1.
History of Videogames
Part Two: The 1980s
From Introduction to Game
Study
Chapter 5
Thanks to Frans Mäyrä & SAGE Publications
MontanaTech

2.
1980s: Learning the Lexicon
 1980s are remembered as “the culture of
selfishness” and carried contradictions – the
decade that brought prosperity and
computers to homes was also the decade of
Chernobyl and AIDS.

3.
1980s: Introducing Adventure,
Characters and Fiction in Games
 From 1970 to 1980 the total recreation
expenditures in the US more than doubled.
 Games profited from evolving technology by
providing more complex digital
entertainment.
 The 1980s introduced fictional storytelling
and character elements to mainstream digital
games.

4.
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).

5.
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.

6.
Auteur
Toru Iwatani
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxa5IDkOghc
 “I was interested in
developing a game for the
female game enthusiast.
Rather than developing the
character first, I started out
with the concept of eating and
focused on the Japanese
word „taberu‟ which means to
eat. The actual figure of Pac-
Man came about as I was
having pizza for lunch.”

7.
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.

8.
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‟),
 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.

9.
Genre of Pac-Man
 If action and iconography 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.

10.
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.

11.
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‟.

12.
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.

13.
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.

14.
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.

15.
More Depth of Character: 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.

16.
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.
 Infocom produced famous games like Zork
(1977-1980), and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy (1984).
 EXAMPLE OF A TEXT ADVENTURE

17.
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.

18.
Typical Rogue-like Interface
------ - Wall
|....| ############ # Unlit hallway
|....| # # . Lit area
|.$..+######## # $ Some quantity of gold
|....| # ---+--- + A door
------ # |.....| | Wall
# |.!...| ! A magic potion
# |.....|
# |..@..| @ The adventurer
---- # |.....|
|..| #######+..D..| D A dragon
|<.+### # |.....| < Stairs to the previous level
---- # # |.?...| ? A magic scroll
###### -------
Source: www.wikipedia.org

19.
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 Game World Example
Temporality (mostly)
Action RPGs Real time Random Diablo (1996)
Interactive Fiction Turn-based Pre-scripted Zork (1980)
Platform Games Real time Pre-scripted Donkey Kong
(1981)
Roguelike Games Turn-based Random NetHack (1985-
2003)
 Contemporary games are often „action adventures‟, featuring both
real-time interaction as well as interlinking puzzle structures.

20.
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.
Akalabeth screen (Image
 His Ultima series of
computer RPGs is credit, Wikipedia, www.wikipe
considered the longest dia.org)
running RPG franchise.

21.
Ultima IV: Game with Thematic
Depth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBwEwcOgi6o
 The fourth game in the Ultima series
represented an attempt to go beyond hack-
and-slash battles or straightforward puzzles.
 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‟.

22.
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.

23.
Auteur
Richard Garriott
aka Lord British
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIoGLAfqf6w
 Richard Allen Garriott (born
July 4, 1961) is an English-
American videogame
developer and entrepreneur.
 Also an avid magician.
 Quotes A.C. Clark “Any
technology sufficiently
advanced in indistinguishable
from magic.”