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The computer games industry is one of the fastest growing and evolving industries on the planet and there is a vast amount of money to be made by designing and developing successful games. Successful that is, in that there are a large number of copies sold and a large financial gain to the companies that manufacture, design and produce them.
I will be looking at why some games are so successful and what a game needs to be a success. I will also be looking at the history of the gaming industry, the most successful games from the past and present, different consumer markets for computer games, advertising and promotion, different genres of game and aspects of gameplay, graphics, sound, addictiveness etc and how these can effect a game’s success.
In the beginning….
It is difficult to define exactly when the computers games industry really started. The very first computer game was ‘Space War’, created in 1961 by a team of programmers in America. The game was designed on a machine called the PDP-1 and was stored on a roll of white tape, which was fed into the machine to play the game. The game involved two players duelling in spaceships and attempting to destroy the other persons ship. The game was surprisingly advanced considering it was the first ever game, however it did require a machine the size of a refrigerator to play that cost $120,000 US dollars and was extremely complicated to operate. Never the less, the game can still be considered successful as it helped the company making the PDP-1 to sell machines by demonstrating what it could do. The game has now acquired a cult status and because it was never copyrighted, it has spawned thousands of clones and emulators that are still played today on modern PC’s.
In 1971 Space War was re-created by a company called ‘Atari’ in a game called ‘Computer Space’ that would become the first coin operated arcade machine. The machine failed to be successful however as it was too complicated for drunk people in bars to play due to the complex control system. Therefore Atari decided that in order for an arcade game to be successful it had to be very simple to use.
The next stage in the evolution of computer games was in 1972, with the invention of the first affordable home games machine called the ‘Odyssey’, made by a company called Magnavox. The basis for the machine was a game called ‘Pong’, an on-screen version of table tennis (ping-pong), that had previously been released as an arcade machine to great success by Atari. It was a played by two players, each with a controller consisting of two knobs. One controlled the up and down movement of the paddle while the other controlled the amount of spin on the ball. Pong was the first truly successful computer game and it made millions of dollars for Atari and Magnavox. Its huge success was due to its simplicity and being something new and exciting as no-one had ever played electronic games before. It could be enjoyed by people of all ages, genders and walks of life and was extremely playable and addictive. The instructions on the machine were legendarily simple, ‘Avoid missing ball for high score’. Pong is a true classic successful game that has been re-developed into countless new guises through the years, all proving to be successful.
In 1977 Atari released the first cartridge based game system called the ‘Atari 2600’ selling for $250. Although successful when released its true success came when it introduced the first home version of the game ‘Space Invaders’ in 1980. This is one of the most successful games there has ever been and the first game to introduce the high score system. This gave the player an aim, being to beat the high scores of other players. The game was made by a Japanese company called ‘Taito’. It was the first game to released worldwide and when released into the arcades in 1978 the game was a phenomenon. It caused coin shortages in Japan and school truancy in America and has pulled in over $500 million over the years.
A year after the release of Space Invaders another classic was released proving to be even more successful. ‘Asteroids’ as it was called was one of the first games to use vector-based graphics as opposed to pixels. It involved controlling a space ship that has to shoot asteroids and break them down into smaller and smaller pieces until they are destroyed. Asteroids was a perfect synergy between simplicity and intense gameplay. It also refined the high score system to allow players to place their initials by their scores for all to see, an idea that has been adopted by all arcade games ever since.
The next huge success was ‘Pac Man’ released by the Japanese company ‘Namco’ in 1980. Pac Man was the single most financially successful arcade game ever made and the first game to be as popular with females as it was with males. This was down to the fact that it was the first game to introduce a named character that was cute and appealing to women and young children. Pac Man was also the first game to be accompanied by an advertising and merchandising campaign and the first game to become an integral part of popular culture. There was a cartoon produced called the ‘Pac Man show’ along with t-shirts, cuddly toys, mugs, cereals, bed covers, books, posters, board games and countless other merchandising. The character also graced the covers of magazines and featured in many articles and features in the press and on television.
