Unit 20: Computer Game Platforms and Technologies

Since the beginning of the 1970's, video games have rapidly been evolving. Over the past 40 years, we have gone from having Pong, a very simple game which consisted of black and white colours, 2 lines and a square, to having photo-realistic games such as Grand Theft Auto 5. 1947 is believed to be the first year a video game was released and this game is a missile simulator on the "Cathode ray tube amusement device". Gaming really kicked in in 1961 when Steve Russell, Martin Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen developed a game known as Space War. This game was quite popular and eventually lead to games consoles being produced and arcade machines

1950s
Interactive TV
In 1953, a show was aired on TV called Winky Dink and You. It aired from 1953 to 1957 on Saturday mornings at 10:30am and was hosted by Jack Barry. Its interactive feature was the 'Magic drawing screen' which people bought and was basically a large vinyl sheet which children would put over the TV screen and allowed them to draw. The TV show would bring up activities like mazes and dot-to-dots which the children would solve and help Winky Dink carry on the story. Winky dink is important as it is classed as the first interactive TV show and hailed this name by Microsoft, however, the show was discontinued because the children began drawing directly on the TV screen.

1960s
Arcade
In 1961, a group of students studying at MIT created a game titled Space War. Amongst these students was Steve Russell, who actually mainly programmed Space War on the DEC PDP-1 which was a new computer at the time. The game Space War proved to be very popular over the years and was added to the first arcade machine in the 1970s as well as being one of the first influential games. This game involved two players controlling ships and shooting each other whilst trying to avoid the black hole in the middle.

PC Gaming
The beginning of game development - 1960s
Mainframe computers were gigantic computers which were the only ones available at the time. They could be found inside universities and some students their would begin to program these very early games in their spare time. A game called Tennis for Two was created on an oscilloscope in 1958 and many people enjoyed the idea, so began to program on these mainframe computers. Due to limited hardware, games made in this time were very simple and did not have a lot of things happening. In 1961, Steve Russell and a group of students created the game 'Spacewar!' where two human players would control their own space ship and try to shoot each other and avoid the black hole in the centre of the screen. This game influeneced a lot of people to begin creating games. In 1966, Ralph Baer (One of the founders of the first home console) created a game called Chase which could be played on a TV set. Baer then went on to create the light gun with Bill Harrison and then got Bill Rusch to help create video games in 1967. One of these was 'Shooting gallery' which used a physical, modelled rifle gun designed specifically for the game in which allowed players to shoot things on-screen.

1970s
Arcade era
The first arcade machine was developed in 1971 by a group of students which was known as the Galaxy game. It was a coin operated machine and considering Space wars' popularity, they decided to put Space Wars on the arcade machine. In 1972, the company Atari, which is Japanese for To hit the target, was formed by 2 men named Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari are famous for creating great early games and the coin operated arcade machine industry. One of their most famous games is Pong and many people still know of this game today. It was extremely successful in its time was was the first massively successful arcade machine game. Although with its popularity, many other companies made similar Pong games which prevented it from dominating the market. Pong was created by a man named Allan Alcorn and this man ended up working for Atari, the best games company at the time.

Another games company, Taito, released yet another extremely popular game in 1978 which later became the first blockbuster arcade video game. As with Pong, this game is still known today and is called Space Invaders. In this game, rows of aliens would slowly descend to Earth whilst whilst the player controls a laser cannon to try to destroy them before they reach land. Due to this game gigantic success, its release is widely known as the start of the Golden era of gaming. Arcades began to appear everywhere and were so popular, companies that owned an arcade machine made giant profits. In Japan, there was even a coin shortage due to so many coins being put in the machines. The most popular games around this time were Space invaders, Galaxian, Pac-man, Defender and Donkey kong. All of these were released within 1978-1981, thus creating the golden age of video gaming as these games are still popular in arcades today and they came out within a small range of time of each other.

Consoles
1st Generation 1972-1976
The first generation consoles were the Magnavox Odyssey and the Coleco Telstar. The Magnavox Odyssey was the first home video game console ever created and most of the games they played consisted of black and white graphics with big pixels. Compared to modern day games such as Grand Theft Auto 5, the differences are unbelievable. These first generation consoles used removable cartridges, which are not used in modern consoles any more. The cartridges themselves however did not contain the actual game, they were like a key which activated its game on the console.The creator of the first home video gaming system was a man named Ralph Baer, which was the Magnavox Odyssey, in 1972. Ralph had the idea of a video game console for the home during the construction of a games console he was building in 1951. He took his idea and then in 1966 - quite a lot of time later - created a two player game which consisted of two dots chasing each other. Due to the limitations at the time, most games in this time period mainly consisted of a few dots an the screen moving about, so graphics quality when compared to modern games is extremely poor. Baer then went on to create a prototype which had two controllers, a light gun and sixteen switches which were used by the players to select which game they wanted to play. 21 years after Baer first thought of the home video games console, it was finally created in 1972. The Magnavox Odyssey, which was quite successful. Typical controllers for this generation usually consisted of a button and either a dial you can twist or a stick which can be moved in all directions similar to the analogue sticks on Xbox or PS3 controllers today.

2nd Generation 1976-1983
This era is also widely known as the early 8-bit era due to the introduction of 8-bit graphics. The first console which started this era was the Fairchild channel F advanced Programmable video system which was released in August 1976. This console was the first programmable ROM cartridge based video game console however did not sell as well as the Odyssey. The best selling console of this era was the Atari 2600 and the Intellivison, Odyssey 2 and Coleco vision were doing quite well too. Games cartridges now consisted of a microprocessor based code that were inserted into plastic casings which could be plugged into a console as easy as a traditional plug and socket. Instead of games consoles already containing the games, this era introduced a stage where games would be added inside the cartridge and consoles would contain a special microprocessor read the code of the game and was able to play it. This is similar to how games are played today. Through the second era, the longer a console was in the market, the better the graphics and sound. Another fact is that the Fairchild console was the first console to use cartridges as the storage medium. These 2nd generation consoles used joysticks which were basically an analogue stick and a few buttons. Unfortunately though, towards the end of the 2nd era in 1983, the games industry crashed and the amount of sales was very poor. Total revenues saw a drop of 97% which meant the majority of games companies were forced to close down as they went bankrupt.

