Entry tags:
Play Me A Story
I don't think I've ever posted this article here, but I'm rather fond of it, so I'll post it for your reading pleasure. It's from the March 28, 2007 edition of the La Salle Collegian.
In 1961, three students at MIT had a question: Can we simulate a spaceship? From there, things got more complicated. Can we simulate two spaceships? Can they shoot at each other? Can they explode? From there, Steve Russell, Martin Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen created the game Spacewar for the PDP-1 computer. The impact of the digital diversion was phenomenal; now everyone wanted to waste universities’ money by creating these computer games on multi-million dollar machines (machines that were supposed to be figuring out the secrets of space, science and math). Once again, a bunch of dorks screwed up the world.
From Spacewar’s concept of interstellar dodgeball came even more simulations of things that people could never accomplish in real life: shooting space invaders in Space Invaders, shooting asteroids in Asteroids and shooting white pixels in Pong. Games got more and more complex (shooting tanks in BattleZone, shooting wire-frame monsters in Tempest, shooting gangsters in Hogan’s Alley), and soon gamers started to want something else in their endeavors: a reason. The rift of telling a story versus not telling a story is one of the most distinguishable lines in an industry where mixing game genres (action, puzzle, racing) is more common than mixing drinks (gin, vodka, rum), even though both are prevalent and were part of the formula for creating Katamari Damacy. It’s a curious question then: what is more appealing, short games without a story or longer games with a narrative? The answer’s more difficult than the puzzles in Final Fantasy X.
( Read more... )
In 1961, three students at MIT had a question: Can we simulate a spaceship? From there, things got more complicated. Can we simulate two spaceships? Can they shoot at each other? Can they explode? From there, Steve Russell, Martin Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen created the game Spacewar for the PDP-1 computer. The impact of the digital diversion was phenomenal; now everyone wanted to waste universities’ money by creating these computer games on multi-million dollar machines (machines that were supposed to be figuring out the secrets of space, science and math). Once again, a bunch of dorks screwed up the world.
From Spacewar’s concept of interstellar dodgeball came even more simulations of things that people could never accomplish in real life: shooting space invaders in Space Invaders, shooting asteroids in Asteroids and shooting white pixels in Pong. Games got more and more complex (shooting tanks in BattleZone, shooting wire-frame monsters in Tempest, shooting gangsters in Hogan’s Alley), and soon gamers started to want something else in their endeavors: a reason. The rift of telling a story versus not telling a story is one of the most distinguishable lines in an industry where mixing game genres (action, puzzle, racing) is more common than mixing drinks (gin, vodka, rum), even though both are prevalent and were part of the formula for creating Katamari Damacy. It’s a curious question then: what is more appealing, short games without a story or longer games with a narrative? The answer’s more difficult than the puzzles in Final Fantasy X.
( Read more... )
When I was a kid, I loved the snow. It always meant something good. Whether it be staying warm inside, missing school, or going outside and playing (or even shoveling, I love shoveling snow), snow always meant something fun. My dad always hated it, because it meant he had to drive to work in really crappy conditions. My grandmother hated it because it made her arthritis flare up. My grandfather was indifferent, I suppose because he was born in the Philippines and immigrated to America in the 1970s, he never grew up with snow and still found it fascinating. Me? Usually, a winter snow in Philadelphia meant waking up early and listening to the KYW NewsRadio for our school's Emergency Closing Number. I don't know if other places have this system, but your school was assigned a number, and they would read your school number if your school was closed or had a delay. I remember it vividly; our school's number was 193. Now, we just check La Salle's website (or you'll get 50 IMs, depending on if you leave your computer on or not), which takes some of the suspense out of the game.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
