GAMING HISTORY PART 4 personal gaming history

Looking back on my early childhood, most of my memories of playing were with Lego, and what i still think of as proper toys, as opposed to video games. I think this was a good thing as i think children should play with real toys, as they have to imagine the world the toy is in, and to give the toy fantastical properties, stimulating the creative part of the child’s brain which i see as crucial in creating a proper rounded human being, but with a video game, which requires relatively little input, and only receiving visual stimuli the child could become mentally stale in the most creative part of their life. Whilst i was growing up, i had very little interest in the video games my older brother was playing, as i thought i could create infinitely more interesting things in my head whilst making cars out of Lego, and smashing them into pieces with a massive yellow toy truck.

One game i did play whist i was very young was SimAnt, a game i played on my families Macintosh home computer sometime around 1995. I really loved this game as it gave me an idea of what happened in an ant colony, but then again i found it much more interesting to go into the garden and dig about a bit, and watch some real ants, only at the expense of my Mum’s gardening and pissing off about half a million ants. I then had a try and playing my brothers Sega mega-drive, as by now he had moved onto the brand new PlayStation. I found it incredibly difficult to play most games, i couldn't even get past level one on Sonic, making it feel a little repetitive to say the least. Although i did play the racing/combat game “Road Rash”, which for a while i really enjoyed, but eventually i grew tired of it and i was back to the Lego again. The first video game to properly tempt me away from Lego, years later, was Motocross madness, a game which was on my families first PC. I liked this game simply because it had motorbikes in it, it looked incredible, and most importantly was really fun. I also had no way of losing on free play mode so I'd play for hours riding around the digital country side jumping over shrubs and tractors. After this i became a casual PC gamer, playing game like Motocross madness 2, midtown madness and the “quite violent for a 10 year old” Unreal tournament. I briefly entered the console world after getting a PsOne for my birthday and buying Alien Trilogy. I’d played the game around a friends house and really enjoyed it, but i soon found out that playing the game alone in the dark was incredibly scary, up to the point where i didn’t enjoy playing it, so i never played it again. Although i wasn’t disturbed by the gore, the feeling of constant tension made me dislike it and subsequently, has given me a distaste of the survival horror genre. On the other hand i had Ridge Racer Type 4, which really cemented my love for racing games, although playing it again now just makes me realize how important AI is in racing games, as the opposing cars simply drive on rails and equal distances apart, making the race a repetitive game of catch up, but still having enjoyable handling mechanics possibly making it my favourite game for the PlayStation one.

I was still only an occasional gamer, only playing on the PC or PlayStation once every week or so, but this all changed after i played Halo in Toys’R’Us,. I managed to get an Xbox for the following Christmas, which for that time was by far the largest gift id ever received, but it was worth it, as it kept me occupied for the next year or so, almost too occupied as i sacrificed going outside and almost breathing, instead attempting to complete halo for the 100th time. I managed to get the unfortunate nickname “Xbox boy” from a neighbour, which even more unfortunately spread to my school friends, causing the name to stick for the next year or so. Non the less i stayed with the Xbox, playing great games like Project Gotham racing 2, battlefront, The grand theft Auto series, and Fable, a game which i am currently playing through again and enjoying immensely. As the Xbox aged i found myself going back into PC gaming with a new love for RTS games, especially Rome Total war, which is still easily in my top 5 games of all time. I continued as a PC gamer, even becoming addicted to battlefield 2, playing practically solid for weeks. The stint of being a born again PC gamer lasted until i got my Xbox 360, which is where my gaming history merges with the majority of casual gamers. With my favourite titles being some of the blockbuster hits of: Project Gotham Racing 4 as it’s a mix of arcade and sim tuned to almost perfection, and Mass effect 2 for it’s incredible atmosphere. I’m a strong believer that the current generation of video games are on average the best generation of games ever as the rate of innovation is slightly ahead of the rate of stagnation, so for every call of duty sequel or copy there’s an innovative Assassin’s Creed or Batman Arkham Asylum to push the industry forwards.

