Transformation Of Video Games
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Introduction
The rapid development and evolution in the technology industry has affected and transformed other industries as well. Consumer today is more connected and updated than ever. The current generation is even unfamiliar with several of the traditional mass media verticals. Hardware advancements and internet have revolutionized the way people used to use their TVs and phones as TVs have been transformed into IPTV and video on demand channels have given more control and choice to the consumers. According to statistics (figure 1), the use of digital TV and non-voice use of phones (texting and messaging through Smartphones) has been estimated to surpass the traditional TVs and Phone. The chart below shows a comparison of traditional VS. digital media usage in USA in an year and clearly shows how consumers are transforming with the changing face of technology and in some years they might even wouldn’t identify the transformations.
Figure 1 Average Usage of Digital Media,
The research figures suggest that an average 18 years old American spends more time online through their laptops and smartphones as compared to the time watching TV, implying to the fact that online content is preferred more by the consumers as they can control what to watch and when to watch. The advent of smartphones and handheld devices have increased the non-voice use of the phones as people can easily multi task such as browse, search, read books, chat, call, write(emails, messages) and play games through their smartphones.
The usage of digital media can also be seen through the stats reported by study conducted by the University of California in 2008 that stated that an average American household consumes about 3.6 zettabytes of information accessed through several different digital medium. The consumer is developed countries including USA are exposed to digital media especially to access internet at virtually everywhere they travel such as trains, busses, restaurants, planes and malls.
The question is how has digital media achieved this level of adaptation and transform other mass media such as the TV, Radio, Magazines, Books, Newspapers and entertainment verticals like games. The paper will look into the evolution of the digital media and how has it transformed other traditional media in a way that consumer prefers the digital media only and cannot bear to stay unconnected for a split second. The paper will discuss in detail how the digital media changed the face of video games and enhanced the gaming experience at every level.
The Advent of Internet
It is a known fact that technology is the driving force behind evolution of mass media enabling it to reach a broader audience in less time. The evolution in technology also influenced the culture and lifestyle in fact technological changes are considered a main factor for evolving lifestyle and fashion. The advent of Internet in the 19th century changed the traditional mass media into digital media and enabled the consumer to do much more. The traditional media before internet had the capabilities of one-to-many communication, anonymous receivers, one-way communication channels and a clear distinction between producers and receivers. The producer and the receiver (consumer) had different roles in the process and there were no direct interactions. Additionally, the different media channels were supposed to provide different type of information such as a radio could only broadcast sound, TV could broadcast sound and image but had no connection with the printed medium. Thus every channel had
some technological limitations until Internet changed all that. The image (figure 2) shows the characteristics and limitation of each channel.
All of the media channels were independent of each other and though newer enhancements came to each channel the path of every channel was different. Just as the media publishing and broadcasting was developing, computers were introduced and slowly made its way from corporations to households. Computers became light weight and more entertaining features such as music players and video games were introduced that find its way into the common household. Computers enhanced the print media as better facilities were developed and with the invention of CDs and DVDs the video gaming market saw a new dimension.
Internet was the next big revolution that changed the trend and pace of the mass media and technology. Internet had the inherent capability of every media channel and gave the options to collaborate all the channels and offer digital contents to a variety of devices. Therefore as internet began blooming, the digital media started enhancing at a new pace. Internet opened the one to many channel of traditional media to many to many communication with a direct communication channel (emails and chats) or small group of people such as forums or social network networking sites, microblogging and mass communication with an unlimited number of recipients through websites, blogs and streaming video. This two way channel cleared the distinction between the producer and the receiver as they could interact and even collaborate online in the process. The initial one to one communication on Internet through emails and chat messages evolved into closed networks (or intranets) into social networks where people communicated with other people regardless of their location.
Evolution Of Video Gaming Industry
The birth of video games is dated back to 17th century around 1971, after television became a common household item. The first generation of video games were standalone devices that could be attached to the television for playing pre-programmed games on that devices. The first most popular game console was by Atari named pong that let the player move cursor to get the slides to bounce back the moving squares. The game and device were a hit and several other companies came into gaming industry following the trend.
Figure 3 Screenshot of Pong by Atari
Though several other companies launched their gaming consoles but none was as popular as Pong until in 1977 Atari launched a Video Computer System (VCS) with some better features of the hardware. The device used multiple removable cartridges with different games to be played using the same hardware. The hardware specifications of the VCS consisted of
- MOS 6502 microprocessor
- Stella, a custom graphics chip that controlled the synchronization to the TV and all other video processing tasks
- 128 bytes of RAM
- 4-kilobyte ROM-based game cartridges
Though it looks simple now, it was supposedly the most sophisticated gaming console at that time. The device was a hit for the home entertainment and there were some direct descendants of Atari 2600 such as Atari 5200, Coleco's ColecoVision and Mattel'sIntelliVision. These games were popular initially but were losing the audience due to lack in quality as compared to the arcade versions. In 1985, Ninetendo entered the video game industry and the picture changed enormously with Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and altered some of the previous standard such as
- Replaced joy sticks with pad controller
- Better quality of games for the home versions too that were comparable to arcade versions.
- Lowered hardware prices to make it affordable
Nintendo developed popular games like Legend of Zeilda that had better graphics and gaming experience as compared to the previously available games.