The final key game to the early era of computer games was ‘Donkey Kong’, later evolving into the name ‘Mario Bros’ made by the Japanese company ‘Nintendo’. The game was based on the film ‘King Kong’. Learning from the success of Pac Man, the game featured a named character called Mario and later his brother ‘Luigi’, leading to another vast wave of merchandising with every imaginable tie-in product. Donkey Kong became the biggest selling arcade machine of 1981 spawning countless spin-off games. The character Mario went on to be the dominating face of video games for the next 10 years. The game also pioneered the first real genre of games other than space based shoot ’em ups as it was the first platform game, i.e. manoeuvring a character viewed from the side around various platforms by jumping and avoiding or killing enemies.
Other important games in the early years were Berserk (1980), the first game to kill someone. An 18 year old man suffered a heart attack while playing the game in an amusement arcade. Death Race (1976) was the first game to cause controversy over violent content. It was a driving game involving running down stick men for points and was banned following protests and pressure on political parties. Both of these games however, achieved success through this publicity despite it being negative. Dragons Lair (1983) was the first game to use film samples in a game making for amazing graphics and it was successful because of this novelty, even if the gameplay was not all that great.
Consoles and Computers…..
This section will set the scene for the following sections giving a brief story of the evolution of computers and games consoles from the early 1980s up to the present day. The following sections will then look in more detail at the different genres of games, how they came about and the most successful games in these genres and why.
The Consoles
Following a slump in the industry from 1983-1984 when many companies went out of business due to declining sales, 1986 saw the release of the of the Nintendo Entertainment System ‘NES’ and the Sega Master System ‘SMS’. This was the beginning of a war that would last well into the next decade. In the year of release however Nintendo dominated the market. The NES console was sold with the Super Mario Bros game (a more advanced version of the arcade Mario Bros) which, backed up by intensive advertising, ensured huge sales of the console. Nintendo continued to dominate over the next few years with the release of the ‘Gameboy’ handheld console sold with the hugely addictive and popular puzzle game ‘Tetris’ in 1989. In the same year Sega released the first 16-bit console, the ‘Megadrive/Genesis’, with the arcade conversion of the arcade it ‘Altered Beast’, marketing the system as a ‘true arcade experience’. Another 16-bit console called the TurboGrafx 16 that featured the first games to be stored on CD. Despite both these machines being successful, Nintendo continued to outsell the competition.
1990 proved to be the most successful year ever for Nintendo with the release of ‘Super Mario Bros 3’. This went on to be the biggest selling cartridge game ever. Another console was also released in this year. The ‘Neo-Geo’ was the first 24-bit machine and featured sound and graphics far superior to any of the other machines. It proved to be a financial flop however due to the huge selling price, which was much more expensive than the other consoles.
The war heated up in 1991 with Sega releasing the game ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’, featuring a cute but cool hedgehog character called Sonic. Supported by a horde of merchandising they hoped to knock Mario off the top spot. Nintendo launched their 16 bit ‘Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) with yet another new Mario game ‘Super Mario World’ and the Mario/Sonic battle began. By 1992, with the release of ‘Sonic 2’ sales were almost equal and Sonic was proving a real threat to the future success of Mario.
In 1993 Atari re-entered the market with the first 64 bit machine, the ‘Jaguar’ manufactured by IBM. The game ‘Mortal Combat’ sparked new controversy over the violence in games and the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) was created to rate the level of violence in games. Sega were now outselling Nintendo but they fought back releasing the highly advanced ‘Donkey Kong Country’, which went on to be the best selling game of the year.
The new generation of consoles were launched in 1995. Sega was first with the 32 bit ‘Saturn’. Sony entered the market with its ‘Playstation’ also 32 bit and Nintendo released the 64-bit ‘N64’.
Sony reduced the price of the Playstation in 1996 forcing Sega to follow suit with the Saturn. Nintendo sold its billionth cartridge while Atari went out of business following the disappointing sales of the Jaguar. By the end of the year Sony were on top making in excess of $12 million per day over the Christmas period. During the next year sales of the Playstation continued to skyrocket closely followed by the N64 while Saturn sales plummeted.