I still consider myself as a casual gamer as i probably only spend a 2-4 hours a week playing video games, rarely playing multiplayer, but mainly because i have an intense hatred for the “Hardcore gamers” on Internet forums, who seem to take offence every time somebody either buys a wii, doesn’t buy call of duty or goes outside.

GAMING HISTORY PART III the 2000s

Although the sixth generation of consoles had started in 1998 with the Sega Dreamcast, the generation didn’t receive popularity until the release of the PlayStation 2 in 2000. The console had a rocky start in terms of retail, due to delays in production, very small batches were released, causing panic in consumers, and disappointing sales for retailers. But as the production rate caught up with demand the console took off spectacularly, with successful launch titles such as SSX and Timesplitters. It wasn’t until late 2001 that Nintendo’s GameCube and Microsoft’s Xbox were released with relatively smaller success than the ps2, as the PlayStations dominance had been well established, at was a known brand in the console world compared to the xbox, but primarily it had had over a year with practically no rivalry in it’s market. The ps2’s dominance continued throughout its generation, even though the GameCube had a lower price tag, technically the Xbox was more powerful, had built in hard drive and most predominantly had Xbox Live.

Since the late 80’s Nintendo had dominated the handheld market with the Gameboy, and Gameboy colour, but this all changed in 2004 with the release of the PSP, technically much more powerful than the current offerings from Nintendo and offering 3d gameplay much more in line with current gen consoles, the PSP sold very well, but by no means took over the market as later that year Nintendo released the DS, which was less powerful, but offered a whole new gameplay experience, with the innovative use of a stylus to interact, and two screens. The DS and PSP have continued to have decent sales up until the current day, with releases of new console versions and successful new games, the handheld market has kept strong.

The Seventh and now current generation of consoles began with the release of the Xbox 360 in late 2005. Microsoft had learnt the message from the success of the ps2, and effectively strived to be the first console to be released for the new Gen. Like the ps2, it had a year in the market with no rivals, selling very successfully, dwarfing sales of it’s previous offering. Sony’s Playstaion 3 was released late 2006 for japan and the us and early 2007 for the rest of the world. The console had initial success, but it was soon obvious that the Xbox 360 was on top. In an almost identical but inversed pattern, the more technically advanced PlayStation, with slightly higher graphical and processer power, and use Blu-Ray discs, failed to sell due to its late entry into the market. Many people were confident, including Sony that much of the PS3’s success was going to come from it’s use of Blu-Ray discs, as they stored five to ten times the content that the DVDs that Xbox 360’s games ran off , but due to the fact that most large developers created games for both consoles simultaneously, few developers could take advantage of it, only noticeably with Killzone 2, MGS4 and recently Gran Turismo 5 has the console shown Blu-Ray’s Prowess, also the high cost of the driver drove the PlayStation’s cost way higher than that of the Xbox 360’s, giving it yet another hindrance. In late 2006 Nintendo’s Wii went on sale. With a much less powerful processer, graphics card and lack of hard drive, the console looked as though it would feel more at home in its own 6.5^th generation, but like Nintendo’s initiative with the innovative controls, low price and accessibility on the ds, they revolutionized gaming one again. Not by replacing what came before it, but creating a new attitude for game development and arguably creating the largest shift in gaming culture in the past two decades with the now established terms of Casual gaming and Motion controls.

Now that the current generation of consoles may be replaced as late as 2014, with consoles manufacturers claiming that new motion controllers will keep the console market fresh. I’m personally (excluding the wii), very doubtful that the current generation of consoles sales will remain healthy until then. As I believe that by then portable gaming market in smart phones will have grown rapidly, after seeing Epic Games “Epic City” tech demo. Which has an Astonishing level of detail, featuring advanced lighting, high res textures with specular, and normal maps. Also I see the introduction of cloud gaming being very promising, where processing is done externally, making it possible for low spec devices such as a smart phone to run super high quality graphics. Even a substantial resurgence of PC gaming could be possible, as it was widely assumed it was a dying trend, but it hasn’t seemed to have occurred, although the current generation has managed to technically keep up with PC games for much longer than any previous gen, possibly due to some of the larger publishers diminishing support for pc titles. Social multiplayer gaming has also had a huge impact on the world of video games, and is destined to revolutionise the industry and throwing many long held gaming conventions up into the air. As currently many of the most popular social games are flash based 2d games, but with inevitable advances in the tech for running these games, and flash already having the ability to render complex 3d objects and lighting models with the latest html 5, full current console gen quality games will be easily ported in the near future, but this is all only my speculation, but like with many technology based industries, for far future forecasts, we can only prepare to expect the unexpected.

