CHAPTER 8
History / Evolution of Videogames
Many forms of entertainment have been created by and for computers. There are arcade games for a large machine that sits in a corner of your local pizza parlor and takes your quarters. There is entertainment created specifically for your personal computer (PC)—games that can be enjoyed individually, in a pair, in small groups, or with thousands of other people on the Internet. And there is entertainment designed for a special console box attached to your TV. The kinds of computer entertainment vary greatly, but they all have two things in common. First, they all came to exist thanks to the development of the modern computer and its components: the computer hardware, the software, the graphics display, and the interface for the player to control it all.
Second, and more importantly, they all are a form of interactive entertainment—computerized entertainment that allows the user to make choices that can affect the direction in which the entertainment will play out. It is input-active entertainment—in contrast to the receptive-only entertainment of books, TV, and films. For general purposes, I’m going to lump most of what I’m talking about under a general word to encompass all types of games played in this manner—videogame.
The Boundaries of Interactive Entertainment
I’ve read a lot of discussions about how to define a “game.” Here, I’m going to keep it simple. I see a game as an activity one engages in, either alone or with others, that has a set of rules and has one or more goals. Thus, a game can be as simple as playing solitaire with a deck of cards, or a round of poker with tough-as-nails pros for big stakes. It can be a friendly game of touch football in the backyard, or it can be the NFL. It could be a complex board game that challenges the intellect, or a game of hopscotch on the front sidewalk.
Videogames can be straightforward “shoot your enemies” roller-coaster rides, or a sprawling, complex online game populated by thousands of people from around the world, where the player’s options are fluid and vast. And of course, a videogame can also be a game of virtual solitaire or playing as a virtual member of the NFL. The possibilities are limited only by imagination.
A videogame is only one form of interactive entertainment. In print form, there are “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, which rely on extremely simple branching options to allow for multiple paths through a story. Attempts have been made to make “interactive movies,” some using live actors, but they’re cost intensive and didn’t make it in the marketplace. There are Dungeons & Dragons–style role-playing games (RPGs), in which people gather to play their imaginary character. There are live-action role-playing (LARP) games, in which, for example, people get together in a real location to unravel a make-believe murder mystery as though they were the actors in a play. A rich variety of interactive entertainment exists, but the videogame is the one that’s achieved the greatest market success.
Some experiments in digital, interactive drama fall outside the realm of games, such as Facade. This Internet-based program deals with interpersonal relationships where there’s no “win” or “lose,” and no specific goals other than exploring how the characters will react to what you do. I look forward to the day when the medium can get beyond the narrow definitions of “game,” and accomplish daring new forms of drama, entertainment, and storytelling.
The Evolution of the Videogame
In the meantime, and for the purposes of this book, the subject will be the multimillion-dollar industry known as videogames, and how you can fit into that industry as a writer.
The following brief history is from my perspective as a writer, rather than detailing the march of technological development. It’s an obvious given that videogames advanced as the technology advanced, and will continue to do so. Games in 2 colors gave way to 4 colors, then 12 colors, then 256 colors, and onward to the beautifully rendered, full-color masterpieces we see today. Ditto with sound and music. A similar technical progression is taking place in mobile games, made for cell phones or handheld units. Although the technology is a significant driving force, it can take a game only so far. Without a well-realized world, a coherent story, and some catchy characters, the best technology in the world can fall flat.
That is, unless you’re playing Tetris, where all you have to worry about is sorting the colored blocks. I freely admit that there are certain types of games that provide entertainment on a simpler level. Let’s rule those out, and agree that we’re talking about the more complex form of videogame, where the participation of a writer makes sense.
Early computer games that wanted to tell a story were text based, relying on the imagination of the player to fill in the “world” in which he played. The only “video” involved was seeing the words on the screen. A small chunk of narrative was given, then the player was given two or more choices to determine what would happen next. After making the choice, the result of that choice was given in the next chunk of narrative, and a new set of choices were presented based on that result. The player could type in a response or chose a response from a numbered list by typing in the number. The earliest parsers (software that analyzes and processes the text input) could handle only extremely simple sentences, basically a verb-and-noun combination (“go west”), or a single descriptive word (such as “west”). The software had to parse the input and provide an appropriate response. Later parsers became more complex, such as the one created for Zork. Zork was a benchmark game of interactive fiction that let the player adventure through a huge underground labyrinth in search of treasure. It went beyond the simple verb-noun parser and used one that could understand full sentences.