In 1998 Sega launched the 64-bit internet compatible ‘Dreamcast’ in an attempt to regain control of the market and achieved reasonable success pushing them back up with the Playstation and N64 in terms of sales. Nintendo extended the life of the Gameboy with the release of a colour version. Prices of both the consoles and the games continue to fall through 1999 and 2000 with the top three consoles all retailing at around $100 with the games as low as $10. Then at the end of 2000 Sony released the first of yet another new generation consoles. The ‘Playstation 2’ is a 128 bit machine that can play DVDs and is also compatible with existing Playstation games. The demand for the new console is so high that all machines are already sold on advanced order before they reach the shops. As the machines begin to run out, online auctions are selling the console at prices over $1000. As Dreamcast sales hit a slump, Sega announced that it would cease production of the machine in March 2001.
The final stages in console history came in 2002 as computer games become increasingly popular and more a part of modern culture. The first films based entirely on computer games, ‘Tomb Raider’ and ‘Final Fantasy’ are released with work underway on many other films based on games. Microsoft finally releases the long awaited ‘X-Box’, as a competitor for the Playstation 2, featuring a windows powered engine capable of PC quality gaming. To complete the story Nintendo launched the ‘Gameboy Advanced’, a successor to the Gameboy Colour, and the ‘Gamecube’ as their answer to the PS2 and X-Box. The Gamecube uses advanced forms of DVD disc, which are smaller and can hold more information. Nintendo hoped this would become the standard in the future.
Computers
At the same time as the consoles, home computers were also developing into a gameplaying force to be reckoned with. The ‘Commodore 64’ and ‘Sinclair ZX Spectrum’ were the first affordable home computers and the games were cheap to buy and easy to program and stored on cassette. Hundreds of games were made and released with a few notable successes such as the platform game ‘Manic Minor’, featuring Monty Python style humour and the highly addictive ‘Jet Pac’ shoot-em-up.
In 1981 two new future giants entered the market. IBM launched the first ‘PC’ powered by an operating system called ‘MSDOS’ created by Microsoft. In 1984 the Apple Macintosh was released as a rival to the PC starting another battle in the computer industry similar to the Sega/Nintendo war in the console industry. The Mac featured the first graphical user interface (icons and buttons etc) which people found much easier to use than MSDOS. Microsoft fought back a year later in 1985 with the release of the first version of Windows.
Despite these giants entering the market, these early Macs and PC's were designed almost entirely for work and business and very few games were available for them. Commodore took advantage of this by introducing the ‘Amiga 500’ (right) in 1987. This affordable home computer was much cheaper than the Macs and PC’s on the market and much more suited to gaming. Before long however PCs began to fight back. As they became more advanced and parents began to see the educational benefit of new features such as CD ROMs and multi-media, the PC began to become more and more popular. Games developers began to utilise the PCs hardware to produce games that were stored on CD ROM that could be much more advanced than the floppy-disk games on the Amiga.
The birth of the Internet and its rise to popularity through the early 1990s ensured that the boom in PCs continued and games developers now had the ability to make games that could be played over the internet. Combined with other advantages over consoles such as large hard drives and powerful graphics chips, the PC began to compete with the consoles in the gaming market and have continued to do so to the present day. The only rival to the PC in today’s computer market is the latest generation of Apple Macintosh computers such as the ‘I-Mac’ and ‘Power Mac’. Macs however are made mostly for design and graphics work along with sound and video editing although they are compatible with many PC games. Both PCs and Macs are continuing to evolve at a rapid rate with faster processors, more powerful graphics chips and new hardware allowing for more highly advanced games to be created.
The Games…
Having looked at the story of the machines available to play games, it is now time to look at the games themselves. The first games were designed for the mass market, i.e. they were aimed at as many different types of people as possible. As the popularity of games increased, developers attempted to focus on certain specific markets for games. Thus the birth of the different genres of game.