The dominance of arcade games in the industry grew to a peak in the first half of the 80’s, arguably peaking at the 1982 release of my personal favourite arcade game “Dig Dug”. Which was the only ever video game to combine mining and monster inflation mechanics to such awesome proportions. The largest advance in gaming technology of the 80’s was the introduction of 3d. First seen in the game “3D Monster” made for the zx81 The game was played in 1st person view, where you had to negotiate a maze whilst attempting to avoid a monster. It was quite a horrifying experience, as when the player rotated, they instantly turned in 90 degree rotations, adding to the sense of disorientation, but also sometimes resulting in the appearance of the monster and subsequently certain death. Including the zx81 many new home computers were entering the market, rivaling the also growing console market. The increase in choice for the consumer for both console and home computer titles created a very large dilemma, as multiple versions of games had to be made, increasing budgets and leading consumers to not know which was the best computer or console, causing an over saturation of the market, which was one of the main causes of the Great Video Game Crash of the early to mid 80’s. The crash was also impacted by two specific games, a very poor selling remake of PacMan, and The now legendary E.T. game, which was developed in six weeks, had a incredibly large budget due to the movie licence and then sold disastrously. The game was so poorly made it had a portion where if E.T. fell down a certain hole, the player could not get out or reset, so the game would have to be restarted. Ironically the large quantity of unsold games were buried in a landfill site in New Mexico, another hole E.T. will never be able to escape from. these two huge failures caused Atari great financial difficulties and in 1984 the company was split and sold. The Great North American Game Crash had a huge effect on the industry, but it wasn’t all bad, as the European market was based on European computers and software, we managed to get away scot free. Nintendo released the NES in 1983 to great success, this console started a few console trends that we still see today, Mainly the introduction of the game pad, replacing the then more common keyboards or joysticks. Also it started some incredibly famous franchises, from Super Mario Bros to Metal Gear. Nintendo again stuck gold in 1989 with the release of the Gameboy, arguably the first handheld gaming device to receive popularity in-line with mainstream consoles. During the 90’s the continued decline of arcade machines continued, until they ended up as the niche brand they are today. Another trend which continued into the 90’s, at an exponential rate was the increases in budgets, technology and design innovation. The most notable development was the widespread introduction of 3d and also 3d texture mapping, first seen in Wolfenstein 3D. it had only appeared in relatively few games during the 80’s, but was now a staple for all mainstream titles. Especially for games released on the new generation of consoles, with the new Sony Playstation, which was released in 1994 and a year later Nintendo’s N64. The N64 was less successful than Sony’s console, partially because of its use of old fashioned cartridges, which limited the amount of content that could be in its games, compared to the CDs the PlayStation used . With the N64 only selling 32.9 million consoles compared to Playstation’s 100 million. But it wasn’t all bad news for Nintendo as the initial Gameboy and Gameboy Colour sold nearly 120 million units, proving that the handheld market was very lucrative, but also that there was a younger, more casual market to explore. The 90’s began a new generation of PC games, as the faster increase in processor and graphics technology kept the computer market technically ahead of consoles, allowing more elaborate games, initially starting with games like Command and Conquer and The Sims, but later much more advanced games such and Unreal tournament and Half -Life with advanced lighting and physics engines, creating much more realistic worlds. In 1999 the next generation of consoles began with the Sega Dreamcast, the console was technically ahead of it’s time, but due to incredibly poor marketing and poor timing, as the previous consoles were still successfully selling hardware and games. Although it had promising initial sales, even breaking 24 hour sales records, the console was a disaster, crippling Sega, and ending their involvement with hardware development.

