Developing a New Major

gotta decide why they’re looking at this - the next big thing and why companies fail might be the ticket, might be how to make it different than in first semester where we would just be interested in learning basic content, here more content but applying it too - maybe start with this article about funware

here’s an article that presents a reason to look at the failure of some game companies - as economy goes bad we need to think about how to succeed, need some specific game company names or console names I think to search on

gotta bring in history of board games too in this section

goal here is to know where we’ve been so we get a better sense of where we’re going

individual historical facts not too important - more important to see the effects of technology on games over time

arcade years, console years

some firsts

• Galaxian had the first color monitor
• PacMan most popular (in terms of units sold) arcade system - 1980
• Ms PacMan was the first woman character
• Centipede was first game co-designed by a woman (1981)
• Shigeru Miyamoto - Nintendo’s first staff artists - hired in 1977
• Pole Position - intro’d the chase camera - 1982
• Tron - 1st game based on a license from a film studio - 1982

• 

  Image via Wikipedia

  Bushnell builds Chuck E. Cheese’s to get over stigma that arcades had

• Mattel intro’s handheld game systems - sports games - 1977
• Nintendo intro’d GameBoy in 1989 (Tetris was the big on launch game) - Game Boy COlor 1998 and Game Boy Advance 2001, Game Boy Advance SP 2003, Game Boy Micro 2005
• Quake 1993 - Doom released by id Software - 4 people could compete on a LAN in death mathces, lead to creation of LAN parties
• Ultima Online gets 50k subscribers with in 1st 3 months

arcade moves into the homes with consoles and PCs, console games at first were copies of arcade games (already popular, didn’t take any new deisgn work); in computer labs there were mainframe (text) games,

Coleco started life in 1932 as the Connecticut Leather Company - released ColecoVIsion, made hand held and tabletop mini arcade games,Cabbage Patch dolls, and then went bankrupt in 1988

Game Genie - 1991 from Galoob Toys let ya cheat at Nintentdo games - - here’s hte wiki page - actually patched the game code -  Nintendo sued saying game genie created a derivative work for which they had no license/no permission, courts said nope, not a derivative work so could sell with no problems

several rounds of console wars - still going on today; competition with the PCs too between Apple and IBM/Microsoft and Commodore64

mainframe games - multiplayer way before we think of multiplayer games - PLATO system had a 32 person Star Trek game in th elate 60s, int he 70s they had D&D MUDs started in 1979 (Bartle)

Compuserve - first ISP - expensive - had text based social games; Quantum Link (became AOL) came along in 1985, there was a version of Ultima Online for Quantum LInk/C64 users - then the internet made multiplayer games more possible on a massive scale

I like a couple of the questions at the end of hte chapter - #10 - predict next big thing, next big phase, # 4 - why do some game companies fail, #5 - what games attracted a large audience

Resources

youtube videos - here’s the search list for videogame history

colecovision ad from youtube

compuserve ad from youtube

ms pac man commercial from youtube

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