

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

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