History and futures
of
computer gaming
CS 370 -- Computer Game Design
Ken Forbus
Spring, 2003
Some advice for the party
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Do setup early
Always have someone at your game
Make sure that both Rob and I see it
Have fun!
Question: How will computer gaming
evolve?
• To see forward, start by looking backward
• What constraints are shaping the system?
• Overview
– Brief history of computer gaming
– Forces on the industry
– Some questions designers are struggling with
Prehistory: The Arcade
• 1930: Electromechanical pinball
machines created, improving earlier
purely mechanical models. USmanufactured machines spread
through the world
• Late 1940s: Pachinko developed in
Japan
• 1954: Sega founded by US G.I. (=
Service Games Company) to import
coin-operated games
Photo Source:
http://www.sandsmuseum.com/coinop/games/chicago/chicago.html
1960’s -- early 1970’s:
The first computer games
• Ran on mainframe computers
• Generate music
– amplifier hooked to register bit
– AM radio near right part of the machine
• SpaceWar developed on MIT PDP-1
– Main use of AI Lab’s PDP-6 on nights and
weekends
• ASCII-based Star Trek games
– Can find their descendents today in BASIC
bargain bins
• 1975: William Crowther developed
Adventure, first text-based adventure game
(KA-10)
1970’s: First commercial attempts
• 1972: Syzygy formed by Nolan Bushnell
• 1973: Computer Space (based on Space
War)
– first commercial electronic arcade game.
– Too hard, failed.
• 1974: Pong. Huge hit in bars, pinball
arcades
– Example of early multiplayer game (optional)
• Tank Command, Battlezone, …
• Renamed company as “Atari”
Photo sources:
http://www.klov.com/C/Computer_Space.html
http://www.gamearchive.com/video/manufacturer/atari/
vector/html/battlezone.html
Late 1970’s:
The first Home Invasion
• 1977: Atari introduces first home game console
– 2600 VCS
– 2KB ROM, 128 bytes RAM
• 1977: Apple II arrives on the market
• 1979: Third-party development houses (e.g.,
Activision) start up
Photo source:
http://www.atariage.com/
Early 1980’s: The Boom
• 1980
– Phillips Odyssey and Mattel
Intellivision reach the market.
– Nintendo’s Donkey Kong arrives
in arcades
– Namco’s Pac-Man does $2.3B
business (1997 dollars)
– Atari reaches $1B
• 1981
– Game Industry exceeds $6B in
sales
– IBM introduces the IBM PC
Photo sources:
http://www.pong-story.com/ody2001.htm
http://www.intellivisionlives.com/
1981-1982: The Crash
• Atari sales down 50%, loses money
– Market flooded with poor quality games
– Buys license for E.T. for $22M
• Game companies targeting home computers form
– Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line, Broderbund
• Mattel loses $225M from Intellivision
– Wipes out profits from previous four years
• 1984:
– Industry drops to below $800M
– Apple introduces the Macintosh
Late 1980s: Struggling back to life
• 1985:
– Nintendo introduces NES to US
• Strict software control, restricts companies to
producing 5 games/year
– Atari tries for comeback with 16-bit ST
– Commodore ships Amiga, designed to support games
• Bad marketing kills it, although it lives on as an
orphan
• 1986:Sega ships Sega Master Console system
– Fails due to lack of developer buy-in
• 1987:
– Electronic Arts releases its first in-house game
– More games show up for IBM PC
Early 1990s: Resurgence
• 1989
– Sega Genesis released, fueled by EA sports titles
– Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers 3 sells 11M copies
• 1990: Amiga, Atari ST die
• 1991: Nintendo launches Super-NES (16 bit)
• 1992:
– PC gaming explodes
– Nintendo sales reach $7B ($4.7B in US); higher profits
than all US movie and TV studios combined
Turn of the century
• Nintendo N64
– Home SGI machine
• PlayStation 2
– “Emotion engine”
• Dreamcast born and dies
– It’s the games, dummy
• Microsoft Xbox struggles
– Will directX rule?
• Renaissance in PC Gaming
– Many titles, large sales, creative use of peripherals
• Apple improves its support for games
The serpent in the garden: Economics
• Why aren’t games as big a form of entertainment
as
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Movies?
Television?
Sports?
Horse racing?
Example: Blade Runner (1998)
• No film reused from movie; all done via animation
– 230GB of graphical assets, uncompressed
– 2,600 motion capture sequences
• Rendering farm = 90 dual 233mhz PII’s, 256MB
RAM
• Development environment = 3D studio MAX,
with 150 plugins
Economics of Adventure games
1998 Sales (US only)
Development costs:
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• Myst: $300K
• Blade Runner: $4M
• The Last Express: $6M
• Typical graphical adventure:
between $1-4M
Riven: $62.5M
Myst: $61.5M
Phantasmagoria: $12.5M
Gabriel Knight 2: $8.4M
The Dig: $6.1M
Blade Runner: $5.6M
Pandora Directive: $3.7M
Zork Grand Inquisitor:
$1.9M
• Last Express: $1.9M
Major problem: Marketing
• Megahit mentality
• Hard-core gamers
– Male, 16-34
– Computer savvy, enough disposable income to buy
latest hardware, software
– Most developers cater to this market
– This group is at most 20% of the US population
• Problem: How to expand the base of players?
– Women
– Younger people
– Older people
The tricky economics of online games
• Example: Meridian 59
– 10,000 players/month
– Revenues covers ongoing production & maintenance
costs only
– No profit, no payback for development costs
• One analysis
– Source: Paul Palumbo, “Online vs. Retail Game Title Economics”,
Gamasutra January 9, 1998 Vol. 2: Issue 2
– Assume: Development costs $1.2M; Flat rate of
$7.95/month; gross margin of 60% desired; 20%
churn/month
– Need 20,000 monthly subscribers, 68,000 new
subscribers/year
Online gaming = Service industry
• Source: Jessica Mulligan, “Online Gaming: Why won’t
they come” Gamasutra Vol 2: Issue 9, Feb 27, 1998
• Potential market huge: 2.5M hardcore gamers with
net work access, but most games have about 10K
• Claim: Successful games focus on customer
service
– 90% of the work occurs after the game is deployed.
– Having sysops who resolve disputes and fix bugs on the
spot essential to success
Model perturbations yield possible
trends
• Implementation possibilities expanding
– Moore’s Law continues, at least for a while
• Richer models now possible
– Which expands opportunities for immersion
• New kinds of stories can be told
– New generativity in imagined worlds
– Multiparticipant stories
Some questions game designers
are grappling with
How might stories evolve?
Will lifelike animation kill full-motion
video?
Will inverse kinematics kill motion
capture?
Is 2D versus 3D like
B&W/Color
or like
animation/live action?
How to exploit new modalities?
• Speech I/O becoming reasonable
– More developers are shipping text to speech, limited
recognition capabilities
• Vision input around the corner?
– Potential applications?
• Helmets, and gloves and sensors?
What can we do to improve game AI?
• “AI code gets big -- 1000, 2000 lines”
(speaker at 1998 GDC)
• “Games are going to become AI-bound”
– Brian Schmidt, Xbox project manager
What game(s) would you like to see?