Introduction to Game Studies:
Games in Culture
Chapter 5: Adventures and
Other Fiction in 1980s’ Games
© Frans Mäyrä & SAGE Publications
1980s: Introducing Adventure,
Characters and Fiction in Games
 From 1970 to 1980 the total recreation
expenditures in the US more than doubled.
 It is questionable whether there was actually
more leisure time available - people just used
more money on leisure and entertainment.
 Games profited from evolving technology by
providing more complex digital entertainment.
 The 1980s introduced fictional storytelling and
character elements to mainstream digital games.
Pac-Man as a Pop Phenomenon
 Pac-Man (Namco, 1980) was originally designed
by Toru Iwatani, and in Japan it was called ‘Puck
Man’.
 Designed to appeal to a wide audience, also
females - one of the all-time most popular
games.
 Consciously avoided references to killing and
war in its shell (imagery, thematic level).
 Small, cute characters and cheerful melodies
were designed.
 Pac-Man toys, cereal, lunchboxes, a hit song
and an animated cartoon series were produced
to profit from its success.
Pac-Man’s Characters
 The main character was
designed to illustrate the
game’s main activity: eating.
 Chasing and escaping while
navigating is the other main
player activity.
 Four ghost characters were
differentiated by their colour
and style of movement
(which also gave them
personality).
 The ghosts’ animated eyes
showed their direction of
movement.
Image credits: Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.
Pac-Man Design
 Pac-Man game design: arcade cabinet (US version, published by
Midway), screenshots
 Play a Pac-Man clone online:
http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/media/pacman_flash/
Image credits: The International Arcade Museum, www.klov.com.
Game Genre Systems
 Game genre can be based on the game’s shell
or iconography (‘space game’) or its interactivity
(type of action: a ‘shooter game’),
 Large numbers of possible actions exist in
games (listing them, Mark J.P. Wolf classifies
games into 42 different genres).
 From a descriptive linguistics perspective, genre
terminology needs to be recognised by players
to be truly useful.
 Game genres are constantly being named and
renamed by players, experts and game media:
living game cultures are in a state of flux.
Genre of Pac-Man
If action decides the genre, Pac-Man can
be called an ‘eating game’.
Many classic board games are based on
‘eating’ other player’s game pieces.
Perhaps more importantly, Pac-Man is a
‘maze game’: labyrinth navigation is a
central feature.
The dynamics of chase increase the
difficulty: player needs to multi-task in real
time while navigating the maze.
Puzzles and Games
 Chris Crawford (1984) compares and
differentiates games from puzzles, stories and
toys.
 The quality and degree of interactivity is the key.
 A puzzle does not actively respond to moves
made by man (a static puzzle is not a ‘dynamic
system’).
 Even a classic jigsaw puzzle can be made into a
digital game - see http://www.jigzone.com/ (adds
real-time counters, competitive challenge or
conflict).
Visual Storytelling
 By the early 1980s, there was already an
entire generation (shikaku sedai, the visual
generation) living immersed in Anime and
Manga in Japan.
 Japanese popular culture influenced digital
game design.
 The Japanese games enhanced the
gameplay experience by introducing
recognisable characters, exploration-inviting
places and rudimentary storylines to motivate
action.
Donkey Kong (1981)
 Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, Donkey Kong
included cut scenes (short non-interactive
sequences or movies) to advance the plot.
 The villain of the game is the ape, which
escapes with ‘Jumpman’s’ girlfriend and the
player is faced with the task of winning her back.
 Jumpman would later be known as Mario, the
most famous game character of all time.
 The game narrative progresses through four
different game screens with different building
platforms to climb - making this the archetypal
‘platform game’.
Donkey Kong Art
 Donkey Kong arcade cabin, screenshots
 Play a Donkey Kong clone online:
http://donkey-kong.freeonlinegames.com/
Image credits: The International Arcade Museum, www.klov.com.
Legacy of Donkey Kong
 From the starting screen of escaping ape to the
final screen with Jumpman rescuing the lady,
Donkey Kong was able to convey an entire
storyline.
 The story progressed as a reward to successful
player action - a solution that many games have
replicated since then.
 Many later Mario series games had similar
features to Donkey Kong: sideways-depicted
jumping landscapes, and ‘rescue the lady’ type
plots.
Popularity of Mario
 The game designer of the Mario games (Shigeru
Miyamoto) has become the most celebrated of all
time - known also for the Legend of Zelda series.
 More than 200 games with Mario characters have
been published, selling nearly 200 million copies
worldwide.
 Relating to their popularity, Mario games have
generally been well-designed: their high playability
includes clear goals, immediate rewards from the
successful use of game controls, enjoyable visual
and audio design, and a ‘sense of magic’
permeating their fictional universe.
Mario in the List of Best-Selling Games
 Estimations of digital games that have sold over
10 million copies:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
Super Mario Bros. (NES version) - 40.23 million
Tetris (Game Boy version) - 30 million
Pokémon Red, Blue and Green (Game Boy version) - 20.08 million
Super Mario World (SNES version) - 20 million
Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES version) - 18 million
The Sims (PC version) - 16 million
Pokémon Gold and Silver (Game Boy version) - 14.51 million
Super Mario Land (Game Boy version) - 14 million
Nintendogs (Nintendo DS version) - 13.6 million
Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire (Game Boy Advance version) - 13 million
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PlayStation 2 version) - (13 million)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PlayStation 2 version) - (12 million)
Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (PlayStation 2 version) - (11 million)
Grand Theft Auto III (PlayStation 2 version) - 11 million
Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64 version) - 11 million
Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen (Game Boy Advance version) - 10.66 million
Gran Turismo (PlayStation version) - 10.5 million
Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES version) - 10 million
Pac-Man (Atari 2600 version) - 10 million
 Source: www.wikipedia.org
Shigeru Miyamoto’s Titles in
Game Franchises
 Entire series of games have been produced,
known as franchises.