Text-based games relied on the cleverness of the writer to set up the story and situations, to anticipate how players might respond, and to decide what to give them in return for those various responses. That, in turn, increased the sheer volume of writing that was required. The more options you give the player, the more variables you have to take into account and the more replies you have to write.
The next major evolutionary step in story-based games was to introduce graphics, the first one being Mystery House, a simple murder mystery with rudimentary animation. Rather than the player creating the environment in her mind based on text alone, she was given the environment in which to interact.
The early animated adventure games were also parser based. The player could move his character around on the screen using cursor keys, but had to type in commands in order to talk, look, take things, and make his character perform other actions. As with purely text-based games, the designer/writer had to anticipate whatever the player might want to do, then create a response for it. Design choices often included responses for the crazy things people may do while playing a computer game just to see what will happen—for example, cursing or typing nonsense, or purposely jumping their character off a cliff. As games became more complex, with more and more choices for the player, the scripts for these games became massive. My script for my first adventure game was a stack about a foot high. It was the equivalent of writing dozens of screenplays.
Along came the mouse. This called for an evolution in the interface of games. Game designers adjusted by switching from text input to screen icons that represented possible actions. Instead of typing in “take gold,” the player used the mouse to click on a screen icon that represented “take” and used that mouse icon to click on the gold. An eye icon could be used to “look at” items represented within the screen environment, a talk icon could bring up a set of dialogue options, a map icon could bring up an interactive map, and so forth. The designer/writer had to shift away from thinking about every possible thing a player could type in, and instead focus on how to tell a story using a limited set of interface icons. The new interface eliminated puzzles or story choices that required typing in text that had to be parsed.
Though the interface became easier for the player, this form of interactivity could seem more limited than earlier parsed games that allowed more input from the player. To compensate for this, many early computer games insisted that the player get a response no matter where she clicked on the screen. This, once again, made for a massive amount of writing, nearly as much writing as a parser-based game demanded. If the writer wanted to have dialogue between the player’s on-screen persona (avatar) and a nonplayer character (NPC, a character controlled by the computer rather than by the player), he had to provide both sides of the dialogue and allow the player to select from prewritten dialogue options. Each option demanded more writing. Because early computer memory was limited, the early computer games used a fairly simple branching-path dialogue tree. These memory restrictions meant that writers had to figure out how to hold the player’s interest with the fewest amount of words possible.
The next step in the evolution of videogames was to minimize the interface to almost nothing. The two breakout examples in 1993 were Myst and The 7th Guest. Both of these games were minimal on story, and there was no NPC dialogue interaction—they were purely puzzle games. They provided visual puzzles to solve. Like previous games, Myst and The 7th Guest were 2-D—meaning their graphics were two-dimensional, and the ability of the player to move around inside the environment was restricted by that. However, both of these games provided stunning and detailed visuals (including video sequences with live actors), along with an interface so simple that anyone could easily master it. When the cursor passed over an interactive element (a “hot spot”) on the screen, the cursor would visually change, and the player knew she could click on that hot spot—which would cause some piece of animation to happen or some object to move. Finding the solution to a puzzle involved figuring out how to move an object, or trying to decide in what sequence objects should be configured, or the frustrating “pixel hunt” (searching for the one spot on the screen that was a hot spot)—and that was the totality of the interface. The writing for such a game would have been limited to the designer’s document detailing what the puzzles were, and scripts for the few minimal pieces of video to cover the thin story. Yet these games were wildly successful. Myst in particular became such a financial powerhouse that other game companies scrambled to produce look-alikes based on the same minimal style of interface. Nearly all of these imitators failed because the mere novelty of the minimal interface wasn’t enough to support an entire genre. The lack of story and low level of interactivity didn’t prove satisfying enough to players in the long run.
By contrast, Gabriel Knight II: The Beast Within was a game that heavily utilized live actors and a simple point-and-click interface like other games of its time period, but in addition it had a complex, character-driven story that set it apart from the competition. It was both a financial and critical success, one that should have proved the value of strong writing.
SimCity (1989) was responsible for another evolution, and created an entire segment of the videogame market unto itself. It was one of the first and most successful of the simulation-based “games.” Though usually referred to and sold as a game, SimCity had no story and no preordained goals. It provided a giant playground in which the player was able to build a city any way he wanted to, managing resources and determining the zoning, taxes, and so on. The player had the freedom to build up, tear down, design, and rebuild any way he wanted. The game then simulated the results of those machinations and how the virtual denizens of the city reacted to them. These sims are also called “god games” because the player essentially plays god to his virtual subjects.