Figure 4 Nintendo Legend of Zelda
The videogame consoles were being enhanced every few years since the very first introduction of console in 1960s. During 1980s the video game industry changed rapidly from basic pong based games to other genres such as fighting, platform, adventure and RPG games and classic games like Pac-man (1980), Mario Bros (1983), The Legend of Zelda (1986), Final Fantasy (1987), Golden Axe (1988) were also released. The core reason behind the rapid development in gaming industry during 1980s is directly associated with the development in the computer systems and consoles with ability to render sophisticated graphics and videos. The newer PCs had hard drives to store important data that transformed the previously monotonous games. The replacement of joy sticks with control pads let the gamers make more movements thus more actions in the game. All the new capabilities of the new computers enabled the gamers to get more form the video games. The changes in the digital media and hardware also enticed the game developers to introduce better story lines and choices as the ability of representation and the quality of game design became better.
One of the popular games with deep story line and moral choices was Bioware’s Star Wars-based roleplaying game and Knights of the Old Republic. These games offered the gamer to choose how they wanted to play and could control the flow of the game.
.During this period the video games design also shifted from basic consoles with built-in games to cartridges for playing several different games. The concept of cartridges evolved into compact discs in 1990s that not only provided more options for gamers but also improved the graphics and game experience. While most of the gaming giants like Sega and Atari launched their CD based gaming consoles the most popular launch was of Commodore a US based company that introduced a gaming computer for average household and got instant attention however the company didn’t survive longer.
Figure 5 Tennis Arena for the Sony PlayStation
Sony PlayStation introduced popular games with 3D capabilities. The popular Tennis Arena game had a 3Dredered tennis court with 360 degree rotational effects and zooming capability. The players were also 3D modeled and their actions would be seen with clear perspective. Though PlayStation lacked smoothing and textures looked pixelated but the games on PlayStation offered more control to the gamer with the extra buttons on the PlayStation’s game pad
Within that same time period Internet had begun to transform all other types of digital mass media channels. The virtual world of Internet was collaborating more and more. Newspapers became e-papers where users could view their favorite newspaper in digital formats on their computer screens. The launch of social media networks gave communication a new definition and people began maintaining their friends circle online as these platforms provided sharing of various contents with large number of people at once. The social media has been constantly being evolving and is now a virtual world for everyone online.
The rapid acceptance of Internet and the advancements in hardware technology naturally worked wonders for the gaming industry too. The standalone PC games and video games slowly adopted the rich functionality of Internet and saw a new dimension with RPG (Role Playing Games), MPRPG (Multiplayer Role Playing Games) and MMORPG (Massively multiplayer Role Playing Games).
Transformation of Video Games Into Online Games
The blooming internet industry revolutionized the gaming industry in similar ways it affected the other mass media channels from TVs to IPTVs, online streaming radio channels, online newspapers, social networks and VOIP based calls.
All these features of internet collaborated to transform the gaming industry. The concept of social networks was first introduced in gaming in 1990s with online games played in a gamer community to compete against each other within that network.
The collaborative community based gaming evolved into MMOGs and MMORPGs, where MMOG enabled several gamers to play simultaneously in a virtual gaming world MMORPG allowed several hundred gamers to play role based gaming together across the globe. The enhancements in the infrastructure of Internet, improvements in the digital screen resolution and introduction of smarter computers changed the gaming industry forever. Games like of World of Warcraft with its 12 million subscribers is one of the popular MMORPG environment. The gaming industry took advantage of parallel developments in the media and internet technology as new games introduced ecommerce, mcommerce and even virtual currency to create an entirely virtual experience for the gamers. These MMORPG have created their own virtual world with virtual economy that has its own rules and regulations as in the real world.
While internet advancements have changed the way people play, the enhancements in hardware technology has introduced concepts like sensing 3D movements by a handheld device to make games even more interactive and HD graphics that provide a rich real life like display. The hardware capabilities of the new generation of gaming devices has enhanced with high definition specifications such as for EVO Smart Console (2008) came with HD graphics, internet access, 120GB hard drive and 2GB RAM. However that not the end, the newer versions are even more robust, interactive and come with more sophisticated hardware to provide the ultimate pleasure to the gamers.
The introduction of smartphones and tablets with their easy access, low price of affordability and multiple uses has made them a new medium for game playing. Though these devices have some limitations to the kind of games played however many games such as angry birds and temple run etc. made their mark in the gaming industry. The interactive and fun games of smartphone even gave hard time to gaming giants such as Nintendo with a loss of 1.58 billion yen in 2013-2014. This opens up more horizons for the gaming industry to develop even more interactive games that have engaging contents to be played anywhere.
Conclusion
The improvements in technology enhanced all mass media channels more and more. The introduction of internet opened up a whole new world and every media channel was transformed with the changing face of technology (sophisticated hardware and operational software) and internet. While all other mass media channels made use of internet and collaborated into one single channel, the gaming industry was transformed from standalone single/double player consoles of 1980s to cd based games in 1990s and by the end of nineties internet was introduced and online gaming became popular. As the computer hardware became sophisticated, new genres of video games were introduced, thus the basic brick games with every element represented as squares or blocks was slowly replaced with better defined screen elements with the development in screen design and resolutions. The gaming industry utilized the best of internet and the hardware/software development and the online games turned into MMOG (Multiplayer Online gaming) and MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role playing games). The enhancements of HD graphics, real time games, virtual gaming world and 3D movement sensors all have accumulated to make games so interactive and indulging than ever. The current generation of games occupies the players with a virtual world that has its own virtual laws and economy and enable the players to strategically survive in that environment. The launch of smartphones and tablets have also bloomed the gaming industry as people can play anytime anywhere.
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