Platform Games
Platform games were one of the first genres of game and have evolved from the side scrolling ‘left, right, jump’ games of the past into the complex three-dimensional worlds of today. Although most platform games are console based, they were also popular on computers, especially the early ones such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Mario, the star of the first platform game Mario Bros, has been the subject of the most financially successful platform games. Super Mario Bros 3, released on the NES in 1990 was the defining game in the genre setting the standard for platform games in the future. It featured a large and varied world with something new on almost every level. The graphics were cute and cartoony and the music was catchy. The gameplay was great because there were plenty of new abilities to perform as the game progressed and lots of secrets and mini games to be found to keep the player entertained. The game also featured a code system so that players could continue from the level they had previously reached, instead of having to restart the game from scratch. The game sat at the top of the best-seller lists for months and sold over 17 million copies. The game was followed by Super Mario World proving to be hit on the SNES and Gameboy. Mario has stood the test of time with hit games on all of the Nintendo consoles. Mario’s rival in the platform genre was Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog who also featured in a string of successive hits on the SMS, Megadrive, Gamegear, Saturn and Dreamcast. Another hugely successful Nintendo platformer was ‘Donkey Kong Country’ on the SNES, released in 1993. The game featured revolutionary graphics for a 16-bit machine. Although the game was still 2D, the sprites were extremely detailed and well rendered. The graphics were the main selling point of the game but it was also very playable with good gameplay and followed the golden rules of platform games laid down by Super Mario Bros 3. A number of other platform hits were spin offs of Disney films and cartoons such as ‘The Lion King’, ‘Aladdin’, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc. The main reason for the success of these games was due to the characters being already popular and well known.
With the release of the Playstation and similar CD based consoles in the mid 90’s, platform games were evolving to make use of new hardware capabilities. ‘Crash Bandicoot’ on the Playstation was one of the first 3D platformers and a huge hit on its release as was the sequel. Instead of moving left and right across the screen you actually moved forward through the game with a view from behind the character. This idea later evolved into games such as ‘Tomb Raider’ and its sequels taking the 3D idea to another level being fully 3D with a camera that moved around to different angles depending on your position. Tomb Raider and the main character ‘Lara Croft, went on to achieve massive success and a huge amount of merchandising, even creating a movie based on the game. The platform game is still evolving to this day and the huge variety of styles of platformer makes the genre popular with a wide variety of people.
Sports/Simulation
This genre covers a huge range of games from city building simulators to football games. One of the first games in this genre to achieve success was ‘Atari Football’, a top down table style arcade machine where players moved players around using a rotating ball. Games were later released to simulate flight, pinball, boards games, card games, driving, tank warfare, basketball, tennis, golf, athletics, shooting and almost any other sport or activity you could think of. Simulation games have always been popular in arcades, in particular driving games, which are particularly popular with males who like having the opportunity to drive like maniacs.
Driving games are also popular on consoles and home computers, especially since 3D graphics chips came about allowing spectacular graphics and a real feeling of speed. Games like ‘Gran Turismo’ and ‘Sega Rally’ proved to be best sellers on the Dreamcast and Playstation while ‘Colin McRae Rally’ on the PC achieved similar success. As censorship laws became more relaxed, controversial games such as ‘Carmageddon’, ‘Destruction Derby’, ‘Driver’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto’ were released where rather than driving to win a race, the aim was to steal cars, kill pedestrians, or generally drive illegally. Grand Theft Auto was particularly successful due to its originality and it could technically be classed as a genre in its own right.
Sports simulators are more aimed at particular groups of people, i.e. people that are into that particular sport. Cricket games for example are unlikely to sell well in the US or Japan, but are popular here in the UK and Australia in the same way as American football games are not really successful outside of the US.
True simulators are normally limited to the power of the home PC. Games such as Microsoft’s ‘Flight Simulator’, ‘Golf’ and ‘Formula 1’, feature incredibly realistic and complex gameplay. which makes it very similar to doing the real thing. These types of games are aimed at and popular with the older generation of game player.
In recent years extreme sports games have become some of the most popular games on the market as the interest in extreme sports in general has increased and it being considered fashionable and hip. Snowboarding games such as ‘Cool Boarders’ and ‘Snow Surfers’ have achieved massive sales, as have skating and BMX simulators like ‘Tony Hawks Pro Skater’ and ‘Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX’.
Simulation games are immensely popular in today’s market with ‘Gran Turismo 3’ and ‘Tony Hawks 3’ currently topping the best sellers list on the Playstation 2.
