{"id":35,"date":"2007-09-28T03:27:59","date_gmt":"2007-09-28T01:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/isabout.wordpress.com\/2007\/09\/28\/computer-game-history-analysed\/"},"modified":"2020-01-02T20:25:34","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T20:25:34","slug":"computer-game-history-analysed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/2007\/09\/28\/computer-game-history-analysed\/","title":{"rendered":"Computer Game History Analysed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really am too busy to blog much right now, on the account of having to put together a rough test version of Karta Machiton<\/em>. But I do have the time for a short observation, inspired by Ville Vuorela, who graciously gave me some rather interesting pointers<\/a> on computer game types as a comment on my earlier post about the games I consider significant. He outlines a solid model of how conforming to audience expectations is a key to commercial success in computer games. (Perhaps not the only key, but I’m ready to believe that it is a commonly followed and routinely successful principle in making games that sell.) The idea of tug-of-war between the publisher’s and designer’s intents is outright fascinating, I’ll have to think about that in more depth; as both principles A and B are obviously important, there might be some merit to having both defended separatively, even if I’m usually suspicious of compromise as a design tool.<\/p>\n

Ville’s comments jogged on something that’s been bothering me ever since I made that list of significant games. It’s a bit orthogonal to that topic, but perhaps significant nonetheless: while Ville’s model of commercial success gives great weight to the idea of following a game type template, an abnormally high percent of the games on my list are cross-type or multitype games! Games like Star Control II<\/a> or Merchant Prince<\/a> are quite clearly amalgams of game types, and where I list games solidly within a game type, they are often ones that defined the genre, like Herzog Zwei<\/a> or Dune II<\/a>. The few games that sit within established game types are highly innovative and demanding in terms of… oh, I just realized that I haven’t included Loom<\/a> on my list yet! That’s an exact example of the kind of in-type game that I can appreciate, with efforts at writing and visualization much above it’s peers at the time. Incidentally, also the only adventure game on my list that doesn’t include significant action sequences.<\/p>\n

What does this mean? That observation is not so much in conflict with Ville, but it does point to an important fact, namely that it might well be that my personal preferences in games are not exactly in harmony with the model Ville supplied. Because these same games tend to be critical successes and cherished classics for others as well, it’s not a given that you can’t find some manner of success making them. I’m not exactly alone in enjoying… oh my, I just realized that I don’t have Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon<\/a> on my list, either, even though it’s also one of the very, very rare enjoyable and well-written trad-style (well, more or less) adventure games. It’s also, coincidentally, game number 70 on my list. Perhaps I should stop thinking about good games of history, I have enough to do without going on a nostalgia binge with old games.<\/p>\n

To close off: looking with a critical eye at the short history of computer gaming, it seems that the most memorable examples of the craft are rarely made by affirming existing templates; as one might expect, the outstanding successes are mostly games that mix up genres or do old things otherwise differently. There are some examples of a game type honed to perfection in small steps, certainly, but they are few and perhaps not so influential when designers continue towards the future. (I might argue that Loom<\/em> very well could be the best you can do with the slightly idiotic genre of adventure puzzle game, despite dozens and hundreds of games that were made in the sub-genre afterwards.) I might also hazard that while few of the games on my list achieved the humongous revenue streams games boast today, there are many other factors to success than design, both in achieving it and gauging it. While I don’t fully control my destiny in this regard, I would certainly choose to make an innovative game loved for its artistry and new ideas over a calculated replay of Doom<\/em>. Going by Ville’s tug-of-war model it seems that this sentiment might very well be part of my job description as a designer; let others worry about making the game agreeable with the expectations of the target market segment.<\/p>\n

Also: I forgot to add Warioware<\/a> and Wizards and Warriors<\/a> on my list earlier. Fuck it, I obviously need to stop trying to list all significant games, or something. Would be easier if I were as oblivious to early designs as I am to modern console games… damn, I can’t believe I forgot Tetris<\/em>… no, actually, that I already had there. Whew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really am too busy to blog much right now, on the account of having to put together a rough test version of Karta Machiton. But I do have the time for a short observation, inspired by Ville Vuorela, who graciously gave me some rather interesting pointers on computer game types as a comment on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-design","category-gaming-analytics","category-volume1"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Eero Tuovinen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/author\/eerotuovinen\/"},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}