Again, my post for my Game History class for Full Sail University.

Prompt: Personal Computers also became a contender for the gaming market during this time. What made PCs a popular choice for gamers over the typical consoles?

As a primarily PC gamer, I can easily say the reasons for PC being a choice is because of three factors: One, the low cost entry for hardware; two, the upgradability; and three, the amount of software available. In the beginnings of PC gaming, PCs did have a higher cost associated with it, however, the machine life would more than make up for it. When consoles were being constantly upgraded every two or three years, the PC form factor would stay the same and not change much. This even led it to being a choice for businesses to purchase them. Once businesses took advantage of the PC, the cost would be dramatically reduced, which led to more people being able to purchase them for gaming.

My second reason, upgradability, comes after the PC was purchased. When a new processor (CPU) or chipset was released, one would only have to purchase a one hundred dollar upgrade, while still being able to use the same amount of memory (RAM), same peripherals, and case. The upgradability made PC gaming a more lucrative experience, as the gamer would get more for their money. Also, since they were able to sell the old parts to companies who were on the older form factors, a better investment. Once a console life was over, there was no option but to either junk it, or keep it for hopes that you could use it again.

Third and more important, would be the software availability. Since most of the console manufacturers would have rules in place for the content of games on their systems, you had to deal with an imposed form of censorship by the console manufacturers. PC gamers didn’t (and still don’t) have to deal with this. While you still have censorship at the level of the Publisher/Distributor, a Game Developer can create a game with any sort of content and release it by themselves (either a diskette on a corkboard at a local game store, a CD via mail, or the internet). The famous shareware model, that iD Software used, is a perfect example. The content of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom made it so that the game had to be released by iD, but became one of the foremost first person shooters. Consoles would never have a game like that until Game Publishers proved the sales were there.

So, this is my post for my Game History class, in which I had to answer the following prompt:

What failures do you believe were the most important during the beginning of the industry? What changes do you see now in the industry and its games from these failures?

Enjoy!

In my opinion, the failures I have seen in video gaming’s past were the lack of innovation and more copying from the innovators. Technically, it started during the pinball years by having other manufacturers pilfer ideas used in other machines, but they generally had different layouts and themes for their games. For this article’s purpose, it started with Nolan Bushnell’s use of Spacewar as an arcade cabinet instead of innovating a new idea. While he was creating a cabinet for mass consumption for the public, due to Spacewar still needing a really expensive computer to play the game at the time, it was still very much a stolen idea. This need to innovate finally hit Bushnell after the release of Pong. Pong, which in itself was not a new idea to the video game market, did have innovations in it, but for the sake of the argument, it was also a copied game.

Innovation, in this case, can be a reuse of an idea repackaged as a different way to play the game. For example, Breakout (Atari) was basically Single Player Pong, without Artificial Intelligence, against a destructible wall. This was still an innovation, yet it still borrowed ideas. We can see this in today’s games, as well as games before now. They all borrowed aspects of gameplay, story, controls, etc. to drive their game. Even games of today borrow ideas from games of the past. The recently released game Batman: Arkham Asylum is basically a fighter game with adventure game elements, and even some hide-and-seek puzzles thrown in for good measure. What makes it truly different than the rest of the games is how the game uses the ideas for play. Even games of the past can be broken down and analyzed as to where they got the basis of design. For example, Sonic The Hedgehog is a speedier version of Super Mario Bros., in which Super Mario Bros. is a slower and more in-depth version of Defender.

Innovation actually helps the industry, while straight up cloning would kill it. The reason for this, as was the reason why Pong copiers didn’t see much profit in the end, is that no gamer wants to play another inferior version of a game. My best example for this would be when Pac-Man was released for the Atari 2600. No one wanted to play a blockier, possibly haphazard version of Pac-Man than what they could play in the arcade version with higher-resolution graphics.