The other type of simulator is the business or management simulator. Although they are usually classed as simulators, these type of games would also fit into the strategy genre. These type of games are normally made for the PC. This sub-genre began with Sid Meier’s classic ‘Sim City’ back in the early 90s. The aim of this game was to take an empty plot of land and turn it into a booming commercial city while making a profit and constantly improving facilities to keep the citizens happy. A whole series of similar games followed with varying degrees of success. Games involving managing railroads, theme parks, pizza restaurants, hospitals, farms, parks and many other aspects of business and diplomacy such as the stock market and politics soon began to be released. There is even a hit game called ‘The Sims’ that simulates everyday life and managing a household of people through relationships, getting a job, DIY etc. Games like this are popular because they can be played over and over again in different ways and using different tactics giving them lasting playability.
Puzzle
If there is one defining game in the puzzle genre then it has to be ‘Tetris’. Designed by Russian programmer Alex Pajitnov in 1985. The game is a true classic and its simple but extremely addictive style has been copied countless times since. It was the game that made the Gameboy such a phenomenon success as it was popular with people of all ages, in particular businessmen who bought the Gameboy simply so that they could play Tetris while commuting.
Another hit puzzle game was ‘Lemmings’. It was a completely original game involving guiding a group of suicide loving lemmings through levels safely and was successful on almost all consoles and computer systems. Like Tetris, Lemmings was very addictive and many sequels to the game have been made.
RPG / Adventure
Dating back to the very beginning of video games, this genre developed from the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ concept. As many early programmers were also keen D&D gamers they began to create text based adventures in a similar style to the game where players would be given a description of their environment and could type various commands or actions for their character to perform. The genre later evolved into two different types of game. RPG (Role Playing Games) stuck more with the D&D concepts such as gaining experience to gain higher levels and having various statistics that would determine how the character would perform in certain actions or battles. These type of games were for the hardcore RPG player who enjoyed spending hour upon hour with their character completing quests and building up their stats. ‘The Bards Tale’ was one of the first RPGs but it was not until the ‘Ultima’ series of games that the genre really took off. The game was played from a top down point of view through a vast and immersive world and true enthusiasts would spend hours playing the game.
The first massively successful RPG was ‘The Legend of Zelda’ on the NES bringing the genre to the consoles. The game was in a similar style to Ultima but was simplified for the mass markets with less of a focus on statistics and more of a focus on graphics and story and the game had later hit sequels such as ‘Zelda 64’ on the N64.
‘Final Fantasy 7’ and its later sequels on the Playstation were top sellers in the late 90’s, featuring much improved graphics than previous games and a turn based combat system with a much bigger focus on the story of the game. PC RPGs such as ‘Diablo’ and its sequel ‘Diablo 2’ were also massive sellers and were much more action based with a focus on the combat rather than the story.
The other type of game in the genre is the ‘adventure’ game. These type of games are similar in that they involve a detailed story but instead of having statistics and combat, the game is played by solving a serious of lateral thinking puzzles using objects collected during the way. They normally involve humorous conversations and situations and cartoon style graphics. Amongst the biggest hits were the ‘Monkey Island’ series telling the story of wannabe pirate ‘Guybrush Threepwood’. The ‘Discworld’ games based on the books by Terry Pratchett were also best sellers. These type of games are aimed more at the mass market of gamers rather than the D&D loving RPG gamers.
Perhaps the most successful adventure game series however was ‘Myst’. The game was very different to the Monkey Island style games. Instead of being cartoony and humorous it was dark and mysterious featuring stunning 3D graphics and mind- bendingly complex puzzles. The game was massive hit all over the world and a popular game to be sold with PCs as it demonstrated their graphical capability.
Shooting Games
Shooting games were THE first genre of computer games and most of the early arcade games were space-based shoot’em’ups. Many early console games were also shooters. The advent of the ‘Light Gun’ meant that arcade machines could me made where the gamer could progress through the game by shooting at enemies on the screen using a life like gun firing a beam of light at the screen that could detect hits. Versions of these were later released for the consoles and games like ‘Time Crisis’ and ‘House of the Dead’ are among the most popular.
