The video game industry has undergone drastic changes since its conception in the mid-1980s. What started out as short experiences focused squarely on gameplay and mechanics has evolved into complex, emotional stories that try to keep players engaged on multiple fronts.
If you've been out of the loop for a while then you may not know just how big the video game industry has become. The truth of the matter is that it has become gargantuan, dwarfing even the movie industry in terms of revenue.
People continue to flock to the interactive medium, but the games they play today are very different from those of the ’80s, ’90s and even the early 2000s.
Dawn of the new age
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) launched in North America on Oct. 18, 1985. It was a simple gray box with two controller ports on the front and a large slit on the top to jam the cartridges into. You simply had to slot in the desired game, boot up the console, pick up a controller and play the game.
The graphics were simple, with 48 available colors and a sprite limit of 64.There was no voice acting, music had to come through the built-in chip set and the controller only had two buttons and a control pad. Everything was much simpler.
Despite the limitations of the time, great games still began to emerge. Stories were told almost entirely through text and visuals, but they still managed to capture audiences.
Titles like Nintendo's own “The Legend of Zelda” still holds a place in the hearts of many gamers thanks to its grand sense of adventure and challenging gameplay. The NES was followed by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), which had more power, colors and buttons on the controller.
The experiences were still a far cry from realistic, but characters were more expressive, music was more dramatic and gameplay was more diverse. This trend of new systems doubling or even tripling the power of the previous generation continued through the years.
More power please
The Nintendo 64 and then PlayStation brought video games into the third dimension, which may not hold up so well today, but it revolutionized the way we interacted with games.
Moving around in three dimensions meant that puzzles could be trickier, combat could be flashier and environments even more sprawling. The uncanny valley was slowly shrinking. With each passing year, games became more and more realistic.
The additions of voice acting and motion capture brought the medium even closer to film, allowing it to tell thoughtful, emotional stories with well-acted characters that felt as real as those that appear on the silver screen.
Graphics became more complex, and even though not all styles set out to mimic reality, they were clearly miles ahead of the sprites and pixels of the NES.
No longer were games just fun experiences; they quickly became art forms – interactive adventures that could be approached from dozens of different angles by millions of different players.
Games these days can be straightforward, linear experiences that are designed to funnel players through a narrative, or they can be very open-ended adventures with dozens of places to discover, people to meet and secrets to uncover. Just like how there are multiple genres of movies, games span many different genres and game types.
Platformers task players to jump between platforms or over various gaps (think Super Mario Bros.), while action games generally see the character swinging a weapon of some sort through the torsos of their enemies.
First-person and third-person shooters are just what they sound like — games where you shoot various enemies from first- and third-person perspectives. Strategy games task you with commanding armies and engaging in massive wars with enemy factions. There are plenty more that range from deceptively simple to supremely complex.
So whatever your preference, there is always something for you to play.
And we evolved again
Speaking of platforms, there are currently six on the market — three home consoles, two handhelds and PCs. The Xbox One and PS4 are the current kings of the consoles.
They each have their own exclusive games and features, but one thing they both do that no other console has attempted is how they approach media. There is now a belief that consoles aren't just for games anymore.
They are the boxes that sit under your TV and act as your gateway to Netflix, YouTube, Blu-ray players and social media.
The Wii U on the other hand – Nintendo's latest console – has some of these extra features, but not to the same extent. It is very much positioned as a place to play games. Its controller has a screen in the center, which allows for off-screen play and use.
Is someone else using the TV? Then you can still play games or watch Netflix. All of these home consoles are trying to differentiate themselves, but what that seems to mean now is that they have to do as much as possible.
The two handhelds are PlayStation's Vita and Nintendo's 3DS. The Vita has two thumb sticks, triggers and a full suite of face buttons, along with a front-facing touch screen and a back touch pad. It was loaded with gimmicks, which very few games took advantage of.
Alternatively, the 3DS had two screens – one on top and one on the bottom. The lower screen acts as a touch screen to augment gameplay and a slider on the top screen allows the games to be viewed in glasses-less 3D. This 3D feature doesn't improve gameplay greatly, but it was a cool addition when the handheld first launched.
The sad reality is that handhelds have not done nearly as well as consoles in the past several years. Mobile phones and the thousands of games that have popped up on them have taken over the handheld market. The part of the market that still stands strong is PC gaming.
People often build their own PCs, which allows them to make the machines as powerful as they want. PCs have many of the same games as consoles, but they are intrinsically more customizable, which sometimes means games can look much better than their console brethren (or much, much worse.)
All in all, the video game landscape has changed quite a bit in the past 30 years. Games have become a medium for telling stories, consoles are media boxes and the genres they span mean that there is something for everyone to play; from lovers of sports to lovers of sci-fi and fantasy.
This quick recap of the video games industry has only scratched the surface, and we will continue to delve deeper over the course of the summer.
Matthew Herst is a Carleton University communications student, video game journalist and Sudbury.com’s resident geek writer. Yeah, this guy love’s video games. Besides Sudbury.com, you can also find his work on TheNerdStash.com. Follow him on Twitter @supergurst.