PC Gaming

Games on university mainframes - 1970s
As mentioned before, mainframe computers could mainly be found in universities and these early games in the 1960s inspired people to create their own games. In the 1970s, these mainframe games boomed to a point where loads were created and there is little record of any but the most popular games. In the late 1970s, programmers began to earn money from their games whilst in the past, the only payment they got was praise. There are some significant stages in the 1970s:

- 1971 - Don Daglow wrote the first computer baseball game where players could manage a baseball team and follow them through as they get to the top.

- 1971 - Star Trek was created by Mike Mayfield at MIT and the game was quite popular. It consisted of small maps and used text to process commands.

- 1972 - Gregory Wob created ' Hunt the Wumpus' for the PDP-10. This was the first text-based adventure game to be created and played like a game of hide and seek.

- 1974 - Maze war and Spasim were created which were some of the first 3D multi-player first person shooter games on record.

- 1975 - Will Crowther created a very well made text-based adventure game named 'Adventure' in which similar to Hunt the Wumpus, used tect to carry out commands. For example, if 'Walk Forward' was written, the game would state a few sentances of where the character would be if he 'walked forward' in real life.

- 1975 - CRT screens began use for games as they could display 30 lines of text on the screen whereas in the past a teletype printer was used to communicate with the player. It would print out text which would change depending on what the game told it to do.

- 1975 - The first role playing game was created in this year by Don Daglow and it was known as Dungeon. It was mainly a text-based adventure kind of game but it was the first to use line graphics, top down maps which allowed for light and darkness and visions for characters in the game.

- 1977 - Another text based game was created by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor called Air and this was an air combat game. They later went on to produce graphical online multiplayer game and a successful on-line game company called Kesmai. This company was even bought by Electronic arts.

Home computers of the 1970s now allowed users to program their own games. Some people even got into groups and produced bigger games and many people bought computer magazines as they contained large bits of code in which the user could write up and play the game the code formed. These codes were indeed very big and one tiny mistake when writing up the code such as pressing the R key instead of the V could completely break the game. Small companies also began selling floppy disks with games they had created on and an example of one of these games is Akalabeth, a role playing game.

Handheld
A handheld console is basically a small portable games console which is lightweight and has a built in screen, speakers, controls and a battery.They are much smaller than actual consoles which is where they have good portability and they can be played anywhere. The technology on these devices has been a bit behind that of consoles mainly due to its size as the creators cannot fit better video cards for example in them. The first handheld console was created in 1978 and named the Mattel handheld electronic game. It was LED-based and the actual device was only able to play the game it was designed for. The most popular game was football and its screen was shaped like a football field. Lights lit up on the screen representing players on the pitch and the actual player of the game had to navigate through the pitch to the other side and score a touch down. This kind of gaming where small lights would pop up on the screen was used in all Mattel handheld games. Some other games created were baseball, basketball, missile attack and armour battle. A year later in 1979 another handheld console was released called the Milton Bradley Micro-vision. This device was significant as it was the first handheld console to introduce interchangeable cartridges, however, there were many problems with the handheld such as cartridges could be permanently damage by the handheld and the screen was prone to rotting.

Interactive TV
In 1978 the Laser Disc was invented. Much like DVD discs today, these were able to store and play videos but were much larger. This is also the first time that people could jump to any part of the video they wanted by using the chapters section, it did not have a linear path which could not be controlled. This meant games could be made with larger plot lines and various outcomes depending on things such as the players choices. This is an important technology as it offered higher quality videos than the VHS and video cassette systems at the time, however, they were not that popular in America or Europe. An interactive movie is a video game which uses mainly full-motion video of live or animated footage. The first interactive movie was Kinoautomat in 1967. At certain intervals, a moderator would appear and ask the audience which of two scenes they would like to see next. The chosen scene would play. They began to film real actors for interactive movies as well as animate characters and could create interesting games due to the fact they could use branching story lines. They would also include bad scenes such as Game over screens where the player chooses the wrong path and is killed by a monster for example. This is an important technology as it got audiences to interact with what was going on in the story instead of just watching it unfold and it helped create important formats such as the DVD

1980s
Arcade
Many US businesses, mainly restaurants such as Chuck E. Cheeses, began to buy arcade machines, thus creating a food and gaming combination which was extremely popular as families could go to buy food and keep their children entertained for hours. However, the arcade age began to die out due to the fact people could buy home consoles and, of course, play games from home. By 1991 - just past the end of the 1980s - , the US arcade industry had fallen in revenues $2.1 billion which is a gigantic fall. However, arcades were saved (but not for long) by the releases of more popular games such as Capcom's Street fighter 2, Mid ways Mortal Kombat and Killer instinct by Rare. These titles all popularized the fighting and action genres of video games and proved to be great successes, which sort of saved the arcades, but only for a short period of time. Some of these titles were made in the 1990s and some in the 1980s so I have decided it is best to put them in this decade.

One very major title to be published was Pac-man - originally called puck man - and this title was extremely popular and is still famous today. It achieved success as it tried to appeal to a wider audience which were women. At this time, games were seen to be played mostly by men, so the creators of pac-man tried to appeal to both audiences. The developers said to do this, they knew that women like eating, so revolved the game around eating - PAC-MAN eats small dots - and bring chased and this strangely worked very well. PAC-MAN was one of the reasons the industry survived the fall.

Console
3rd Generation 1983-1992
This generation was widely known as the 8-bit era and saw a start when Nintendo released their Nintendo family computer and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The release of the consoles put an end to the North American Video game crash in 1983 and completely resurrected the industry, causing gaming to become very popular again. This era was home to the first role playing games such as Dragon Quest and side scrollers such as Super Mario. Many widely recognised and famous characters and games were created in this era and established one giant step for Video games consoles and gaming. Some important inventions are Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Metal gear. This era also introduced a game pad which took over joysticks and paddles which are similar in a way to todays game controllers in the sense that they had a lot of buttons and a D-pad on them. The best selling games console in this generation was the NES/famicom. The NES sold 61 million units world wide and still proved to be the best selling console up until the Play station (1994) which was followed by the sega master system (1985), which was massively popular in Europe. Nintendo had put strict licensing rules on the NES which became a problem for third party developers as they could not release games on the NES console. On the other hand, the Sega Master System would allow third party games and was a massive success in Europe and became very successful due to this.