Other sims followed, leading to The Sims, in which the player gets to play god with a cast of NPCs whose lives she completely controls. She can determine how and where they’ll live, when they eat, how they interact with other NPCs, and so on. Then the sim characters react to these decisions in a continuously evolving process based on their inherent drives, goals, and desires. The outcome of those godlike manipulations depends upon the game design, programming, and artificial intelligence of the NPCs, rather than on any kind of written story. Sims are a fascinating form of interactive entertainment, which may or may not use any form of story writing.
Doom (1993) established the popular form of play known as a first-person shooter (FPS), in which the action is seen as though the player were inside the game environment and looking through his own eyes. In this early type of FPS game, story was virtually nonexistent, and the goals were basic—shoot things, survive, shoot more things. Doom also took advantage of yet another significant graphic development, the 3-D game engine, which created a three-dimensional virtual world through which the player’s character could move. Now the player could feel more immersed in the virtual world by being able to move around freely. The heightened sense of reality, combined with great sound and music, had a major impact on players. From a writing perspective, early FPS games had little to offer, because there was only the barest excuse for story, and none of the other elements that call for good writing, such as character development. However, these games set the stage on a technical level for immersive games with story—games that could push the boundaries of digital storytelling. Plus, the FPS itself has evolved so that the genre is now an important source of work for game writers.
The boom in console games has altered the videogame landscape because they eat up an enormous chunk of the money spent on videogames. This results in more development money being spent on console games than on PC games, which in turn affects which writing jobs might be available. However, it’s worth noting a new trend of dual-platform launching in which a game is released in both PC and console versions.
For the writer and designer, what is significant about console games is their interface between the player and the game. Because a console controller consists of a limited set of buttons, the designer of the game is restricted to those limited interactive options with which to tell an interactive story. To convey story, console games make use of “cinematics”—noninteractive real-time animated scenes between NPCs. These are similar to “cutscenes” developed for PC adventure games, which are noninteractive, prerendered animated sequences or video of live-action scenes. One of the consequences of relying on scenes of this type is a trend toward giving console games more-linear storylines.
Finally, I want to touch on the development of the MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games). These games are a unique blend of adventure game, role-playing game, and social club. They have also opened new doors for content writers because the amount of writing that goes into them is especially massive and ongoing. An MMOG requires an enormous amount of writing to create the vast worlds and races it has to provide; the backstories for all those races and locations; an overarching quest of some kind; and endless numbers of smaller, individual quests, missions, and tasks. All of which to keep the legion of online players occupied for weeks, months, and years.
In the past few decades, videogames have grown from a small business run out of someone’s garage into a gigantic industry whose products spawn movies, comics, animation, and toys—or whose products are based on one of those media. Sometimes they happen simultaneously, with a movie, game, and other merchandising being created at the same time.
One thing hasn’t changed—within the videogame business, there is still a lack of recognition of the need for professional writers. This has improved slightly since I began designing games in 1988, but only slightly. A few enlightened producers or executives understand how much a writer can add to the quality of the game. More often, writers are brought in as an afterthought when a game is already partly or mostly completed, and someone suddenly realizes they don’t have a coherent story—or because the dialogue needs to be done, and nobody else around the company has time to do it.
Mainly this comes from the reality that videogames first emerged through the creativity of programmers. You can have a game without visuals or music or professional writing, but you can’t have a game without code. Consequently, programmers-as-writers were the norm in the beginning. Back when I began designing, I had an e-mail argument with a longtime designer-programmer who told me that I couldn’t design games unless I knew how to write algorithms. I countered that you didn’t have to know how to build an engine from scratch in order to drive a car.
As games have grown up, so have the budgets and amount of people required to produce them. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, because game budgets have become enormous (if not outright astronomical), and the consequence of enormous budgets is that (a) it’s harder to get a game made, and (b) companies are a lot more nervous about the whole process. They’re less willing to take risks, and thus they become more dependent on existing licensed properties. The bottom line and marketing have largely come to dictate what the creative process will be.
The tiny good point in this evolution is that large companies, especially those that are part of or tied to major entertainment studios, are more likely to want a professional writer to be involved in the development process.
Nowadays, a typical game design team might consist of a producer or product manager, lead designer, lead programmer, lead artist/art director, composer, sound engineer/designer, and the teams of programmers and artists.
You’ll notice I didn’t include writer. They’re rarely included in the initial design team. My own personal opinion is that from the earliest stages, the ideal design team should include a writer with some design experience. The trick is to get a company to budget for one. Instead, what you find is that companies expect to hire a lead designer with superhuman qualities who knows code, can use art programs, and can write on a professional level.
