Gameology 2.0

Now that the Xbox 360, PS3 and the Nintendo Wii have finally all arrived, the next generation of gaming consoles is upon us. It remains to be seen if one console will truly dominate the market to the extent that it defines the future of gaming, but the radically different approach taken by the Nintendo Wii provides ample opportunity to discuss possible futures for videogaming. I've recently been doing research into the early days of video gaming (70's and 80's), and with all the speculation about the current generation, it's been interesting to see what writers predicted 20+ years ago for future games and game systems. So I've decided to write a series of blog entries documenting what I find interesting about these looks ahead from the past. In each, I'll take a few examples from what I've been reading and try to highlight the interesting parts. I'm interested in looking at other media, but for now, I'm taking books about video games as my starting point.

Graham, Ian. Usborne Guide to Computer and Video Games, 1982.

First up is the Usborne Guide to Computer and Video Games, from 1982. It's a relatively short book, and beacuse its target audience is children, it has lots of nice, colorful illustrations. It provides an overview of current games and introduces some of the technology that makes them work, and like most books from that era, it mainly focuses on arcade games with "TV Games" or home systems relegated to a single chapter.

Interestingly, there's even a section on so-called "Useful Games," which includes a military training simulation based on Atari's Battlezone and learning tools like the Speak and Spell (I had a couple of these, and it always bugged me how bad the pronunciation was).

The section on games of the future, however, is surprisingly prescient:

Note the slick interface on the multi-player console and the weird display device. Here are some quotes in case it's hard to read:

Seems about right, except for the radio part. It's really interesting, in a way, that they predicted a future of interconnectedness, but didn't predict that computer technology (such as the BBS systems already in place in 1982) would be the underlying force that enabled it. Note also that these two gamers of the future appear to be playing chess, something that surely would be possible, if inconvenient and possibly expensive, with technology already available in 1982.

But multi-player games and long-distance real time games are only the beginning:

Here we see the hyperbole of virtual reality as the ultimately involved gaming experience, the fantasy underlying Tron (1982) and dozens of movies since. We all know that a bigger screen is better than a small one, so it seems logical to assume that a wraparound screen would be ideal. I'm not sure what they mean by "laser lighting" (perhaps something like a Virtual Boy?), but we've definitely seen the surround sound and 3D effects become commonplace.

Kubey, Craig. The winner's book of video games, 1982.

Craig Kubey's book is also from 1982, and it does have some predictions in common with the Usborne Guide. It's hard to tell what the audience is, but the author attempts to combine humor and information in a way that's hard to read. For example, there's a chapter on videomedicine which I first thought might be a discussion of games for health. Instead, it discusses case histories and sample diagnoses for ailments such as Asteroids Finger and Joystick Hand. It's frustrating, though, how he combines what sound like plausible and interesting facts with obviously made up ones.

Much of the book is dedicated to strategy for popular arcade games, but I wouldn't be writing about it here if it didn't have a section on games from the future. For his starting point, Kubey goes to an expert, the Senior Marketing Executive at Atari, Frank Ballouz:

Again, the intractible image of VR as the game experience of the future demonstrates its powerful hold on the imagination, and Kubey's "Dream Video Game" seems to benefit from similar technology as well. He describes it in terms of several criteria which I'll summarize:

• Total Environment: "The ultimate game would be played in a room at least as big as a movie theater, with images on screens at least as big as movie screens. Screens all around: every side of you, on the ceiling, on the floor."
• Realism: "The pictures would be clear and colorful and sharp. Where animation is required, it would be the sharp etchings of a color Vectorbeam-style system. ... Plus 3-D effects through holography or at least through mirrors, animation, or 3-D glasses...Computers would be programmed so the player could have intelligent conversations back and forth with any narrator for the game as well as with friends and enemies on the screen. "Take that, you turkey!" you would scream at a vicious enemy flying saucer as you lanched missiles at it. "Sorry, Earth wimp, I just flipped on the force field," an eerie alien voice would reply."
• Theme: "And the alien enemies ought to be beings that you can really sink your teeth into. That is, human beings. In particular, human beings who've been asking for heavy fantasy retaliation for years now. Ideal candidates for enemy aliens are the most annoying local TV advertisers in major cities. You know, those shameless sellers of cars, furnitures, and stereos. These avaricious clods have been irritating us for years. Now it's our turn. Stick them up in a little flying saucer that's just as exasperating as they are: Asteroid's laser-firing Beaver. Modified to include the awesome capability of aimed wraparound shots."

I'm not sure what to make of the anger and specificity of this jab at advertisers, but I think the Beaver reference has something to do with his strategy guide for Asteroids. The author likes to make up his own names for the various creatures and entities in games, so Beaver must be something from Asteroids. He continues:

The emphasis on limitations here is uncharacteristic, but understandable. The Dream Video Game, it seems, should not be easy, but it's interesting to me that Kubey introduces limitations as a function of believable correspondence to reality.

Beamer, Charles. Video Fever, 1982.

This is a slightly different type of prediction. Charles Beamer's audience in Video Fever seems to be concerned parents of so-called "vidkids," worried about the effect video games are having on their children. Beamer attempts to come off as neutral on the topic (and to be fair he does a decent job of characterizing opposing points of view), but with chapter titles like "Do Video Games Harm Anyone?", "What Can Parents Do?", and "What Else Can Parents Do?", his conclusions are pretty clear from his table of contents.

His comment about the future of gaming comes as he summarizes the "pro" argument on the question of whether video games are here to stay or are just a passing fad. This also seems to include arguments held by the "pro-gaming" side of the discussion:

Clearly, this prediction is not as exciting as the others, but of the ones I've included here, it's the one that came true most completely. He seems right on the verge of mentioning gaming on cell phones and integrated, handheld multimedia devices.

Finally, I want to conclude with something far more recent, from 2004. The following statement is from Ralph Baer, holder of the first patent on "TV Games" and inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey game console. Though he's writing after the sixth generation of console games, Baer's long-ranging perspective gives him a unique vantage point on the future:

I don't know if Baer is alluding specifically to the different approaches that the PS3 and Wii take to innovation, but I certainly believe that greater visual detail does not automatically equal fun. One might argue that "fun" isn't exactly what we're always after in a gaming experience, and one might also argue that the bodily interation enabled by the Wii is just a different kind of attempt to claim the myth of Virtual Reality, but Baer's comment at the very least implies a corrective to the surround-screen hyperbole of the visions I quote above.

I'll let you fill in the blanks of what really happened in the 25 years since the above comments were written, but are there yet-unfulfilled qualities of their Ultimate Games that we should still consider pursuing? How would you imagin a Dream Game today?

In closing, I've somewhat optimistically called this post "Part One" of a series because I believe there's more of this material out there. Over the next weeks, I'm going to be looking through my stack of Interlibrary Loans and whatever other sources I can think for discussions from the past on the future of gaming. But in the meantime, if you come across anything, or anything comes to mind, please send me the citation or feel free to post it in the comments here. I'd also welcome any contributors to post their own installment of the series, perhaps focusing on a particular year or medium.