The major breakthrough in the genre came with the game ‘Doom’ on the PC in the early 90’s. Although ‘Castle Wolfenstein’ was the original ‘first person shooter’ (FPS), Doom was the first to reach the mass market. Doom also pioneered the ‘Death Match’ where players could battle against each other over the internet and it soon became the most popular game being played on the internet. As graphics cards and processors got more powerful, so the FPS became more advanced. ‘Quake’ and ‘Half-life’ in 1996 took the 3D graphics to a new level while ‘Unreal Tournament’ expanded on the multiplayer aspects with new game modes such as ‘capture the flag’ and other team or clan based modes.
Some companies decided to combine the action of the FPS with an element of strategy to create games like the ‘Rainbow 6’ series. Although played in first person perspective these games were realistic combat simulators, which required tactical and strategical thinking and are popular amongst military enthusiasts.
Although the classic shoot ’em up has all but had its day, FPS continue to be massive and are still the most popular game to be played online, especially as connections have got faster.
Fighting
Fighting games or beat ’em ups as they are sometimes known were another genre that was born in the arcades. The first games were walk and fight games such as ‘Double Dragon’ and ‘Altered Beast’ where players would progress forwards through a scrolling level beating up enemies and picking up various weapons until they had to fight a boss at the end of the level. The games soon found their way onto the consoles and as well as arcade conversions, console manufactures began producing games of their own such as ‘Streets of Rage’ on the Megadrive. The fighting game really took off however with the release of Capcoms ‘Streetfighter 2’ in the early 90s. It was different to previous fighting games as it was played on just one screen with two characters facing each other and fighting it out over a set number of rounds. The game was a smash in the arcades and topped the best-seller list for a long time until a number of copycat games began to be released.
Fighting games, like FPS games, have often been the subject of controversy over video game violence. ‘Mortal Kombat’ was released shortly after SF2 and although it featured similar game play, the graphics, instead of being cartoon style, were photo realistic. The game also featured bloodthirsty ‘Fatality’ moves where the victorious player would actually kill the loser with a variety of gory moves involving a lot of blood.
These one on one fighting games remained popular on the consoles as they evolved through to the new generation machines as they were popular games for playing at parties or socially and a large group of people could play ‘winner stays on’ tournaments etc. Today’s fighting games are usually 3D as opposed to the 2D games like SF2. Games like the ‘Tekken’ series feature changing camera angles to make the combat more realistic.
Strategy
This is probably one of the most varied genres and my personal favourite. This genre is the thinking mans game. The first successful strategy game was Sid Meier’s ‘Civilisation’ in 1990 on the PC. It was a turn based strategy game where players took control of the first settlers of a new stone age civilisation and had to build an empire that would last until the space age. The player had to conduct diplomacy and trade with other empires as well as conducting war and defence. The player also had conduct research into new technology and construct city improvements and even wonders of the world. There were countless different ways of playing the game and each time was a new experience. Its later sequels were also great games and very successful and countless copycat games have been made using the same style of gameplay.
While Civilisation was turn based, the first ‘real time strategy’ (RTS) game was ‘Dune 2’, made by Westwood Studios. The game was based on the classic science fiction film ‘Dune’ and was to set the standard for a plethora of RTS games in the future. The game involved harvesting spice in order to earn money. This money could then be spent on buildings such as base defences, refineries, power stations, barracks, tank factories etc. When the appropriate buildings were constructed, players could begin building units to form an army with which they could attack their opponents. RTS games involved more action and quick thinking than turn based games like Civilisation as whatever the player was doing, their enemy would be constantly building and attacking. Though Dune 2 was a success, it was ‘Command and Conquer’ that really got people into RTS. Also made by Westwood Studios, C&C brought the genre to the Internet allowing players to compete against other human players rather than the computer controlled opponents in single player mode. A number of successors to C&C were also big hits such as ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Tiberian Sun’. While these games focused on space age units and weaponry, RTS games like ‘Warcraft’ and Age of Empires’ focused on medieval warfare. There are many other variations on the RTS game such as ‘Commandos’ where the player takes control of just a small squad of men instead of an entire army. There are a vast amount of strategy games on the PC market today and they are beginning to make their way to the consoles.
