Lecture 1 History of computer games

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Lecture 1 - History of computer games

• Mike Baskett
• School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
• Liverpool John Moores University

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In this session

• We will look at
• the birth of the computer and video games
  industry
• and
• chart the progress of the major developments over
  the last 40 or more years!

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The first computer game?

• In 1958, William Higinbotham designed what may
  have been one of the first video games at the
  Brookhaven National Laboratory Video tennis
• http//www.osti.gov/accomplishments/videogame.html

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1960s and early 1970s

• Games developed on mainframe computers
• Star Trek was very popular in early 70s
• Almost no graphics
• No significant commercial markets 1961-1962
• SpaceWar! developed at MIT using vector graphics
  on PDP-1
• http//lcs.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/sp
  acewar/

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1971-1974 Birth of commercial games

• 1971 Nolan Bushnell develops Computer Space
• First commercial arcade game
• Based on SpaceWar developed at MIT
• Vector graphics, but really cool real-time space
  game
• Too sophisticated for market and fails
• Renamed company Atari
• Named after a move in GO
• 1972 Pong in Arcades by Atari
• A huge hit in bars, pinball arcades,
• Odyssey by Magnavox
• 1974 Kee releases Tank
• Fake spin-off from Atari
• First game to use ROM

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1972-1976

• William Crowther and Don Woods developed
  Adventure The Colossal Cave
• First text-based adventure game
• Ran on DEC mainframes (PDP-10)

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Late-70s Atari expands

• 1976
• Bushnell sells Atari to Warner Comm. for 26
  Million
• Warner markets Pong to home as a single game
• Breakout designed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
• 1977
• Atari introduces the 2600 VCS
• First home game console with multiple games
• 2K ROM , 128 Bytes of RAM
• Very successful
• 1977 Apple starts selling the Apple II
• 1978 Space Invader developed by Taito in Japan
• 1979
• Activision is formed by Atari developers
• Third party development houses start up
• Atari 800 introduced 8-bit

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1980-1981 Rise

• 1980
• Phillips Odyssey2 (1978) and Mattel Intellivision
• Mattel had better games graphics, but terrible
  controller
• Namco has Pac-Man
• 1 billion (2.3 in 1997 dollars)
• 300,000 arcade units sold since introduction
• Atari doing 1 billion Asteroids released
• Zork released by Infocom, Ultima released
• 1981
• Game industry 6 billion in sales
• Nintendo Donkey Kong
• Galaxian, Centipede, Tempest, Ms. Pac-Man
• IBM introduces the IBM PC

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Japanese to US name changes

• Pac-Man was originally Puck Man as the designers
  thought the main character looked like a hockey
  puck
• In the US version the name was changed to avoid
  the obvious changing from Puck to F
• Donkey Kong is also a very literal translation
  from the idea behind the game
• DK features a stubborn gorilla which when
  looked up in a Japanese-English thesaurus
  produced Donkey for stubborn and Kong for gorilla!

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1982 Everybody jumps in

• Atari sales down 50 -- starts to loses s
• Releases 5200
• But it controlled 80 of the market
• Atari buys rights to ET for 22 Million
• ColecoVision gets Donkey Kong
• Game companies start just for home computers
• Sierra On-Line, Broderbund, BudgeCo
• Electronic Arts is formed
• Vectrex introduced
• Vector graphics
• Sinclair ZX Spectrum
• Commodore 64

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1983 Crash!

• Mattel losses 225 million from Intellivision
• Doesnt ship the Aquarius
• As much as it had made the four prior years
• Atari loses money
• Market flooded with poor quality games
• Coleco crashes
• Saved by Cabbage Patch Kids
• Commodore 64
• 17-22 million total sold
• Dragons Lair released
• Laserdisk format
• Took 6 years to make - Bluth Studios

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Crash resurgence

• 1984
• Industry drops to below 800 M
• Apple introduces the Macintosh
• Birth of modern computer good resolution, sound
• Games not a priority
• 100,000 sold in first six months
• 1985
• Nintendo introduces Nintendo Entertainment System
  (NES)
• Strict control on software
• Lockout chip, and restricts companies to 5
  games/year
• Nintendo sells cartridges to software
  distributors
• Atari tries to come back with 16-bit 520ST
• Computer and Game system

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Failed competition

• 1986
• Commodore ships Amiga cool but marketing kills
  it
• Computer system designed to support games
• Developed by Atari hardware engineer Jay Miner
• Sega ships Sega Master System console
• Technically superior to Nintendo, but it ignores
  third-party developers and fails because of lack
  of games (and maybe Nintendo pressure on
  developers)
• Atari ships 7800
• Nintendo outsells competitors 10 to 1

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1987-1989

• 1987
• Electronic Arts releases their first in-house
  game
• Skate or Die
• Serious games start to show up for IBM PCs.
• VGA and SVGA help
• 1988
• Tetris imported from Soviet Union
• 1989
• Sega Genesis (Megadrive) is released 16-bit
• Attacks console market with EA sports titles
• Aggressive marketing at older market ( 13 year
  old)
• Nintendo sticks with 8-bit
• Super Mario Brothers 3 sold 11 million copies
• Releases Gameboy (colour version to follow in
  1998!)

