Introduction to Game Studies:Games in Culture

Chapter 5: Adventures and Other Fiction in 1980s’ Games

© Frans Mäyrä & SAGE Publications

1980s: Introducing Adventure, Characters and Fiction in Games

From 1970 to 1980 the total recreation expenditures in the US more than doubled.

It is questionable whether there was actually more leisure time available - people just used more money on leisure and entertainment.

Games profited from evolving technology by providing more complex digital entertainment.

The 1980s introduced fictional storytelling and character elements to mainstream digital games.

Pac-Man as a Pop Phenomenon

Pac-Man (Namco, 1980) was originally designed by Toru Iwatani, and in Japan it was called ‘Puck Man’.

Designed to appeal to a wide audience, also females - one of the all-time most popular games.

Consciously avoided references to killing and war in its shell (imagery, thematic level).

Small, cute characters and cheerful melodies were designed.

Pac-Man toys, cereal, lunchboxes, a hit song and an animated cartoon series were produced to profit from its success.

Pac-Man’s Characters The main character was

designed to illustrate the game’s main activity: eating.

Chasing and escaping while navigating is the other main player activity.

Four ghost characters were differentiated by their colour and style of movement (which also gave them personality).

The ghosts’ animated eyes showed their direction of movement.

Image credits: Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Pac-Man Design

Pac-Man game design: arcade cabinet (US version, published by Midway), screenshots

Play a Pac-Man clone online: http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/media/pacman_flash/

Image credits: The International Arcade Museum, www.klov.com.

Game Genre Systems

Game genre can be based on the game’s shell or iconography (‘space game’) or its interactivity (type of action: a ‘shooter game’),

Large numbers of possible actions exist in games (listing them, Mark J.P. Wolf classifies games into 42 different genres).

From a descriptive linguistics perspective, genre terminology needs to be recognised by players to be truly useful.

Game genres are constantly being named and renamed by players, experts and game media: living game cultures are in a state of flux.

Genre of Pac-Man

If action decides the genre, Pac-Man can be called an ‘eating game’.

Many classic board games are based on ‘eating’ other player’s game pieces.

Perhaps more importantly, Pac-Man is a ‘maze game’: labyrinth navigation is a central feature.

The dynamics of chase increase the difficulty: player needs to multi-task in real time while navigating the maze.

Puzzles and Games

Chris Crawford (1984) compares and differentiates games from puzzles, stories and toys.

The quality and degree of interactivity is the key. A puzzle does not actively respond to moves

made by man (a static puzzle is not a ‘dynamic system’).

Even a classic jigsaw puzzle can be made into a digital game - see http://www.jigzone.com/ (adds real-time counters, competitive challenge or conflict).

Visual StorytellingBy the early 1980s, there was already an entire

generation (shikaku sedai, the visual generation) living immersed in Anime and Manga in Japan.

Japanese popular culture influenced digital game design.

The Japanese games enhanced the gameplay experience by introducing recognisable characters, exploration-inviting places and rudimentary storylines to motivate action.

Donkey Kong (1981)

Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, Donkey Kong included cut scenes (short non-interactive sequences or movies) to advance the plot.

The villain of the game is the ape, which escapes with ‘Jumpman’s’ girlfriend and the player is faced with the task of winning her back.

Jumpman would later be known as Mario, the most famous game character of all time.

The game narrative progresses through four different game screens with different building platforms to climb - making this the archetypal ‘platform game’.

Donkey Kong Art

Donkey Kong arcade cabin, screenshots Play a Donkey Kong clone online:

http://donkey-kong.freeonlinegames.com/

Image credits: The International Arcade Museum, www.klov.com.

Legacy of Donkey Kong

From the starting screen of escaping ape to the final screen with Jumpman rescuing the lady, Donkey Kong was able to convey an entire storyline.

The story progressed as a reward to successful player action - a solution that many games have replicated since then.

Many later Mario series games had similar features to Donkey Kong: sideways-depicted jumping landscapes, and ‘rescue the lady’ type plots.

Popularity of Mario The game designer of the Mario games (Shigeru

Miyamoto) has become the most celebrated of all time - known also for the Legend of Zelda series.

More than 200 games with Mario characters have been published, selling nearly 200 million copies worldwide.

Relating to their popularity, Mario games have generally been well-designed: their high playability includes clear goals, immediate rewards from the successful use of game controls, enjoyable visual and audio design, and a ‘sense of magic’ permeating their fictional universe.

Mario in the List of Best-Selling Games Estimations of digital games that have sold over

10 million copies:1. Super Mario Bros. (NES version) - 40.23 million2. Tetris (Game Boy version) - 30 million3. Pokémon Red, Blue and Green (Game Boy version) - 20.08 million4. Super Mario World (SNES version) - 20 million5. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES version) - 18 million6. The Sims (PC version) - 16 million7. Pokémon Gold and Silver (Game Boy version) - 14.51 million8. Super Mario Land (Game Boy version) - 14 million9. Nintendogs (Nintendo DS version) - 13.6 million10. Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire (Game Boy Advance version) - 13 million11. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PlayStation 2 version) - (13 million)12. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PlayStation 2 version) - (12 million)13. Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (PlayStation 2 version) - (11 million)14. Grand Theft Auto III (PlayStation 2 version) - 11 million15. Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64 version) - 11 million16. Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen (Game Boy Advance version) - 10.66 million17. Gran Turismo (PlayStation version) - 10.5 million18. Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES version) - 10 million19. Pac-Man (Atari 2600 version) - 10 million