This was Nintendos best , if not one of its best, eras as it brought out so many great games which caused it to lead this era and sit at the top. The Legend of Zelda series is a personal favourite and many other popular titles in this era from Nintendo are Super Mario and Donkey Kong which are also very popular and well known. Suprisingly, all of these titles were produced by the same man, Shigeru Miyamoto. He was born on Nov 16th 1952 and is commonly known as " The Father of Video game" due to his successes with these games. He was influeneced by things he did as a child and inspired to make games like this. For example, he got the idea of Zelda as he used to explore areas such as caves a lot and he got the idea of space invaders from the manga books he used to read.

PC Gaming
Here, the computer games industry saw its first major challenges and problems. Publishing houses appeared with fly-by-night operations that cheated the developers many businesses failed but there are some such as EA which are still standing today. Some people were able to clone games and pass them off as something they made and it was hard to actually find evidence of who actually owned the product, however, the low costs of producing games allowed for many unique and interesting titles to be made, which influenced the creation of more.

Technology and game elements improved greatly over the years with new games adding elements widely used today. Many of these were seen in the most popular games. An example of a popular game is Battlezone. This game was created in 1980 and became what was known as the first true three-dimensional game. it used wire-frame vector graphics with no textures and was created to be a battle simulator. Monster maze (1981) was the first 3D game for a computer however. This game was also popular and involves the player moving through a 3D maze eating pellets and avoiding ghosts. It is actually quite similar to PAC-MAN, but from a first person perspective. Dungeons of Daggorath (1982) added weapons, monsters, greater sound effects and a health monitor. These elements are usually found in almost all games today. As technology improves, so do these elements. PAC-MAN (1980) achieved popularity in mainstream culture and the character was the first of any to actually own any rights. Pole position (1982) established the foundations of driving in games in todays era. It had the camera set up above and behind the car, so the player could see the car from 2 different angles. Dragons Lair (1983) was the first laser disc game and added full motion video.

Adventure game titles were quite popular in the 1980s especially Zork. They did not have graphics such as the ones in PAC-MAN for example, but instead focused more on story and decisions. These were also much easier to make but towards the end of the 1980s, people wanted graphical adventures and not text, so text-based games began to die out whilst all others boomed. A very small amount of text games are still being made today, but are no where near popular. The first graphic adventure was Mystery House. It was almost exactly the same as a text based adventure, but it had images of the areas described in the text area at the bottom and the graphics were black and white line drawings. At the time it was very popular and its creator went on to make many more adventure games.In 1982, the commodore 64 was released and quickly became the most popular home computer in the USA. It had a basic programming setup and advanced graphics and sound, which made it very popular with games creators as better games could be made quicker than before. Then, not long after still in 1982, the ZX Spectrum was released in the UK which caused Britain to become more interested in the games industry. It quickly achieved great success in the UK and Western Europe, but clones of the computer were produced which saw it have competition in the market. In 1984, the Sierra Kings Quest series was created with great colour graphics and third person perspective, where the player can see their character as if someone was watching them. It still used text base commands to carry out tasks however. A big technology was also created in 1984 and this was a game that had full 6 degree movement. This game was Elite and allowed users to explore 3D Solar systems and look around them freely with the camera, which was a first for computer games and brought them into another age. In 1985, the Atari ST brought in 16-bit technology with 65,535 colours which which was a big jump from the previous 8-bit with only 256 colours. This great leap did come with a big complication for buyers. It was really expensive as it costed $1000 for it and a coloured monitor. The computer mouse was also introduced which is a great piece of hardware still used today, which saw success when used with the King's Quest game and high resolution bitmap displays allowed high-quality interfaces to be made.

On-line PC Gaming
Dial-up bulletin boards were popular in the 1980s and could be used for online gaming. They had a text interface but were later able to make use of terminal control codes and various games such as adventure games became playable using the interface. Some early online games allowed users to interact with each other such as fantasy role-playing games. Commercial online services also began to arise with a plain text interface. By the end of the 1980s, they used fully-graphical environments. Popular services were ones such as CompuServe and The Source. These companies also had interactive games features.

Handheld
After the Micro-vision, Nintendo released their first handheld in 1980 called the Game and Watch. It was very successful as it went on through the years as the games produced for it such as Donkey Kong, Mario Bros and Balloon fight proved to be very popular and made the handheld very well known. Nintendo then went on to release another handheld in 1989 which is known to be the most successful handheld console in gaming history. This was known as the Game boy. It had a fair price of $109 at launch, but with the Game and Watch, its main success factor was the games Nintendo produced for it. For example, at launch Tetris was released with the Game boy and this game lead to many purchases of the device as everybody loved the game at the time. Many still play tetris today. Nintendo then went on to produce titles such as Super Mario land and Donkey Kong for it which increased its sales and popularity. The handheld proved that games make the system, not the hardware as the game boy had a horrible, blurry green screen, but went on to be the most popular due to the games it had. Due to its success, Nintendo went on to produce better versions of the game boy in later years such as the game boy advanced which we will talk about in the later years.

The Atari Lynx was also released in 1989. It had far better graphics than the Game boy, but it was large and expensive. The console was co-developed with Epyx and hoped to compete with the Game boy, but could not. This is also a large piece of evidence that games make the console, not the hardware as the Lynx greater graphics proved to be no match for Nintendos poorer visuals due to the Game boys amazing games.With this, Nintendo went on to dominate the market for many years.