Looking at the evidence the title of “the first video game” seems to be quite ambiguous, as differing opinions throw up a few possibilities. But its not dates of inventions, or who invented what which is in deliberation, it seems the biggest hurdle is on deciding on the correct definition of a “video game”. Because of the use of greatly differing technologies and display techniques, there are roughly five or so possible contenders, of which I’ve narrowed down to two, as both seem to addier to the two main definitions of a video game. The first electronic game was a version of noughts and crosses called OXO, suspiciously lacking in references to stock cubes of the same name, it was developed in 1952, which used a board of lights to display the grid and symbols, in my opinion, this isn’t actually a video game, as the image is not displayed on a raster display i.e. video display, because on screen objects are not mobile, they are not rendered in anyway, as in the case of the symbols, each of the nine areas can only display an X, O or blank, so in reality it’s just an electronic display system. The first true video game was developed in 1958 by William Higginbotham it was called Tennis for Two, it used an Cathode Ray oscilloscope as its display, with a single beam of photons colliding with the phosphorescent display, thus representing the ball. The most impressive aspect of Tennis for two though was the way the game appeared to have a physics engine, giving the ball mass and drag as it flew though the air, and accurate elastic collisions with the ground and net. The next major game development was unquestionably space war, a space simulator/shoot’em up developed in 1962 at MIT University by a group of programmers, but most notably Steve Russell. This game has many titles, being the 1st shoot’em up, 1st game set in space and possibly the 1st game to have a theme tune, although I have no evidence apart from a YouTube video to back that last statement up. I have actually played a current version of this game, which was running in java on this site: http://spacewar.oversigma.com/ This version may have similar controls, but it doesn’t give the original game’s visuals justice, as with the standard of CRT monitors back in the early 60’s, long green trails followed many of the moving objects on screen, due to the intensity of the photon beams, giving visuals which could, at a stretch be descried as impressive even for a modern arcade game. It took 200 hours of programing to create it, but what I find more impressive is that they seem to running out of a machine built from a microwave oven and some over sized cassette tapes. In 1966 Scientist Ralph Baer worked at the military electronics contractor “Sanders Associates”, and there he developed a technology to allow video games to be played on television screens, by using "the brown box". Initially creating a game called Chase, and then subsequently a Target shooting and a Table tennis game the technology was shown to be very adaptable, and a huge step in the right direction if video games were to become a popular and usable products.

In 1971, a version of the game Spacewar!, called Galaxy game was installed in the students union at Stanford University. The game had been developed to work on a coin-operated system, making it the world’s first Arcade game. Although only one of the Galaxy games was ever built, it undoubtedly inspired Nolan Bushell and Ted Dabney in the same year to create there own coin operated versions of Spacewar, this time called Computer space. They built 1,500 machines. But due to the games difficulty, it sold poorly, although it did gain the title of the first mass produced video game for commercial sale. Unhappy with their earnings from creating the gaming machines, Nolan and Ted founded Atari, Inc, and in 1972 released Pong. Although it wasn’t the first, i see Pong as the grand farther of modern video games, mainly due to the number of players it had being over 3, and infact selling 19,000 copies. Continuing the video game industry trend of blatantly copying other peoples ideas, many duplicates of pong were created, one of which, called “Tennis” was bought for my dad as wedding anniversary present in the mid 70’s. And so began the golden age of arcades, with classics such as pacman and space invaders. Alongside the arcades, Based on the technology Ralph Baer had developed in the late 60’s with the “Brown Box”, Magnavox created the Odyssey, initiating a new age of games consoles, with hundreds of systems all with massively over the top names and user friendliness scores lower than a moon-landing-denier’s IQ.