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Console wars

• 1990
• Nintendo releases Super Mario 3 - all-time
  best-seller
• Amiga and Atari ST die out
• PCs and Consoles are major game platforms
• Electronic Arts starts to acquire other game
  publishers
• 1991
• Nintendo launches Super-NES (16-bit)
• 1992
• PC gaming explodes
• Nintendo has 7 billion in sales (4.7B in U.S.)
• Has higher profits than all U.S. movie and TV
  studios combined!

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More wars

• 1993
• Pentium chip is launched
• Consoles (Sega and Nintendo) are 80 of game
  market
• Panasonic ships Real-3DO 32-bit (now just
  software)
• Civilization published
• 1994
• Atari ships Jaguar 64 bit
• Very expensive for console 700, 100/game
• Neither 3DO or Jaguar does particularly well
• DOOM released by id
• Myst released
• All-time biggest game

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Doom

• The first big 3D-FPS (first-person shooter) game
• Spawned a multitude of others
• Quake, Heretic, Duke Nukem, Unreal

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32-bit wars

• 1995
• Sega ships Saturn (32-bit)
• Sony ships PlayStation (32-bit)
• Microsoft releases Window 95
• Includes the Game SDK - DirectX
• Brings major game performance to Windows
• Internet and WWW expand
• Full-motion video (FMV) becomes a part of games
• 7th Guest

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1996-1998

• 1996
• Nintendo ships Ultra 64
• Originally promised for 1995
• Multi-player gaming gets serious
• Via modem and internet and network companies
• 1997
• Force-feedback joysticks and steering wheels
• 3D acceleration starts to standardize on 3D-FX
• Games start to assume 3D acceleration
• Pentium II at 200Mhz make serious game machines
• 1998
• Lots of very good PC games
• PlayStation rules consoles

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1999-2001

• 1999
• Sega Dreamcast
• 2000
• Development starts to move away from PC to
  consoles
• Sony PlayStation 2
• 2001
• XBox (Microsoft)
• GameCube (Nintendo)
• Gameboy Advance (Nintendo)
• Sega of Europe Officially Announces Games for
  Competing Systems
• September 11 Affects the Game Industry

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Seventh generation

• This generation is currently phasing in.
• It is believed by some, that the seventh
  generation began in late 2004 with the
  introduction of Nintendo's DS and Sony's
  PlayStation Portable.
• Microsoft's Xbox 360 was released on November 22,
  2005.
• Sony's PlayStation 3 was announced to be released
  in Japan on November 11, 2006 and in North
  America on November 17, 2006 and in Europe in
  March of 2007.
• Nintendo's Wii was announced to be released in
  North America on November 19, 2006 (retailing for
  250), in Japan on December 2, 2006, in Australia
  on December 7, 2006, and in Europe on December 8,
  2006.

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The gaming industry

• More people in the UK now spend money on computer
  games than on renting videos or going to the
  cinema
• Sales of computer games hit a record year in 2001
  with more than 1.6 billion sold, according to
  ELSPA
• More than 1.7 million PS2 consoles have been
  installed in UK homes since the product was
  launched in November 2000, compared with 700,000
  of the first generation PlayStations at the same
  time in the sales cycle
• The UK is now the third largest market in the
  world for computer games, after the US and Japan

(ELSPA) European Leisure Software Publishers
Association See http//www.elspa.com/ for more
details
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Summary

• The computer and video games industry has a long
  history and now generates more revenue than
  Hollywood!
• Technology doesnt necessarily sell a game it
  is good design that makes a game a million seller
• Big games cost around 3million to produce these
  days and involve around 120 people!

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Further reading

• For more on the history of computer games and
  machines see
• http//www.classicgaming.com/museum/
• Read The Ultimate History of Video Games by
  Steven L. Kent, Prima Publishing (2001), ISBN
  0761536434

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Next session

• We will look at the different genres of game and
  how this can affect the design of a game