Interactive TV
The first commercial interactive movie game was Dragons Lair which was released in 1983 which consisted of a full-motion cartoon. It had a lot of scenes and choices for the player to choose, but if the player picked the wrong option, they would 'lose a life' and would then be able to either carry on or retry the scene - depending on what the current scene is - until they find the right option to progress with the story. Dragons lair became very popular and has even had a modern day remake. This was possible due to the laser-discs ability to jump to chapters. When the player makes a choice, the game will be scripted to reveal a certain chapter which is basically a scene which determines the right path or the wrong depending on which is chosen. The first laser disc game was Segas Astron Belt. It featured live-action full-motion footage which showed space ships and laser fire and it was created in 1982, however, the most popular interactive video game at the time was Dragons lair, so Astron Belt was not as popular. Newer controllers were also being developed in the 1980s for interactive video games. The light gun was invented which became popular and lead to a lot of shooting games being invented with this light gun. Whilst this was happening, Digital pictures began to create interactive movies for home consoles. When CD-ROMS began use, games with live action and full motion were considered cutting edge; The X-files game, Gabriel knight 2 and Ripper are just a few of the most popular interactive games in this era.

1990s
Arcade Around the mid-1990's, fifth generation consoles (e.g. The Nintendo 64) became similar to the quality of arcade machines with the main feature being the true 3D graphics and became much more popular than arcade machines. Personal computers followed shortly after with 3D accelerator cards and people could create their own games on these. By the end of the 1990's, Sega released their Dream cast console which was 128-bit and could produce 3D graphics the same as the ones in arcade machines. Over the next few years, consoles such as the Xbox took over Arcade gaming in every way due to better graphics and you could play at home for as long as you want, not for 10-20 mins of arcade gaming before having to pay money again. Due to the releases of fighting games such as street fighter, fighting games were the most popular choice of games amongst gamers at the time. Popular games in this era were Mortal Kombat, The Simpsons, NBA jam and Street fighter.

Console
4th Generation 1993-1996
These consoles were the beginning of the console 16-bit era as the consoles released here were much faster, powerful and used these new 16-bit processors which gave them much better graphics. One important point to make is that home computer systems had been running with 16/32 bit processors for some time now which gave them a big advantage and a lot of people spent a lot of money buying these instead of consoles as they could play all the top games and the technology on these computers is better than that of a console. Before the 4th era, Atari were a major games company who are known as the fathers of gaming to many people due to their many great games, but with the failure of their Atari 7800, they began to fade out of the market as many new competitors stepped in. Nintendo were currently leading the market due to their amazing, memorable games such as The Legend of Zelda and they also released a Super NES which sold an amazing 50+ million units. Nintendo's main rival were Sega, who still held a significant place in the market, with their Sega Genesis. It had multiple processors and was more advanced than the Nintendo consoles, however, many game developers could not be bothered trying to figure out how to code these extra processors which mainly lead Sega to fall behind Nintendo. Sales figures for the Sega genesis were at 10 million which is quite a distance away from Nintendo's figures of 50 million. In this era, sega introduced a well known character called Sonic the hedgehog who is still well known today. This was a similar move to combat Nintendo as they had many loved characters such as Mario and Zelda.

Fifth Generation 1992-2000
The fifth generation marks a new era for gaming. Consoles in this generation contained 32- and 64-bit processors which enabled the development and creation of 3D games which dominate todays market and probably still will in the future. It also marks the fall of the classic side-scrolling games. These types of games however have not completely halted in production as 2D games are still being made, some bring quite popular such as Terraria. Games stepped up a level in immersion as the player began to feel as though they were the character in the story and could move about freely in a 3D world just like in the real world. Graphics also improved greatly due to these 32 and 64-bit processors which meant games would gradually begin to become more realistic establishing more and more immersion and entertainment. New competitors began to arise in the fifth era with the main one being Sony. They had been studying the market for quite some time and released a well known console which sparked gaming to be even greater. The PlayStation was released in 1994 and as of 2005, it has sold over 100 million units. Its younger brother, the PlayStation 2, sold even more units which I will cover in the 6th era. However, one major company fell in the 5th era. They did not fall entirely but stopped production of games consoles. This company was Sega and in 1998 they released the Sega Dream-cast. This console only sold 10 million units and Sega realised they would be unable to compete with Microsoft and Sony, so pulled out of the hardware market. Nintendo, who were leading the market in the previous era, had been losing to Sony in this one. Their console, the Nintendo 64 managed to sell 30 million units which was more than the Dreamcast but a lot less than the PlayStation, however, in the handheld market, Nintendo were still the leaders. Due to Nintendo's great success with previous consoles and games, they were able to stay in the market and continue game and console development. Another very significant departure is that of Atari. Once a giant company has had many great falls and now Atari has pulled out of the hardware market just like Sega. This is due to its low sales with the Atari 7800 and Jaguar. Controllers in this era had changed greatly. The PS controller for example had a lot more buttons on it than in previous generations controllers and two analogue sticks so the player can move and look around the new 3D environments. An important game created in this era was Tomb Raider. Many squeals have been made and it was primarily successful for featuring a female main character with a third person camera which has not been seen in a game before.

PC Gaming
This era mainly involved the rise of 3D graphics, increased computer power and the rise of the industry. It was also the era that redefined gaming and set many mechanics and genres we use today. As large companies grew, smaller ones began to break and die out due to increased costs of technology and processors such as the Intel 386 meant computers became more powerful and would be able to render much stronger and better graphics and processes. For these smaller companies to survive, they used a thing called Shareware. This is where customers are able to try a portion of the game for free to see whether or not they think it is worth buying, then after the player gets to a certain section, they might have to pay a fee in order to continue with the game if they want to buy it. These companies included Epic Mega games which is known as Epic Games today. Since games were becoming bigger, they could not be stored on floppy disks which were commonly used in the 1990s by companies to sell games, so shareware games were replaced by shorter demos distributed on free CDs. These CDs could have been given free within a games magazine or could have been bought over the internet. Popular shareware games in this time were Wolfenstein and Doom. Doom was released as shareware, with people encouraged to distribute it further. Over 1 million copies had been sold and Doom was mainly responsible for enlarging and setting the First Person Shooter genre (FPS) which is where the player views the environment from the in-game main characters perspective, so they will be able to see the weapons they hold just like a person would in real life. This genre is also centred around shooting enemies, whether they be human or alien and anything in between, and having a set of ammunition.