Beneath the surface, it gets back to the mistaken notion that anybody can write. Although a company wouldn’t hire a programmer to create beautiful art, or an artist to write elegant code, they somehow think that any spare person can match the quality of an experienced professional writer. It’s a hurdle that still needs to be overcome for anyone who wants to write for games.
Videogame Categories
Videogames can be broken down into the same genres as animation and comics—such as science fiction, fantasy, action-adventure, military, historical, and so on. But more commonly, games are defined first by their hardware-platform category, then by categories that describe their type of gameplay. The platform dictates how extensive or complex the gameplay can be. A desktop PC has vastly more computing power than a Game Boy (at the moment), and provides better screen resolution, so that is going to determine what sort of game can be played on it. The nature of the hardware interface will further dictate how complex the gameplay can be.
Following are the major platform categories:
• Console:A game-playing box that connects to a television set or monitor, with a handheld controller for gameplay—such as the Wii, Xbox, or PlayStation (each platform having its own proprietary systems that aren’t compatible with other platforms)
• Handhelds: Such as the Game Boy, PlayStation Portable (PSP), or any game-playing device that is its own independent system that can be held in the hands while played
• Mobile, wireless, Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity): Cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and other mobile/wireless devices
• PC: A desktop computer or laptop (further divided into computers using Windows, Apple, and Linux operating systems)
• Web-based games: Use the Internet and/or World Wide Web (and are therefore widely accessible to any computer)
Following are the major videogame categories:
• Adventure, action-adventure: Adventure games provide the avatar that the player will play throughout the game, along with a story and an overall large quest, subquests, NPCs, puzzles, combat, and whatever else makes for an interesting virtual adventure toward achieving a final goal. Examples include Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
• Arcade games: Games made specifically for large, stand-alone game-playing machines with a screen and a panel of buttons or other game-playing controls. They provide a set amount of game time for coins or tokens. So named because they are usually found in arcades. They are only a tiny slice of the market at this point.
• Casual: A large, loose market that includes such subcategories as puzzle (for example, Tetris and Bejeweled), word and trivia, card and board, action and arcade, poker and casino, and pop culture. Not a writer-driven category, but one that must be mentioned.
• Educational: Games primarily for children, to teach through entertainment. Examples include Clifford The Big Red Dog Reading, Zoo Tycoon, and I Spy Fantasy.
• FPS (first-person shooters): As described earlier, these games are played through the first-person perspective of the player, showing whatever weapon he’s holding. They usually involve a lot of running around and shooting things. Examples are Doom, Quake, and Halo.
• MMOG (massively multiplayer online games), also sometimes called MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing games): This type of game combines elements of other games listed above, but adds a community of people from around the world, with hundreds or even thousands playing at the same time. These games involve large amounts of typical RPG play, but can be played from either first-person perspective, with no avatar on the screen, or third-person (looking over the shoulder of the character) perspective, where the player sees the avatar on the screen. They evolve in real time (an ongoing, persistent game world). They have some background story and plot, but differ in that they are more open-ended (new material is constantly generated). Players interact with one another in real time, sharing quests or missions, crafting, selling their crafts, chatting, socializing, or engaging in combat with one another. Examples include World of Warcraft, EverQuest, City of Heroes, and Dark Age of Camelot.
• RPG (role-playing games): A game in which the player plays the role of a particular character from a third-person perspective. These are usually more story based, involving long stories and a quest or mission to be achieved. The character is usually from a certain class type, such as “warrior,” “ranger,” “priest,” “rogue,” and so on. The player builds up the experience, abilities, appearance, and other characteristics of her character as the game progresses. Examples include Final Fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons.
• RTS (real-time strategy): A game that progresses in “real time” as the player plays, so that the action is continuous. RTS games usually have a combination of combat, strategic planning, building bases, directing individuals or units, and managing resources (such as gathering, manufacturing, production, and so forth). Examples are Dune II, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, and Rome: Total War.
• Sandbox: This is a recent and controversial category and I may get in trouble for even mentioning it, but it encompasses an important concept, so here goes with a very simplified definition. A sandbox game provides the player with a virtual space or environment, provides a lot of “toys” (objects, items that can be used), possibly some story, and then gives the player total freedom (as much as is possible) to do anything at any time to anyone or anything within that virtual environment. Some people quote Grand Theft Auto as the quintessential sandbox game. Other people argue that nearly any MMOG can be called a sandbox game. The main thing about the concept of a sandbox game is the amount of freedom given to the player to use or abuse the interactive environment in any way he wants without necessarily having to accomplish a goal unless he chooses to do so. Other examples are Mercenaries and Destroy All Humans!