Advertising, Marketing and Promotion…
In the early days of computer games, advertising was much less important than it is in today’ market. The first games achieved success through their novelty and the fact that they were the only thing on the market. They became popular through hype and word of mouth. As more and more games came onto the market sales were no longer assured. Manufacturers and developers now had to compete with rival companies to make the most successful games and to market them to the people. The main aim of advertising is to raise awareness of the product. Computer games manufacturers have used many methods to achieve this aim throughout the years. The four biggest players in the video games advertising world were the four companies that have made the most money from the industry, Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. In the computer industry there are many more big players but the biggest three are Microsoft, IBM and Apple although their advertising focus was on the business opportunities of computers as opposed to the games.
Atari dominated the gaming industry from 1971 until about 1982. They had both the most successful arcade machines and the biggest selling console as well as the most popular and biggest selling games. Atari’s main target market was males aged between 14 and 28 but they also developed advertising to incorporate other groups into their market. They advertised through the mass media (TV, radio, newspapers) as well as through posters and billboards. There were also magazines devoted to Atari games where potential gamers could read reviews of Atari games and find out when new releases would be on the market. Atari also created brand awareness through sponsorship of sports and music events giving the brand a ‘cool’ image and helping to promote this to its target audience. They also created publicity , which, positive or negative, still raised awareness of the company. An example of this is the legal action they took against Magnetron over the copyrights to the game ‘Pong’. Despite losing this lawsuit, Atari sales went up as a result of the publicity. Atari were also involved in a number of other legal actions over copyright infringements.
By 1985 Nintendo had successfully pushed Atari off the top spot and into a steady decline that result in them ultimately going bankrupt. The success of Donkey Kong had made Nintendo a household name and when they released the NES they used their familiar Mario character to great promotional success. Nintendo’s target market was wider that Atari’s with much of their merchandising aimed at younger children, both male and female, as young as 6 or 7. The cartoon and later the film starring Mario further increased the characters popularity and it became the ‘in thing’ for kids to have the latest Mario merchandise, be it school bags, lunch boxes, watches or wallpaper. Like Atari, Nintendo used mass media advertising, sponsorship, specialist magazines and publicity, all with a definite focus on their mascot ‘Mario’. Nintendo had what was close to a monopoly situation through the late 80’s and early 90’s until they began to face competition from Sega.
Sega brought computer game advertising into the 90s. Their advertising was slick, cool, fast paced and clever. Before long the company was considered much cooler than Nintendo, as was Sega’s own mascot, ‘Sonic’. While Mario was still popular with the very young kids, Sonic was more popular with teenagers and young adults. Sega used the same marketing methods as Nintendo competing with them in every area. The two companies fought head to head in a similar way to ‘McDonalds and ‘Burger King’ or ‘Pepsi and ‘Coca-cola’. Sega’s commercials contained feature by feature comparisons between the Megadrive and the SNES with personal ‘below the belt’ attacks. Nintendo attempted to fight back with similar advertisements but it seemed Sega were always one step ahead. While Sega designed more sophisticated games aimed at older gamers, they ended up stealing much of the market for younger gamers as well who wanted to play the same games as their older brothers etc. Playing video games was no longer referred to as playing Nintendo. Now people were playing Sega.
When Sony entered the market with their Playstation in 1995 they took a revolutionary approach to advertising. After initial commercials and advertising conducted in a similar way to the Sega adverts of the early 90s to establish the brand and the machine, they opted for a much more surreal approach to advertising. Their commercials portrayed the Playstation as a kind of cult using the different shaped symbols on the control pad buttons in various surreal and comical situations. Sony were soon outselling Sega and Nintendo. With the launch of the Playstation 2 in 2001, they changed their advertising and came up with a new slogan, ‘The third place’. Their commercials now became even more surreal, advertising the gaming experience as a kind of new surreal dimension where anything can happen. When Microsoft launched the X-Box, they copied this style of advertising. These new generation consoles are no longer aimed at the youth market but at adults as well.
Games developers themselves also advertise their games. Although some big titles are advertised on television, most advertising for specific games takes place in magazines and on the internet. Favourable reviews are essential to a successful game and therefore the games have to be good for people to buy them.