Another game called Dune II was released in 1992 and this also set the standard mechanics for Real-time strategy games. Dune II was not the first RTS game, but the mechanics which it used were more favourable than the ones previously used in other RTS games and future RTS games shared a lot in common with Dune II. The player plays the game from an overhead perspective and controlled the economic and military aspects of running an army. Its warcraft style used GUIs once a building or unit was selected for example and a Command and Conquer style which allowed the building of units and strategys in order to defeat every enemy on the map. Another genre also arose in 1992 and this was Survival Horror. The game that started it was Alone in the Dark and it influenced the creation of popular games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. There are also many free survival horror games on the internet which have boomed in popularity around todays time and these are games such as Slender and SCP Containment Breach. Adventure games such as Monkey Island were also very popular and continued to grow. Point and click gaming was introduced which used the computer mouse and many saw this as much easier to use than in the past where you would have to type up a lot of commands. Similar to adventure games, puzzle games were also going strong and Myst was the best selling game of all time for a lot of the decade. The game itself made full use of the new high-capacity CD ROM format, however, both puzzle and adventure games began to fade out due to the giant increase in popularity of the action games (Such as Doom and Wolfenstein) and Real-time Strategy games (Such as Dune II).

The final genre that arose in the 1990s was Simulation games such as Sim City. These types of games eventually went on to a game called 'The Sims' being created which is still very popular in todays era and the Sims 2 is one of the best selling games of all time. 1996 though, 3dfx released the first affordable 3D accelerator cards called the Voodoo Chip-set which were released for personal computers. This allowed home computers to be able to render higher-resolutions and more detailed 3D graphics. FPS games quickly took advantage of these new cards and became the first games created for them. The most popular was Quake and FPS were the best selling and most favoured games of this decade. They would also be used for the development of new 3D hardware.

By 1996, the rise of Microsoft and the great success of console games such as Super Mario 64 brought interest in accelerated 3D graphics on the IBM pc compatible and this brought out the attempts to for affordable solutions with the ATI Rage for example. Also in 1996 another very popular game was released. Tomb Raider. This was one of the first 3D games and was the first game to feature a proper 3D modelled female main character. It was very successul and many sequels have been made. It also had great graphics which were deemed revolutionary. 3D graphics libraries such as DirectX and OpenGL knocked other interfaces out of the market and became more popular with their benefits they had shown in games. Due to Microsoft's newer operating systems, many older games were rendered unplayable on these new machines and the only way to be able to play them is using an emulator. Over time, computer technology increased rapidly and graphics and CPU power increased enormously which meant games became more and more realistic. More complexity was also added as newer graphics cards such as NVIDIA GeForce 6 allowed engines to be more powerful.

On-line PC Gaming
This era saw the start of internet gaming. The first major game to include internet services was Quake and this is the main reason it became so popular. Over the years, 'Multiplayer' as it came to be known, was a requirement in all FPS games. Multiplayer began to move to other genres too such as RTS games like Age of Empires and Massively Multiplay Online RolePlaying Games also began in this era such as EverQuest. This genre saw far more players on one open world than that of any other genre. The internet also began having websites with small web-games on them due to the creation of Macromedia Flash and Java. These web games took a lot less time to make than a real game, but were still very fun and today there are thousands all over the internet, quickly advancing in graphics and power. The most popular however in the 1990s were board, arcade and puzzle games. One advantage of PC gaming is the use of mods. These began to appear in the 1990s and were made for the very popular games. This is where gamers take a game and modify or create files for it to change in game elements. An example would be with Fallout 3. Modders are able to create new weapons and armor for example, which can be used in game. Half-Life however - an extremely well known and popular game even today - was the biggest game for modders and had the most played mods at that time. This new custom content or 'mods' proved quite popular and many players encouraged the development of more. The better graphical MMORPG games like Ultima On-line brought these games to the mainstream audience and they too became popular as people like these new social elements implemented into these games and the fact they could play the game with real people, not just NPCs.

Handheld
The most successful competitor to the Game boy was the Sega Game gear launched in 1990. it had a colour screen,unlike the GB. It was also able to keep its price down to $149 and is said to have a better selection of games, but this was not enough as Nintendos dominance of the market boomed and the majority of people favoured Nintendos handhelds and games. 8 years later, Nintendo released their first handheld console in colour. The Game boy color. The screen now displayed various colours and as well as the screen, the GBCs case also came in a colour. Another thing which made this handheld successful was its backwards compatibility with old Game boy games giving it an enormous library. This however was not Nintendos final handheld. They had a few bigger things in store in the next decade.

Interactive TV
DVD games for the TV were first created in the 1990s and were poorly received and understood as an entertainment medium, however, it became the biggest form of home video distribution in Japan. Further into the future though, consoles like the PS2 popularised DVD gaming and now most PCs have a DVD player. A DVD/DVDi is a standalone game that can be played on a set-top DVD player. It is an important piece of technology because most movies now have some kind of interactive feature and its involvement with the PC and PS2 has made it become a great success. Some video games have also been imported to the DVD format which now allows them to be played on a DVD player and not a PC and one of these games was Dragons Lair.

Although interactive movies had a better quality than the arcade and early consoles at the time, they lacked direct interactivity which caused many gamers to stay away from them. After 1995, Full Motion Video began to fade away due to advanced consoles being released which people thought were much more entertaining. Interactive games were also very expensive to make especially if you wanted a professional actor. For example, Sega created a game called Ground Zero: Texas and this alone costed $3 million to create. Also, the quality was not as good as people hoped. Many weren't considered full-motion as they did not run at 24 FPS or higher. Some of the hardware also limited the creators use of colours too such as the Sega CD only being able to process 64 colours.

In 1994 Visiware was established itself as the authority for TV user experiences for gaming and interactive TV. It is based in Paris, New-York and Denver. Its most famous for its Play Along platform which allows TV producers and channels to launch next gen social TV synchronised interactions, so millions of TV viewers can participate during a programme via the internet, Iphone, IPad, Tablet or smart phone. Users can also interact with the TV and play games. With these devices, the user can touch the screen to select items and what is chosen will change what is displayed on your TV. The devices let users play games, take part in quizzes, look at leader boards for sports, participate in polls and votes and allows T-commerce. It differs to games consoles such as the Xbox and PS3 as it uses a tablet, phone or the internet whereas these consoles use controllers. It is quite similar to the Wii U as both have a tablet or external device which is used to interact with the actual thing displayed on the TV. Also, the devices are unable to play big games such as the ones on the Xbox and PS3. The games they play are quite similar to arcade games and mobile games as they are small and mainly 2D. It is able to play things such as chess, poker, action adventure games, sports games and many more.

