At the beginning...
Although one could possibly track back the infancy of the games way, way back, let’s all just assumed it started circa 1975, when strange machines appeared pizza parlors, bars and bowlings. Electronic entertainment. It wasn’t just an extension of the concept of jukeboxes, pinballs or slot machines. It was the opportunity to challenge and beat the Computer, which was as far out as taking the shuttle to Mars.
Recently, it seems that video games are increasingly popular, that they reach an even wider audience. That would be assuming that back then, this hobby was fairly confidential and restricted to a few enthousiasts. In fact, it’s difficult to measure the incredible impact that videogames had on society and pop-culture from day one.
- Space Invaders
- a.k.a. "the game that caused a national coin shortage in Japan"
In Japan, "space invaders" caused such a shortage of yen coins that the national bank had to quadruple their production. It is estimated that "Pac Man" brought in more than $500 million (and these were 1980 dollars, so that would be slighly more than one billion current USD). At the peak of its success, Atari had over 10000 employees, more than any other game company ever. It was estimated that one US household out of 4 was equipped - with an Atari gaming system.
- An Atari 2600
- Virtually every home had one back then
The first games
So what characterized the games from this period?
They were excindly simple. The action usually took place on one single screen. It wasn’t untill Pitfall, in 1982, that "scrolling" (ie the possibility of going from one screen to the next) was invented. Plus, it wasn’t necessary to do much to innovate - conceptually, nothing had been done, and even a small departure from a tried and true concept (like, say, invisible aliens in space invaders) was hailed as a revolution.
Games were very easy to pick up. Controls were unsophisticated and instructions, unnecessary.
They were entirely based on skill. Experience of a specific game helped to some extent, but a player in good shape with good reflexes could ace in a game they played for the first time.
They were repetitive.
- Pac Man
- forever stuck in the maze
There was seldom an end. As long as the player was good enough as the difficulty kept increasing, and was willing to insert coins, the game would go on. Pac Man has alledgedly 256 levels, and beating the last one of these, which is practically impossible, would crash the game.
People did not expect to "beat" games. They handled them like pinball machines. After a certain score, pinball machines yield an extra credit, which is similar to "beat" the game, but essentially, when this happens, the player just continues trying to control the ball. Same here for videogames... without the extra credit. Just like gravity will eventually drive the last ball in the hole, the "game over" screen will terminate the player’s experience in a few minutes, or a few seconds.
Games were easy to make. Games were complicated to make. Games were fairly quick to code compare to modern productions, which require dozens of specalists to work for years. Back then, some of the best-selling games were produced in days, in a few weeks, and never than in a couple of months. But it was usually the work of one single author, skilled at programming, electrical engineering, game design, graphics, sound, etc. Those creators were held as geniuses (and most often, rightly so) and worked with minimal supervision. Plus, there was no tradition or best practices at this point, and little would they care if there were. So games were not nicely polished, respecting unwritten rules of good playability. No. Games were difficult, extremely difficult compared to today’s standards, and the player knew that playing meant accepting to lose, again and again.
Insert coin. The player must pay to play, and pay to continue playing. On the other hand, there are usually many machines in one location. This means that the game must create enough tension for the player to be attracted enough to put money in the machine they are playing, instead of trying another game or just stop playing.
High scores. Playing, and playing well, would yield one reward: a higher score, that kept increasing more or less rapidly depending on the skill of the player. Then, when the unavoidable "game over" would appear on the screen, if the player had one of the top ten scores, they would have the social privilege to enter their three initials, knowing that the list will be on display on the machine until someone could better their performance.
the playing contract
The playing contract was thus: the player agrees to play difficult and repetitive games, and evenutally lose. The player must pay to start each game or to continue playing. As reward, the game will let the player enjoy more or less time of gameplay per coin, and will publicize the player’s performance if they achieve one of the ten best scores.
Remarkably, that was pretty much the case for the console version of those arcade games. While it doesn’t make a lot of sense to display the list of the ten highest scores in a family that has four members, this was done systematically. By the same token, the same game structure philosophy was applied to home version of arcade games: difficult and repetitive games, play to lose more or less rapidly.
What happened next?
- Pac Man, Atari 2600, 1981
- Atari alledgedly paid Tod Frye $1 million for this port.
By the mid-eighties, Atari was fragilized by the colossal failure of two titles in which it placed great hope: Pac-Man, which adaptation was absolutely disgraceful, and ET. In fact, Atari had such ambitions in the franchise, that rumor has it that they manufactured even more game cartridges than Atari consoles currently in existence. The game was so poor that Atari was stuck with millions of cartridges in inventory. Over the last years, the technical advances of home consoles were minimal and the market was so saturated with low-quality games that cartridges could no longer be retailed at premium prices.
- ET, Atari 2600, 1983
- This disgraceful game is blamed for being one of the main causes of the ’83 crash..
The final strike came from an unexpected enemy: it appeared that for the price of a game console, which could only be used for gaming, one could afford a fully-fledged personal computer, which was now a serious gaming competitor. Thus, the first affordable home computers, such as the Commodore or the ZX81, invaded the market and relegated the now outdated Atari, Intellivision and Coleco into oblivion.