¬_¬ (week 9)

So Ive covered the history of gaming and the dark dark middle ages of game development. But ask yourself this one question "How far will the gaming industry go with technology ?". As more and more next gen consoles are released will game designers make using consoles harder and harder? Or will human input become a thing of the mind?

This Week I'm going to tackle the important issue of Human interface and ergonomics in the game industry. So take alook at the current consoles in the shops and homes of thousands of people around the country, its either a Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii. Now compare the controllers and actual interface of the console itself. All three are very different from each other but in all the same ways are the same. Out of the three the Wii controller to this date is the most advanced at smashing cups/flower pots/your brothers nose and so forth and advanced in the way of technology. Using a series of weights and infrared sensors to detect the movement of the player or user it depicts these movements on screen. Sounds simple? Well sort of, the first time and last time i played on a Wii it took me a few hours just to master Wii sports and bowling. Red Steel for the Wii was another ball of effort to master using the controller with the nun chuck thingy. My mind was telling me one thing and my hands were doing something else.

This is one possible future problem for future game/console developers is that people will find some games too hard to master (OK some hardcore people will get it). However most people who play games are looking for a reason to escape reality for afew hours and enjoy a simple game with simple controls, not wresting and smashing windows with a fucking Wii controller. Now the Xbox 360 have hit the nail on the head (this is my honest opinion) with their controller and console interface. For me the controller sits perfectly in my manly hands and their is no cramp or burn in my hands or wrists after playing Tee Bag Your Friends Corpse Till Your Hearts Content in Halo 3 multilayer. The controller interface i believe is diffidently spot on, i don't think anyone else could improve on it, unless to quote Zero Punctuation "It has a force feedback Cod piece".

The PS3, Wow how original they took the old ps2 controller stuck some weights in it and called it six axis crap. Still the same controller and still too small for me, you end up concentrating more on keeping the damn thing from slipping out of your hands like the soap in a prison shower than playing on a game. Its also like a bastard inbred child of the Wii controller, couldn't quite decided whether to be a pig or a bear/man. Either Sony you release a separate controller that's dedicated to six Axis and another normal old school style ps2 controller with force feed back. You cant use two at the same bloody time! You cannot possibly get using to i.e. flying with the analog sticks then start using the six axis, even the bloke who showed the tech demo in front of a few hundered people for the six Axis couldn't even use the bloody thing!

So i don't know whether or not i should look forward to the future of console input or not. Perhaps in time we will be using those gaming consoles in the film eXistence or force feedback cod pieces who knows.

Next Gen? (week 4)

Ok i dont know why blogger is underlining everything im typing and I cant find the option to turn the bloody thing off.

Anyway the next part of my blog leads me to Next gen games and some of the pros and cons of next gen games. The first main problem with next gen games are having the correct hardware to play them on. This especially effects PC gamers and their constant struggle with their comptures and new hardware, which is especially bad for their wallets. Like some of the games today such as Crysis you need some sort of super computer the size of a small 3 bedroom semi detached house in the middle of wiltshire to run the game on a decent setting so you get the full effect of the "oooooooo" factor.

Also the fact of blasting trees across the map with a fun family sized tactical neclear warhead. So yeah this is one major issue that surrounds next gen gaming, the customer not being able to keep up with the demands some games have for propper decent eye candy.

Game developers also have a slight problem with next gen games where the games become very complex to make. Also models of assests such as ingame items and characters become more detailed and the work for game designers becomes very specialised. However going back to the problem of consumers not being able to keep up with next gen game demands, developers are trying to gather as much info on peoples current hardware setups. As an example the Steam platform created by Valve regulary ask the consumer in a survey about their current hardware to get a general idea on their consumers computer configurations.

The History of Gaming Part 2!(week 3)

OK , last week I talked about the first few decades of gaming. In this blog entry I'm going to talk about the "middle ages", this includes the 1980's to 1990's.

1980's: a Japanese company called "Namco" release "Puck-Man" soon retitled to "Pac-Man". Pac Man became a huge hit and is still a classic even to this day, it was renamed to Pac man because Namco feared that American consumers may renamed/nickname the title to something offensive. A year later in 1981 Nintendo release Donkey Kong, another classic even till this day. However Nintendo seem to beat the dead horse and I'm surprised no donkey Kong titles have been released for the Wii yet, but we shall wait and see. Another Milestone of this decade is Microsoft's flight simulator, they too join the "arms race". '85 Tetris is released, therefore reaching another milestone of gaming history in this decade. 1986 saw the release of the NES by Nintendo, this i believe is the start of a new page of gaming history. Consoles become a common item in the house hold.