2000 - 2013
Arcade In today's era, arcade machines are rarely found anywhere else except arcades or bars. Groups of people still go to arcades and are still quite popular where ever they are, however most people play on PCs or consoles. Popular games today are Dance dance revolution (1998), Virtua cop (1994) and House of the Dead (1996). These games have been out for quite some time now, yet are still popular. They also have their own unique controllers and examples would be in Dance dance revolution, you use your feet to stand on the different pads on the ground to match up the symbols on the screen and on house of the dead, you hold a gun, wired to the machine which shoots and invisible laser which reacts where ever it hits the screen. These types of controls, I believe, are much better than controllers for consoles.

In Japan however, arcades have still remained popular and have seen no decline throughout the years. A good example which shows its popularity would be the games industries market figures in 2009. The arcade sector held 3/10ths of the total revenue gained by the entire sector of video games. The total was $20 billion and the arcade sector earned $6 billion. Consoles however only earned $3.5 billion, but recent figures state that the arcade sector is declining.

The technology behind arcade machines heavily relied on solid state electronics and integrated circuits. In the past, these machines used custom hardware usually made or bought by the company who made the game but modern machines now mostly modify console hard ware. Vector graphics are the use of points, lines, polygons and shapes to establish game elements and models such as the fighter ships in Star wars games. Developers usually create a wire mesh from these items which create and exterior skeleton for the character, object or scenery. Arcade games mainly use vector based graphics for 3D motion

One massive advantage of arcade machines over consoles is their unique controls. Each arcade machines has its own special controls which aren't usually anything like controllers on and Xbox for example. They vary massively from steering wheels and pedals for driving games, guns for shooters and kick-able footballs for football games. Some even have their own cabins which you can climb into which are completely dynamic and move depending on what is being displayed on the screen inside, For example, there are roller coaster simulators and these cabins will lean to the right in the roller coaster turns left to make the game more realistic and immersive. In most arcade games, the player usually gains a score determined by how well they played the game. The games get increasingly more difficult over the play session which makes it harder to get a better score and many people play arcade games to try to beat high scores or scores of their friends. It adds a bit of competition.

Considering great titles such as Super Mario will be lost in time with the introduction of new games consoles and games, emulators were created to attempt to preserve old games and make them playable on newer consoles. Emulators enable the ability to play old games from old consoles and first started to appear on the Sony PlayStation. Nintendo later decided to add emulators to their consoles, due to their many successful title releases and these emulators can be bought on the Wii virtual console service. The PlayStation network and Xbox Live have even older game emulators such as Asteroids and Battle zone.

Limitations of Arcade
Some limitations include:
- Graphics quality and game play are a lot poorer in today's era than in the past, so they are not as enjoyable to play as other games
- Some people may be confused by the varying controllers used by arcade machines
- Some may be fun, but most people would not play them for as long as they do a console game for example.
- You have to pay to play them in arcades.

Console
Sixth Generation 2000-2005
Another major competitor had entered the competition in this generation known as Microsoft. They had created the console known as the Xbox which was released in 2001. It was easier to program and was released with a very popular title called Halo in which games are still being made about today and is making millions. It was criticized however as the PlayStation 2, the Xbox main competitor, was said to be better and many people didn't like the Xbox box. This was redeemed though by the newly introduced multi player side to gaming where Xbox introduced a service called Xbox Live. It had much better servers than the PlayStation 2s network but costed around $60 a year whereas on the PlayStation 2, on-line was free. Consoles in this era began to focus more on multi player instead of single as it was proving to be much more popular as people could play with friends from their homes instead of going to each other houses and was much more entertaining. Despite the Xboxs great on-line feature, Sony dominated the market in this era but the Xbox was not that far behind. As for specifications, the Xbox was proven to be a more powerful system but many still preferred the PlayStation 2 as it is said to have much better games. Another competitor also entered the stage, from Nintendo and they released the Game Cube (2001) which was the companies first console to use optical discs. It was much smaller than the other two consoles and had graphics much more like the ones from the 5th generation, but it still sold very well. As with most Nintendo consoles, many great games were released for it such as The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker which made it sell incredibly well. Despite having poorer graphics, Nintendo were able to make a lot of money from this as they did not have to spend lots of money getting these newer, better graphics and the console and games were more family orientated than the Xbox and PS2. Another disadvantage for this console was the lack of any on-line features. These were implemented in Nintendos next console, the Wii, but many preferred the Xbox and PS2 due to these new on-line features. Controllers in this era stayed similar to ones of the past. These 3 consoles above all came with similar controllers with different layouts and these are now classed as typical games controllers as even the consoles in the next generation (except the Wii due to the introduction of motion controllers) used practically the same controllers they used here.

7th Generation 2006-2013
This generation contains the fewest number of consoles due to the rapid rise in technology and the higher costs. This generation began with the release of the Xbox 360 in 2005. Later on in 2006 the Nintendo Wii was introduced and the PlayStation 3. All of these seventh generation consoles are still used widely today, but will soon die out with the Wii U and the up coming release of the Xbox one and PlayStation 4 which will start the 8th generation. Home entertainment was a main focus in this era and consoles began to contain applications which could play music and videos. They would later go on to be able to download films and add social media apps such as Facebook to make the console have more features and to become more social. The Xbox 360 focused a lot on these things and HD gaming and the PS3 did too, however the PS3 contained a Blu-ray player which is set to eventually take over DVDs, but it failed due to the introduction of steaming which was much more convenient. Each console tried to introduce a new breakthrough in technology, with the Xbox adding HD resolutions, the PS3 adding HD movie playback and the Wii adding motion controllers. The Xbox 360 sold 78.2+ million units worldwide and the PS3 sold 75+ million. Even though the Xbox 360 was more successful in sales, the actual consoles themselves had a serious problem. They had a 54.6% failure rate because a lot of the consoles fell into what was known as the Red Ring of Death in which the green lit-up circle on the front of the console would turn red and render the entire console unusable. However, Microsoft were able to make money due to the annual subscription of Xbox Live. Judging from the previous state of Nintendo games consoles, it would be safe to assume the Nintendo Wii would not do very well in sales as with the last two consoles compared to its competitors. This is because Nintendo consoles do not focus on the best graphical quality or technology and they created more on family games than games with mature ratings like most of the ones on the Xbox and PS3. Surprisingly, the Wii was the most successful console of this generation with more than 100 million units sold. This was primarily due to the fact the console was the first to use motion technology which was unbelievable at the time of its release. Due to this amazing success, Microsoft and Sony even tried to implement their own motion controllers to their consoles. Microsoft released the Kinect in 2010 and Sony release the PS move in 2010 also. The Kinect was different though as it did not require any controllers, Microsoft stepped the game up by making it so the player controlled the device with their body. The Kinect sold 8 million units in its first 60 days, but was not able to make the Xbox 360 surpass the Wii's sales.