I’m Robin Smith a brand spankin’ new game art student. I’m from Leicestershire, more precisely Rothley, a smallish village a bit north of Leicester. Having both of my parents being potters and an older brother constantly designing and drawing, it seemed I was inevitably going to go down the creative route, but it wasn’t always the case. When I was growing up I was encouraged to follow a more “academic” path and I always had the outlook that I was going to go into the field of biology or something involving the environment, and just to do art as a hobby. But I always had a slight notion that I should act upon my talents and my passion, instead of my more academically successful subjects, which did interested me but ultimately I found unfulfilling. I subsequently spent most of my high school and college years considering my options of what I wanted to do. Choosing which route to take felt like the biggest decision I’d ever make, and as far as consequences, probably will be one of the biggest decision I will ever make. As luck would have it though, gradually my grades in my science subjects began to decline and my art and design subjects gradually became my main focus, purely coincidently after a particularly inspiring guest talk I had at my college by a past pupil. The speaker was Chris Wright, one of the lecturers for De Montfort University’s game art course. It kind of clicked whilst I was watching the presentation, I was really impressed with some of the pieces of student’s work he was showing us, and the overall course sounded really exciting. I had not entirely decided on a game art course at the time, but i was now unquestionably going to study an art and design course. By this time I was nearing the end of my A levels, so to give myself a better chance at making the right decision and also to improve my overall art skills I chose to enrol onto an art and design foundation course. Although the way the university application system works It only gave me three months of additional decision making time. Looking back on it, it couldn’t have been that difficult of a choice as I’m struggling to remember most of the alternative courses I was considering besides game art.

I chose to study at De Montfort University primarily because of the course’s structure, as it seemed to have a clear focus on teaching the most relevant skills necessary for getting a job in industry. It may have also been partly due to its closeness to where I live, although I am now living in halls, only visiting home for real food, free beer and possibly even to see the family. I Also studied my A&D Foundation at De Mont, so I knew that the overall university was a nice place to study especially the art and design faculty.

I’m assuming like a large amount of game art student I originally had my dreams set on becoming a concept artist. But after some brief research it turns out there are quite a few people in the world who want to try and make a living by drawing robots and space ships. With most companies outsourcing it to well established freelancers, using design consultants such as Massive Black, similarly to how the car industry works with design consultants such as Pininfarina and Bertone, or by employing very small internal teams of artists comprising of some of the most talented artists within the company, each with good few years working for them as junior and senior 3d Game artists. I initially saw this is my best bet, but it seemed too large a compromise, as at the time my outlook of having to work as a 3d artist was unattractive, since I hadn’t particularly enjoyed my brief experience with working with 3d programs, as without any tuition I found them counter intuitive compared to many of the more basic 2d programs I had worked with. Chiefly because they are entirely different, but also I couldn’t use my usual learning technique of trial and error, as the tools aren’t as forgiving. This opinion changed though as during my foundation year I began trying out some basic tutorials and especially a certain gnome workshop dvd my brother bought me, which made me realize that 3d is pretty damn awesome, and that it’s not the complete brain smash I initially saw it as.

Apart from my love for video games and design, I have a keen interest in the sciences, mainly ecology and physics, neither of which I really peruse at any higher level than watching a few horizon episodes and reading a couple of science magazines and websites a few times a week. I often use my minor knowledge in science as reference when creating concept art. Because I have a pet hate of many pieces on concept art, especially some sci-fi concept art that makes either no sense or is completely implausible, which then ultimately degrades really damage the game the design or believability of a game or film. In the same way as if you were creating a video game set in for example ancient Rome, it would be ignorant not to research roman architecture and clothing. Even if it’s some fictional mass effect drive core to power a space ship, at least the artist has taken the time and thought about what he is designing, and why it would look the way it does.

After looking for job posts on numerous developer’s websites I found a couple of rolls as a junior environment artists, at Codemasters and Rockstar North. They both ask for roughly the same skills of time management, achieving deadlines and proficiency in a 3d program, both of which specify 3ds max. I am aware that both of these are developers of triple A titles, so getting into them for a first job will be challenging, but I think I will defiantly have the necessary 3d skills by the end of the course and possibly even. Although I don’t want to get complacent with my current 2d skills and focus too heavily on developing my 3d skills as the clear continual increasing poly counts in game models will continue, but the largest apparent development in current gen, and undoubtedly further in the next generation of video games are in the complex new textures, from specularity, occlusion and especially normal maps etc. so my 2d skills combined with my 3d skills will surely remain relevant in the ever-changing field of game production.