1990's: Things start to get interesting in the gaming world and different companies battle it out to become the leading producer of consoles. Sega release their Genesis console and Nintendo release the Super NES. The gaming community is starting to become a serious income for some countries (i.e. Japan). '91 sees the release of many classic titles such as Street Fighter 2 and Civilizations. '92 sees the epic release of Mortal Combat, this game sets the record straight for future fighting platforms. Mortal Combat soon becomes a house hold name title and it is released as a arcade game and soon to be films. '94 sees the establishment of the ESRB system that rates games making sure that the right people of certain ages can only play games designed for their age group. '95 see the release of CD consoles such as the Sega Saturn and PlayStation. Later on into the decade the gaming industry sees more advances, including the next-gen consoles such as the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Game consoles become smaller and smaller like the GameBoy. Also with the release of the Dreamcast is the start of online gaming, the Dreamcast is built in with a 56k modem that allows players to play head to head over the Internet.
The start of Internet gaming is the first major milestone in gaming history and opens up more horizons for the Gaming industry.

The History of Gaming as written by myself (week 2)

To this day there is no real history of games, only perceptions from people at the time when the first "games" were made, however using some research from the Internet i will try my best to explain what i believe is a decent timeline and history of computer/console games, so bear with me.

1950s or 1952 to be more exact, at this time a man called A.S. Douglas creates the first computer that can play Chess and tic tac toe at Cambridge university. This i believe is the start of a gaming revolution as it were. This paves the way for new ideas and technology and a start of a new era.. well i think anyway.

During the 1950s and '60s games were still unknown to the common person, not until the late '70s games were a common play in the home also like televisions and fridges etc, so again trying to write a Gaming History that's very accurate is extremely hard, take for instance the Cold War, games could of been developed in Russia but were unheard of, even now have not been recorded due to the fact that the Cold War was at its high and different influences from country's erase some parts of history if its bad propaganda. So what I'm trying to say is, keep an open mind, nothing is more in portent in life than indulging in other cultures history's rather than staying in the confines of your own mind (i.e. tunnel vision).

1960's: Reading material from the Internet and using wiki (i know not the best idea). Not alot happens during this decade, again like i mentioned earlier the cold war is starting to kick off but there are some improvements in the area of games, nothing amazing but people like Steven Russell create a game or console game called Space War, however the console is more like the size of a small car and never takes off in the common market, but does become familiar in universities and research departments around the United States. Also around this decade businesses and markets open their eyes to the possibilities of console games.

1970s: Now shit hits the fan, but in a good way, Atari is born, he first home console is born and Activision (a group of people that broke away from Atari) is also born. During the first part of this decade the first coin operated arcade style game called Computer Space is produced and becomes common sight in bars and taverns (around the USA i think, possible in major cities around the globe, but who knows). However it doesn't become a massive success. '72 first home console is rolled out called Odysseys, this could be the first record of Ping Pong a.k.a Pong. Pong is then also produced by Atari, this is man peoples views is the daddy of all games, this is the creation of the gaming culture, later in the '70s Atari produce their own console the Atari 2600 then later in the '70s Activison are born and produce game titles such as "Hero" for the Atari 2600.

Now that Ive covered the first few decades of gaming i will write the rest up another time... Stay tuned.

Back to the future!

Welcome back to the next installment of my blog... This week (I know I'm behind) I'm going to discuss my personal gaming history and where it all started for me and what i personally believe to be the "history" of gaming and how it first came to be.

Christmas '94. My first console a Sega Mega Drive II complete with Sonic the Hedgehog and few other games I cant really remember but there was one game that was 3 in 1 which included football, driving and some sort of arcade game. Anyway to me at the time was amazing, i was hooked and this was where my love for games was born. soon I bought more games (well i say bought i mean asked for because i was only 8 or 9 at the time I think). Those titles included Streets of Rage, more sonic titles, Eco the dolphin, the lion king, Road Rash. The titles go on however I still played them for years, I also managed to hold onto my Sega for a few years a few its demise until the Sony PlayStation arrived.

Along with the arrival of the Sony PS1 at the time was the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 (N64). I soon got rid of my Sega Mega Drive (to this day i wish i didn't) and a PS1 was another Xmas/Bday present from my parents. Problem I'm having at the moment is remembering what exact titles i had for it, however at the time i also remember spending most of my time around my friends house playing on his N64 and playing Golden Eye, Turok and Duke Nukem. Abit later on in my life PC gaming was soon introduced and Personal Computers and Home computers (same thing) were becoming the in thing. Soon my parents bought a PC (Pentium 1, 133MHz some sort of poor low spec ram and hard drive) I soon was the only person in the house that used the computer and i only used it for games, same went for most of my friends at the time as well, most either ditched their consoles and played on the computers. I remember playing which at the time was my favourite game and still sorta is because that haven't really done anything along the same lines was Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels. At the time i spent hours and hours playing this game and i was also a huge fan of the whole War Hammer 40k scene. PC gaming soon became my prefers platform to play on and until today i still play games using a PC. Up until this November where i purchased my first console since my PS1, a Xbox 360 Elite along with Halo 3, Gears of War and my personal Favourite Call of Duty 4.

So there, there is a brief background in what i used to play on and what i still play on now I'm at uni.