8th Generation 2012-Current day
This is the current generation of consoles and since this generation has just started, it only contains one console so far. The Wii U. This console was released by Nintendo in Nov 2012 but sadly has been unable to achieve a lot of sales. It has sold 3+ million units so far. This console contains a special game pad that has its own screen, so the player can have two screens to play on which opens a lot of possibilities for games. The game pad is also touch screen. In the future, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will be released and further increase gaming technology. Other competitors as well are said to be stepping into the console business. A major PC company known as Steam which is run by Valve have said they will be bringing out their first console and has brought up a lot of excitement. Similar to the previous generations, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox one will be using very similar controllers for their products but have began to integrate motion technology into them. For example, the PS4 controller will have a special area designed for touch on its front, but both controllers follow pretty much the same layout as with the previous two generations. The Xbox one has also said to contain a new Kinect type of machine which will have much more advanced technology than its brother and this may lead to an era focused around motion gaming.

Limitations of consoles
There are quite a few disadvantages of having a console, even though they are the most popular gaming medium:
- They usually have poorer graphics and power than PCs
- The Xbox costs money just to go on-line
- Games can be quite expensive
- Consoles are known to be more likely to overheat than other devices

PC Gaming

Characteristics - Openness
Openness is the defining characteristic of the PC platform that is the absence of centralised control. All other gaming platforms are owned and administered by a single group.

Advantages are:
- Reduced software cost prices
- Games/ services are cheaper and many are usually free
- Increased flexibility as older games can be played on newer machines and hardware is constantly evolving.

Disadvantages are:
- Increased complexity as misconfiguration can cause problems and hardware compatibility is also an issue
- Increased hardware costs as better technology is implemented
- In most situations is is impossible to completely control the way hardware and software is used which means software piracy will be an increasingly painful issue.

On-line PC Gaming
MMORPGS saw a rapid increase in reputation in 2004 when Blizzard released World of Warcraft. This is now to date the most successful MMORPG ever created and is still receiving lots of updates. To entice people to play it, WoW was free-to-play up until the character reached level 20, so they would be able to see a lot of the game and hopefully decide to buy it as a lot of people did. The fact it was partially free-to-play made it even more popular with audiences. It used subscriptions in order to recieve money and as of today, more than 11 million people have subscribed.

Then, in 2009, Zyngas Farmville hit the most popular social website known as Facebook. It was free-to-play and players could easily connect with their friends on Facebook and see what each others farms looked like. This simple feature was extremely popular but the game itself did not give everything for free. It involved micro-transactions - where players would pay a small bit of money for in game items - and this became major thing to add into free to play games to ensure money would be made. Games such as Team Fortress 2 even have micro transactions as it has been proven that they work quite well.

Off-line Vs. On-line - PC gaming
In the early 1990s, multi-player or on-line was not really seen in games. Before this time, pretty much every game was what is known today as an 'Off-line' game. This is because the word 'On-line' indicates a state of connectivity, but at the time, not many computers were connected through networks, so became Off-line games. Games such as The Legend of Zelda have no on-line features so cannot be classed as an on-line game, but games such as World of Warcraft are on-line games as they have on-line features and this game in particular uses these features a lot and is based around them. The advantages of Off-line PC games are:
- No network is needed so there is not extra cost.
- Do not require constant connection
- Can be played anywhere, any-time with out a connection

The advantages of On-line games are:
- They are social so you can make new friends and play games together
- Playing with real people around the world can be more fun and you can do much more with other people
- More realistic experience since you are playing with other real humans

Limitations of PC gaming
Some bad points about PC gaming can include:
- If you want a proper gaming computer, you will find that the hardware used in them will be quite expensive, therefore the computer will be very expensive. PCs are the most expensive out of consoles, arcade, television and mobile.
- Pcs are large so they are not portable at all. It is a lot harder to pick up your whole computer, monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse to move them to another location than it is to move a console or a handheld.
- Levelled playing field. When playing on-line games for example, is somebody has a more powerful computer, they will get more frames per second and will be able to connect and join to games quicker. This could lead to less powerful computer players to be getting beaten more often as better hardware makes for an easier, smoother game, so is not fair on less powerful computers.

Handheld
In 2001, Nintendo kicked into the handheld market once more with another version of the game boy. This time it was called the Game Boy Advance. This handhelds release had a similar impact to that of the original game boy in the sense that many people bought it. To date, 81 million people have bought the GBA and 118 million people have bought the original game boy. In 2003, the Advance SP was released which fixed a problem with the device and added a front-lit screen which became a big complaint about the handheld. Nintendo did not stop there though, they released yet another handheld with multiple versions. The original Nintendo DS in 2004. Other versions released were the DS lite in 2005 which was a smaller version of the DS, the Nintendo DSi released in 2008 which was lighter, charged quicker, had more features and two cameras and the DSi XL which was a larger version of the DSi. Many people were not sure about whether the DS was good though. Many thought the design was a lot worse than the GBA and the dual screens were more annoying than a revolution in gaming, but as with all Nintendo consoles, the games greatly boosted its popularity and many titles have been named greatly innovative and amazing. Another DS was released too in 2011 called the Nintendo 3DS which, of course, included a 3D feature which had not been seen in handhelds before.