 List of game franchises with more than 25
million units sold:
 Sonic the Hedgehog (44 million)










Mario (more than 193 million)
Pokémon (155 million)
The Sims (85 million)
Final Fantasy (75 million)
Tetris (60 million)
Madden NFL (60 million)
The Legend of Zelda (52 million)
Grand Theft Auto (52 million)
Donkey Kong (48 million)
Gran Turismo (47 million)










Lineage (43 million)
Dragon Quest (41 million)
Crash Bandicoot (34 million)
Tomb Raider (32 million)
Resident Evil (31 million)
James Bond (30 million)
Mega Man (27 million)
Medal of Honor (27 million)
Command & Conquer (25 million)
Street Fighter (25 million)
Source: www.wikipedia.org
More Depth of Character: RPGs
 Role playing games (RPGs) have developed
into different varieties: ‘pen-and-paper’ or
‘tabletop’ RPGs, ‘live action role playing’ (‘larp’)
and computer RPGs.
 First tabletop RPGs (like Dungeon & Dragons,
1974) had their roots in miniature war games.
 Typically RPG games involve the creation of a
character with various attributes, such as
strength and intelligence.
 A game master (GM) will present the challenges
of an adventure to players, who take on the roles
of their player characters (PCs) during the
adventure.
Early Computer Games: Text
Adventures
 Early computer games often relied on text and
typing rather than graphics and audio.
 The earliest text adventure game was ADVENT
(1975-76), programmed by Will Growther and
Don Woods.
 The player would read descriptions from the
screen and type in commands like ‘go north’.
 Infocom produced famous games like Zork
(1977-1980), and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy (1984).
Rogue-like Games
 An alternative to text description was to use the
computer monitor to draw images by using text
characters.
 Famous games of this type: Angband,
Hack/NetHack, Moria, Rogue.
 Known as ASCII graphics, these games only
relied on basic letters and numbers (ASCII
characters) to display the game world.
 Rogue-like games often featured randomly
generated dungeons, adding to their replay
value.
Typical Rogue-like Interface
-----|....|
############
|....|
#
#
|.$..+########
#
|....|
#
---+-------#
|.....|
#
|.!...|
#
|.....|
#
|..@..|
---#
|.....|
|..|
#######+..D..|
|<.+###
#
|.....|
---- #
#
|.?...|
######
-------
#
.
$
+
|
!
Wall
Unlit hallway
Lit area
Some quantity of gold
A door
Wall
A magic potion
@
The adventurer
D
<
?
A dragon
Stairs to the previous level
A magic scroll
Source: www.wikipedia.org
Adventure Game Types
 Several distinctly different types of games with ‘adventure’ elements
exist.
 Taking two key features, interaction temporality and the consistency
of game world, the following table can be constructed:
Game Genre
Interaction
Temporality
Game World
(mostly)
Example
Action RPGs
Real time
Random
Diablo (1996)
Interactive Fiction Turn-based
Pre-scripted
Zork (1980)
Platform Games
Pre-scripted
Donkey Kong
(1981)
Random
NetHack (19852003)
Real time
Roguelike Games Turn-based
 Contemporary games are often ‘action adventures’, featuring both
real-time interaction as well as interlinking puzzle structures.
Ultima RPG Series
 Richard Garriott started
the design of computer
games while still at
school.
 His first published game
was called Akalabeth
(1979), made for Apple II
personal computer.
 His Ultima series of
computer RPGs is
considered the longest
running RPG franchise.
Akalabeth screen (Image
credit, Wikipedia,
www.wikipedia.org)
Ultima IV: Game with Thematic Depth
 The fourth game in the Ultima series
represented an attempt to go beyond hack-andslash battles or straightforward puzzles.
 The player is destined to become Avatar, a hero
figure who is faced with various ethical choices.
 The game follows the main character’s struggle
to understand the Eight Virtues and reach
Avatarhood.
 The player can become engrossed in the fiction
and ethical dilemmas, but it is also possible to
face Ultima IV as ‘just a game’.
RPG Player Styles
 In late-1990s, participants in the
rec.games.frp.advocacy Usenet newsgroup
developed ‘Threefold Model’ to identify different
playing styles.
 It is one of the key player or play style typologies,
differentiating between:
 ‘dramatist’ (values how well the in-game action creates a satisfying
storyline)
 ‘gamist’ (is focused on game challenges, ‘winning the game’)
 ‘simulationist’ (values above all a coherent and believable,
simulated game world).
(Source: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/threefold/)
Ultima IV Art
 Ultima IV screenshots; install and play original Ultima IV
for DOS or XU4 remake from
http://xu4.sourceforge.net/download.php
Image credits: Origin/Electronic Arts; source: www.mobygames.com.
Assignments on Diversifying
Game Cultures
 The birth of a genre:
select a digital game (preferably from the 1980s) that
you consider to have started a new genre. Give a short
description of it, and give your reasons for attributing it
as the first in a particular game genre.
 Maps in games:
look for examples of the use of maps in games; describe
and discuss them. You can either take a particular game
and map, or write about the role of maps in games in
general.
Map of Britannia, shipped with Ultima IV.
Image credits: Origin/Electronic Arts; source: www.uo.com.