Game Design Theory

Hello and welcome to the final entry in Game Design Theory, and the overall history of video games. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey thus far, but to quote an old and wise Dov, “even we who ride the currents of Time cannot see past Time’s end.” Before the end of this blog, however, I would like to take the time to talk about the possible future for the overall industry, and what routes different genres could or even will take in just a few months alone. And with that, I hope you enjoy.

Usually when we think about the realities of video games and their productions, the last thought had typically follows the why of a certain game’s creation. Put simply, we as observers only tend to admire the final product of a piece, a work, what have you. But the true, unbridled efforts of love, dedication, and admittedly seldom dread, lies within the process, the code. A simple team of just two people managed to accumulate, conceptualize, develop, and release the indie game Undertale in 2015. Less than two years later it became a catalyst for fan-made spin-offs, an unguessed trove of theories and speculation, an overwhelmingly adoring fan base, and eventually an official “sequel” three years later. However what the majority of casual attendees–by no one’s fault, mind you–fail to realize is the thirty two months and several push backs it took for these two people to develop and illustrate every asset needed. With all of this being said though, where does it tie in? How are the lessons from Toby Fox and Temmie Chang’s tribulations applicable to game design today?

It seems these days with most triple-A studios, the only process being reproduced is that of a formula. The trails and tribulations only come about from figuring out what aspects, features, and other assets will sell the most; not toward what aspects make the player feel the most. The difference between Undertale and any modern Call of Duty game in today’s light–aside from the drastic jump in graphical and realism quality–is that of the story. You see, anyone with the talent and patience to learn a program can eventually learn how to create their own game. Maybe someone does, and perhaps their launch sells more copies than anticipated. But maybe four months, five months, a few years down the line when that same wave comes back to crash the stores for a refund, it will already have been too late to recognize the fatal issue: the lack of a profound story.

Stories, my friends–at least the ones that keep you up weeks later demanding to know more–are what drives games forward; what pulls players back to fish out another bill from their wallets. Because the ability to tell a story, in my opinion, is one of the very few sources of real-life magic that we have left. To reel an audience in through words alone, to make them move with passion when the protagonist succeeds and jeer in fear when they don’t. To rip apart the heartstrings with an unexpected death only to mend them back together when an old friend resurfaces after years of being presumed dead. These are the things that stick with us as players, as gamers, as people, because for just a moment, we feel that we’re actually in the shoes of the protagonist (or any other character the reader relates to). At the end of the day, it won’t matter if a company dedicated fifty people to make sure the blood splatters in the exact correct way if the character its spurting out of is only seen as a collection of pixels, or just another mindless NPC for the player to run through.

It is very possible that the most powerful companies within this industry will disregard the public’s cries and pleads, and continue to churn out formulaic yet empty titles. It’s very possible that tiles like Fallout 76 and No Man’s Sky have already begun to usher in a new generational crash like the Extra Terrestrial did back in 1982. And because of this, it’s very possible that the Virtual Reality niche may be the last, final gasp of life for this machine, as it then begins to fade into obscurity; only to be remembered for the next punchline. However, it is also possible that the aforementioned failures serve as a spark to the powder keg, so to speak. The last straw a community picks before it decides it’s had enough, and takes to the streets. Who knows? We may see an overwhelming boom and surge for a new generation of video game development. That’s the uncertainty in life. As terrifying and unknown as it is, it can also be beautiful and full of potential if we just find the right perspective to view it in. As long as we keep telling stories, eventually there will be something substantial enough to write a game about it. Art imitates life, and life imitates art because the two are one in the same.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s entry into the history of game design, and the blog as a whole. It was an enlightening experience going back through history with you, and I’m privileged to have been given the chance to do so, and to have experienced it with you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and as always,

Cheers.

Ethan

Good afternoon, and welcome to one of the final two posts for Game Design Theory, and our overall history of game development. With Thanksgiving Break having passed and Christmas Break fast approaching, I figure I would culminate everything within the history of game design into two final posts: What was achieved, and what we can expect to see and play in the future. Today’s entry will cover the former; what was achieved in the forty to fifty years since Tennis for Two was created. With that being said, I hope you enjoy!

So as it’s been stated several times in previous entries, video games did not start off as the visual, titanic phenomena that they are today. The very first seed to be planted was in fact William Higinbotham’s “Tennis For Two”, despite rumors falsely pointing toward Atari’s “Pong” as the first. From this seed sprouted a Hyperion tree, so to speak, with millions of different branches harboring vastly unique titles and systems. From this tree came the first arcade systems, and subsequently their later re-release for the familial household. From this tree the first rivaled branches were watered; pitting the first of this new generation of gamers against one another. From this branch sprouted the First Console War where, as it usually goes with conflict, some branches were sawed off; left forgotten to be dissolved by time. And yet, despite all the modifications, the droughts–leaves falling left and right with no suitable replacement in sight–this very tree still manages to pervade the households of millions of people around the globe.

Following the aftermaths of the fabled Console Wars, however, there was always one specific seed that would revitalize the tree, and the industry as a whole. After the bout between Atari and Genesis, the mythic plumber brothers swept the stage. When hand-held consoles walked to the pitch, titles like Tetris and Pokémon were instant home-runs. And finally just when the feud between Xbox and PlayStation had supposedly run its course, Virtual Reality blipped into the scene, completely revolutionizing the overall visual experience.

No matter the conflict, the ramifications from poor sales or out-lash from horribly managed game releases, the industry as a whole always seems to find some route, some crevice to retreat to; only to bide its time before the next revolution. I really hope you enjoyed the first of the final two entries into the history of game development and Game Design Theory as a whole. Tune in tomorrow where I address in my final post where the industry could possibly go from here. Until then, and as always,

Cheers,

Ethan

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

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