Crash Course Games – Season 1
Episodes
What is a Game?
Welcome to Crash Course Games! In this series our host Andre Meadows is going to discuss the history and science of games. We’re going to talk about video games of course, but also board games, role playing games, card games, even sports! But before we get ahead of ourselves we are going to look at what a game actually is, who is playing these games, and what they are doing to us. It turns out these answers aren’t as obvious as they would seem, but one thing is definitely clear: games make up a huge portion of most peoples’ lives, and we think that can be a great thing!
Ancient Games
From the ancient Egyptian game of Senet to the Aztec’s Patolli, games have been played since the beginning of civilization. Today, your host Andre Meadows is going to take a look at a few of these games, including some that are actually still played today, and talk about how they’ve influenced our modern board and video games and why they have had such staying power.
The Dawn of Video Games
Over the next few episodes we’re going to talk about the history of video games. Today, we’re going to start with the first re-programmable computers in the 1940’s. Now, these computers were serious tools. They were for codebreaking and calculating artillery tables during World War II - but like most tools we human use, we eventually looked for ways to make them playthings. And over the next three decades the advances of computer technology and the tentative curiosity of many engineers and programmers would inspire a new culture and eventually the first true coin-operated video game in 1971.
Atari and the Business of Video Games
Nolan Bushnell, often considered the Father of the Video Game Industry, saw the opportunity for the commercialization of video games. Bushnell founded Atari and oversaw the development of its first game - Pong. And then, through some questionably ethical business strategies, Bushnell was able to get his machines into arcades all across the United States. But if this is all Atari had done, we probably wouldn’t be dedicating an entire episode to it. Atari also played a major role in getting video games into the home with the Atari 2600 console. Video games were becoming a part of peoples’ everyday lives and they were becoming a part of popular culture. But Atari wasn’t the only video game company in the 1970s, it wasn’t even the first. So we’re going talk about some of the other companies that took part in the war for a place in our living rooms next week
The First Home Consoles
So last week Andre talked about Atari’s role in the rise of the video game industry, but Atari wasn’t the only major player in the 1970s. So we’re going to step back a few years and first talk about Ralph Baer who designed the first video game console - the Magnavox Odyssey. The Odyssey would go on to inspire the industry including of course Atari but also Mattel and many others. This was the start of the first console wars and with it we see huge improvements in graphics, gameplay, and of course better storytelling. But we’ll also see a flooding of the market which will have a cost, but we’ll get to that next week
The Video Game Crash of 1983
So the 1980s was the golden age of arcade games. Games like Donkey Kong, Pac- Man, Space Invaders, and Centipede had become a cultural phenomenon. These games had expanded the gamer demographic and even encouraged the rise of competitive gaming. There were also many innovations in the home console and computer market with deeper and longer games like Pitfall and Castle Wolfenstein. Suddenly, you could play a game for much longer than your single quarter could get you on an arcade machine. So the video game industry was booming, but it had also become a sort of Wild West and everyone from Purina to Quaker wanted to get into the action. With these new creators came a glut of choices, and to remain competitive Atari began rushing games to market resulting in some truly terrible games. Gamers started to lose confidence in the industry and then in 1983 the gaming industry in the United States crashed.
Nintendo and a New Standard for Video Games
Even though the video game market had collapsed in the United States, demand for video games remained strong in Europe and Asia. Nintendo of Japan, originally a playing card company, which had seen some success in arcades, saw this as an opportunity to (tentatively) introduce its own console to the U.S. - the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES. The NES saw a number of significant technological and gameplay improvements but it was Nintendo’s approach to game development that changed the industry. Nintendo’s defined a new set of standards for video game quality by requiring contracts with all 3rd party developers. Nintendo even used special technology within the console that forced developers to get approval, marketed as a Seal of Quality, for their games to work on the console. And this strategy worked. Nintendo reinvigorated the North American market and became synonymous with quality games. But it wouldn’t be the only new player in the U.S. for long.
Sega and More Mature Video Games
So we ended the last episode nearing the close of the 1980s and Nintendo had become the dominant player in the home console market, but Sega, originally a slot machine game company during World War 2, was looking to get its own console into players’ homes. Sega’s first console wouldn't see much success, but with the introduction of Sonic the Hedgehog on the technologically superior Sega Genesis, Sega established itself as the new best thing in video games. This would be the start of a new round of console wars and the era that brought us more mature games including fighting games, 1st person shooters, and lots of sports games. This maturation of games also led us to the software ratings system by the ESRB. But Sega and Nintendo would not be the alone in the market for long, next week we’re going to talk about the entrance of technology monolith Sony and their introduction of the Playstation.
Playstation and More Immersive Video Games
In 1994, Sony introduced their Playstation console which successfully coupled cutting edge technologies with some great games. But Nintendo and Sega weren’t just sitting around. In the 90’s we would see the introduction of the Sega Saturn and eventually the Sega Dreamcast as well as Nintendo’s immensely popular Nintendo 64. And with this new hardware came a new era of immersive games. Games were going 3D, and with the introduction of CD’s, the size of games increased dramatically allowing for much longer and complex storytelling. Local multi-player and split screen games also became popular during this time as consoles such like Nintendo 64 were now powerful enough to support these kinds of social games. And games on the PC were becoming more immersive as first person shooters began to flourish on the platform.
Microsoft and Connected Consoles
Today, we wrap up our discussion of the console wars by taking a look at Microsoft’s Xbox which was announced in 2001. The early 2000s saw a lot of innovation in hardware and games and we’ll cover some of that, but one significant change that would heavily influence the industry was actually pioneered by that doomed Sega Dreamcast was Internet connectivity. Sony’s Playstation 2, released in 2000, and Nintendo’s GameCube, released in 2001, would also include ways to get online, but Xbox’s implementation of a fully unified network that allowed gamers to compete across consoles was the first of its kind. Now, PCs gamers had been playing across networks, particularly within the popular MMORPG genre, since the mid 90s and we’ll spend a couple episodes taking a closer look at the PC's influence, but today we’re going to focus specifically on how the Internet on consoles helped lead to the prevalence of the competitive gaming and online gaming communities we see today.