• Sims (simulators): The idea of a sim game is to create a virtual reality in which the player has various levels of control over how that virtual reality evolves. A dating sim game lets the player explore various options and their consequences in virtual dating. A flight sim lets the player experience what it would be like to fly a plane. The Sims game lets the player explore what will happen to NPCs in a range of virtual-life situations as the player manipulation aspects of the virtual world. Other examples include SimLife, Railroad Tycoon, and Project Gotham Racing.
• Sports: Any sport you can imagine, from skateboarding to volleyball to football. A huge section of the market with huge sales—which is why it’s listed here as a category rather than as a genre. Examples include Madden NFL, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and Tony Hawk’s skateboard games.
This doesn’t cover every type of game out there, plus there will be games that combine elements of two or more types, but these are the significant categories.
Alternative Markets
In addition to the major categories listed above, there are some interesting alternative markets that deserve a mention.
ARGs (Alternate-Reality Games)
These games are often used for promotional and marketing purposes, such as creating buzz for a major movie or console game release. They represent a tiny market for now, but have potential for enterprising writers. An ARG uses real-world assets to “push” various pieces of a storyline to the participants—such assets being Web sites, e-mail, text messages, faxes, phone messages, diary entries or photographs on a blog or Web site, and so on.
To give a sense of what it’s like to write for this niche market, I consulted with novelist Maureen McHugh, who has worked on ARGs. She said that getting work in this small field mainly involves being in the right place at the right time. “I got work in the ARG field because I’m a science-fiction writer and the head writer knew me. I had been following his work in one of the very first ARGs ever. I was enthusiastic about his work and the field because I loved what he was doing.”
She points out that it’s actually quite possible to set up a Web site and create your own ARG—if you can convince a couple of other people to spend eighty hours a week in this labor of love. However, McHugh also points out that she knows of at least one person who now does game design who started by running one of these games.
Most ARGs are seen as marketing and advertising, and many of them are designed and written by advertising firms. They are “pitched” by teams to potential clients. It’s all very much a business.
McHugh describes this type of writing as highly collaborative, similar to the TV-writing process that is often done by a team of scriptwriters who rewrite each other’s work and plot stories as a group process. “The writing on them ranges. The first big ARG, for the Steven Spielberg film A.I., was very story driven. That rather set a kind of expectation that they would be stories told in interactive, innovative ways. Many of them are still very writing intensive, built around a design lead and writing lead working in partnership. Because they are often advertising for a movie or a console game, they are always done in a huge hurry. A nine-month development cycle is long. The pace is blistering for people used to the traditional game industry. When they are story heavy, the story can make or break the experience. An ARG has to have a sharp and innovative design, including an element of novelty (pay phones, T-shirts, phone calls, and live events) and a story so that once the innovation becomes familiar, the story pulls the players back again and again. On the games I’ve worked on, the traditional aspects of storytelling—interesting situations and compelling characters—have been essential. At the same time, each game must establish the conventions of that game. For example, that the game will be told entirely through diary entries, answering machines, stolen e-mails, photographs, and Web sites.”
Serious Games
Sectors that wouldn’t normally be involved in game design are learning to make use of the expertise of the game business to create “games” that are not simply for entertainment, but serve a more serious purpose. The United States Army created a game, America’s Army, that was designed to teach people what it’s like to be in the army. America’s Army was intended mainly as recruiting tool. Other serious games have been developed to teach people how to respond to emergencies or how to perform medical procedures. Another example, World Hunger—Food Force, is about a United Nations food program, and is designed to educate players about world hunger and how the UN deals with it. There are now conferences that deal entirely with the category of serious games.
Virtual-Reality Worlds
A fascinating development is the success of online “games” that don’t involve combat and are designed more for purely social interaction. What is unique about them is that everything in these virtual worlds is created by the players themselves. That includes architecture, landscaping, vehicles, clothing, accessories, and scripted actions such as dancing or gesturing. What these worlds don’t have is writing or story content, because everything is user created, but those users can establish entire virtual-life subcultures and social groups. These virtual worlds operate on a different economic model that involves both subscription fees and real-world economics, such as buying and selling virtual assets for real-world money. Examples include Second Life (secondlife.com) and There (there.com).
The Second Life virtual-world software provides extensive tools to create a player character. Every physical characteristic down to the smallest detail can be altered and manipulated so that each character is highly personalized and unique.