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Shigeru Miyamoto’s Titles in Game Franchises Entire series of games have been produced,

known as franchises. List of game franchises with more than 25

million units sold: Mario (more than 193 million) Pokémon (155 million) The Sims (85 million) Final Fantasy (75 million) Tetris (60 million) Madden NFL (60 million) The Legend of Zelda (52 million) Grand Theft Auto (52 million) Donkey Kong (48 million) Gran Turismo (47 million)

Sonic the Hedgehog (44 million) Lineage (43 million) Dragon Quest (41 million) Crash Bandicoot (34 million) Tomb Raider (32 million) Resident Evil (31 million) James Bond (30 million) Mega Man (27 million) Medal of Honor (27 million) Command & Conquer (25 million) Street Fighter (25 million)

Source: www.wikipedia.org

More Depth of Character: RPGs

Role playing games (RPGs) have developed into different varieties: ‘pen-and-paper’ or ‘tabletop’ RPGs, ‘live action role playing’ (‘larp’) and computer RPGs.

First tabletop RPGs (like Dungeon & Dragons, 1974) had their roots in miniature war games.

Typically RPG games involve the creation of a character with various attributes, such as strength and intelligence.

A game master (GM) will present the challenges of an adventure to players, who take on the roles of their player characters (PCs) during the adventure.

Early Computer Games: Text Adventures

Early computer games often relied on text and typing rather than graphics and audio.

The earliest text adventure game was ADVENT (1975-76), programmed by Will Growther and Don Woods.

The player would read descriptions from the screen and type in commands like ‘go north’.

Infocom produced famous games like Zork (1977-1980), and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1984).

Rogue-like Games

An alternative to text description was to use the computer monitor to draw images by using text characters.

Famous games of this type: Angband, Hack/NetHack, Moria, Rogue.

Known as ASCII graphics, these games only relied on basic letters and numbers (ASCII characters) to display the game world.

Rogue-like games often featured randomly generated dungeons, adding to their replay value.

Typical Rogue-like Interface

 ------                             -  Wall |....|      ############           #  Unlit hallway |....|      #          #           .  Lit area |.$..+########         #           $  Some quantity of gold |....|       #      ---+---        +  A door ------       #      |.....|        |  Wall              #      |.!...|        !  A magic potion              #      |.....|              #      |..@..|        @  The adventurer   ----       #      |.....|   |..|       #######+..D..|        D  A dragon   |<.+###    #      |.....|        <  Stairs to the previous level   ----  #    #      |.?...|        ?  A magic scroll         ######      -------

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Adventure Game Types Several distinctly different types of games with ‘adventure’ elements

exist. Taking two key features, interaction temporality and the consistency

of game world, the following table can be constructed:

Contemporary games are often ‘action adventures’, featuring both real-time interaction as well as interlinking puzzle structures.

Game Genre Interaction Temporality

Game World (mostly)

Example

Action RPGs Real time Random Diablo (1996)

Interactive Fiction Turn-based Pre-scripted Zork (1980)

Platform Games Real time Pre-scripted Donkey Kong (1981)

Roguelike Games Turn-based Random NetHack (1985-2003)

Ultima RPG Series

Richard Garriott started the design of computer games while still at school.

His first published game was called Akalabeth (1979), made for Apple II personal computer.

His Ultima series of computer RPGs is considered the longest running RPG franchise.

Akalabeth screen (Image credit, Wikipedia,

www.wikipedia.org)

Ultima IV: Game with Thematic Depth

The fourth game in the Ultima series represented an attempt to go beyond hack-and-slash battles or straightforward puzzles.

The player is destined to become Avatar, a hero figure who is faced with various ethical choices.

The game follows the main character’s struggle to understand the Eight Virtues and reach Avatarhood.

The player can become engrossed in the fiction and ethical dilemmas, but it is also possible to face Ultima IV as ‘just a game’.

RPG Player Styles

In late-1990s, participants in the rec.games.frp.advocacy Usenet newsgroup developed ‘Threefold Model’ to identify different playing styles.

It is one of the key player or play style typologies, differentiating between: ‘dramatist’ (values how well the in-game action creates a satisfying

storyline) ‘gamist’ (is focused on game challenges, ‘winning the game’) ‘simulationist’ (values above all a coherent and believable,

simulated game world).(Source: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/threefold/)

Ultima IV Art

Ultima IV screenshots; install and play original Ultima IV for DOS or XU4 remake from http://xu4.sourceforge.net/download.php

Image credits: Origin/Electronic Arts; source: www.mobygames.com.

Assignments on Diversifying Game Cultures

The birth of a genre: select a digital game (preferably from the 1980s) that

you consider to have started a new genre. Give a short description of it, and give your reasons for attributing it as the first in a particular game genre.

Maps in games: look for examples of the use of maps in games;

describe and discuss them. You can either take a particular game and map, or write about the role of maps in games in general.

Map of Britannia, shipped with Ultima IV.Image credits: Origin/Electronic Arts; source: www.uo.com.