Sony then began to move into the handheld market in 2004 with the PlayStation Portable. It was much more advanced than the DS and capable of better graphics. It used a UMD format for movies and games which was a Disc covered by a small case whereas the DS used smaller cartridges. Many people did not like these UMDs however and preferred Nintendos used of cartridges. Even though it was more advanced than the DS, the DS sold much more than the PSP. The PSP sold 76+ million copies to date and the DS 153+ million copies. This is yet again a strong case of where the games make the consoles and not the hardware as the PSP had a few stand out games whilst the DS had lots. It is also worth taking note that the PSP costed more than a DS. Sony later released the next version of the PSP in 2011 which was called the PlayStation Vita. It had a similat button layout to the previous PSP except this time it had 2 analogue sticks like the PS3/Xbox controllers and it had a touch-screen pad on the back. It is much more powerful than the PSP and DS as it contains a 4 core ARM cortex A9 MPCore processor and a 4 core SGX543MP4+ GPU which means it is powerful enough to play games as large as a consoles with similarly great graphics. An example of its power would be the game Uncharted. It looks and plays as great as any game on the PS3 when played on the Vita. The Vita is also backwards compatible with digital PSP games, but it is quite expensive.

The final handheld console is by far the best. It was released in July of 2013 and runs on an Android OS. It is called the Nvidea shield. It is competing with the PS Vita and 3DS, but due to its OS, it has more in common with smart phones than consoles. The Nvidea shield is basically a controller quite similar to the PS3 controller in its layout but uses the Xboxs X A B Y buttons and has a flippable 5-inch screen connected to it. It is also the first device to be able to stream PC games from a nearby computer.

PDA/Smartphone
PDA - A Personal Digial Assistant is similar to a computer in the sense that it can store contacts, files, time tables, programs and more, but it is portable and able to fit into your hand.

Smart Phone - Similar to a phone as it allows the user to send messages or make calls, but is more powerful than your typical mobile as it can run much larger programs that other phones would be unable to process and runs a lot more smoothly and quicker. Modern smartphones are powerful enough to play 3D games and even emulators for consoles like the N64.

These emulators are proving to be quite popular and a giant range of old games can be played on them such as Donkey Kong, Super Mario brothers and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The mobile phone company Nokia once released their own handheld console called the N-gage in 2003. They were not really a gaming company as they specialized in phones but wanted to try something new. Unfortunately, the N-gage failed and many people really did not like the device as they did not like its mobile phone layout as it was not suitable for gaming. People preferred to keep gaming and phones separate, however, Nokia has not given up and has future plans for smart phones.

Gaming on smartphones however has really began to kick in lately and Sony's release of the Xperia play in 2011 made it stronger. It runs on Android 2.3 and due to the fact it is made by Sony, it is able to play PlayStation suite games. The phone uses a slider to slide out the screen and reveal the PlayStation controls for the device. The user will have to flip the phone round and play horizontally for a better view in the games. Similar the a typical PS controller, it has a Dpad, two L and R buttons at the top left and top right and uses the usual PS buttons which are X, Square, Circle and Triangle. A new feature which had been implemented into the Vita is the touch-screen panel in between the buttons which opens new possibilities for games. The device itself is also quite powerful and is able to play many top 3D games out at the moment for the device and it also supports Micro SD cards which are said to be better than the memory stick variants used in PSPs.

Limitations of mobile
Some include:
- Many of the free games released for them have been known to be more addictive than other games, plus they can be played any time, so there is more chance of addiction. This can lead to many negative effects on the person.
- Graphics quality - although improving - does not match PC or console quality
- In game ads are becoming more dominant in mobile games and become annoying
- Screen size is much smaller than other platforms, so becomes less immersive.

Interactive TV
Back on the topic of Visiware, the company had some important milestones in this era:
- 2000 - Frances first interactive game channel for the family was established and aired on TV called LudiTV which was later renamed Playin'TV
- 2001 - Playin'TV began being aired in the USA
- 2002 - Joined with Fox Kids Europe and launched a new channel for children, Fox Kids Play
- 2003 - Interactive game channel was setup called Playin'Star
- 2006 - Playin'TV was released on mobile phones and now had support with 550 devices.
- 2011 - Play Along is launched which used the external devices mentioned in the last generation to interact with programmes on the TV

Playin'TV is the most broadcasted interactive game channel in the world and its audience is the entire family. It has a team of 100 developers who spend their time creating new amazing games to play. Currently, Playin'TV has over 200 games for everyone to play with a giant range of genres. There are board games such as poker and chess, Action and adventure such as Carrot Mania and Megatone, Sports such as Tennis and football, Puzzle such asScrabble and magic 4, education games such as jigsaws and memory testers and Casino games such as Black jack and slot machines.

Direct TV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster which was launched in 1994. It launched its first games channel called GSN and then became GSN live in 2008 which is now an interactive call-in show that features calls from viewers, interviews and behind-the-scenes features of game shows. Three times a day, interactive games are played with its viewers and whoever wins is able to win a special prize. As well as just winning GSN merchandise, viewers could also win Jewellery or even a new car. Better technology allows viewers at home to play with their TV remotes. They can use the buttons to interact with what's on screen and the red button became popular with interactivity on TVs. GSN uses this remote feature in order for its users to pick and play whatever game they want or just interact with things from the program. As with visware, GSN has many games too such as puzzle games like scrabble and Frenzy, classic board games like monopoly and dominoes, card games like Solitaire and 5 card slingo and arcade games such as darts or 10 pin bowling.

Limitations of interactive TV gaming
Some limitations of TV gaming are:
- Games released don't have graphics quality similar to PCs or consoles.
- Play Along requires an external device such as a phone or tablet. Some things might not be available to those who do not have one of these.
- The users money is usually involved is they want to play one of the games - similar to arcades
- Games are usually fun to play, but not many people play them so on-line gaming might not be possible with some games.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console
Notes from Paul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_game
http://www.ehow.com/about_5114004_handheld-computers-history.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_game_console

Unit 20: Computer Game Platforms and Technologies

Tuesday, 13 May 2014

Presentation

Saturday, 22 March 2014

Assignment 3

Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Assignment 2

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Task 2

Task 1

Tuesday, 10 December 2013

Glossary of RAM

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

Assignment 1