As well advertising the games, consoles and computers themselves, many games now feature advertising for other products within the game itself. Sports games for example feature banners and logos around the track or field as there is at real sporting events. Other games also feature branded products or advertisements in the background or even as vital elements of gameplay. Whether this is good or bad for the gaming industry is debatable. It may bring in more money for games developers but will this money be spent on improving the game? On the other hand, do players want to be bombarded with corporate logos and brand names while they are gaming?
Conclusion…
So what does make a financially successful game? The games we have looked at throughout this essay have achieved success in many different ways. I think it is a combination of factors that make a really successful game, but what that combination is depends on the games target audience and the context in which they are to be played. Arcade games for example need to simple to play but complex to master. Games developers learnt lessons from games like ‘Computer Space’ being too complex to play, especially after alcohol. Games that were too easy to master however, meant people would spend too much time playing the game without having to put more money in. They also need to be competitive, either by allowing two or players to play simultaneously against each other or by having the option of recording high scores. The level of challenge is an important factor in all games, as if there was no challenge there would be no point in playing the game. Graphics and addictive gameplay are also important aspects of arcade games. Graphics to attract people to the machines and addictiveness to keep people coming back.
Originality can often bring success to a game as people are always looking to play something new that they haven’t seen before. The pioneering games in a genre, i.e. those that invent the genre or take it to a new level are often the most successful. Doom for example was massive because it was the first experience people had of an FPS game. Quake was also successful because it took FPS to a new level graphically and with its realistic gameplay. On the other hand, instead of being original, developers can copy the idea of another successful game so that they know they have a winning format. This often leads to copyright infringements and legal action such as in the case of Atari and Magnavox. Developers therefore have to be careful to make the game substantially different as to avoid breaking the law.
Once a company has produced a successful game, it can prolong its success is through sequels. Most people who enjoyed the original game would buy the sequel hoping for something similar or better. Good examples of a successful series of sequels are the Tombraider, Mario and Final Fantasy series’. Their success was due to constant improvement of graphics, gameplay, sound and other features between games. Instead of developing a full-blown sequel, another way of prolonging the life of a game is through expansion packs. These add new levels, characters or missions to an existing game and can also increase the sales of the game itself as it is thrust back into the limelight. Sid Meier’s ‘The Sims’, for example, has had a number of successful expansion packs released to expand the scope of the game, each supported by advertising campaigns.
Another route to success that has been followed by games developers is to base a game on an existing product or character. If a game is based on a currently popular film or TV show, it is almost guaranteed success, even if the game is not that great. A recent example of a top selling game based on existing brand is ‘Harry Potter’. The film was a multi million dollar blockbuster and the game was released while the hype for the film was still strong, sending it straight to the top of the charts. The Pokemon phenomenon was another example of games developers taking advantage of a craze that was obsessing children all over the world. A number of Pokemon games were released and children, wanting to collect every possible Pokemon related item, bought the games in their millions.
Publicity, both good and bad, is another factor that can have a big effect on the sales of a game and unlike traditional advertising it doesn’t cost any money. Games that have caused sufficient controversy to make them newsworthy can reach a worldwide audience without having to spend a penny by featuring taboo subjects such as sex or extreme violence. This sparks people’s natural curiosity and desire to see for themselves exactly why the game is so controversial and so they buy the game. A recent example is the game ‘Hooligan: Storm over Europe’, the aim of which is to control a group of football hooligans and cause general mayhem in various European cities. Coming soon after a number of real life incidents of hooliganism featured in the news, the developers knew the game was bound to attract media attention and therefore encourage people to buy the game. The right advertising methods and marketing are also a key part of selling a game. Companies that have got the mix right have gone on to reap the rewards such as Nintendo with Mario, Sega with Sonic and Sony with Lara Croft. The characters were cleverly marketed through merchandising, TV shows and even films to ingrain them into part of popular culture.
At the end of the day, however, in order for a game to be truly financially successful, it just has to be a really great game. A game that people really want to play and really enjoy. A game that receives good reviews and write-ups and that people recommend to their friends. Graphics and sound are important but not essential as some of the highest grossing games such as ‘Pac Man’, ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Pong’ featured relatively basic graphics and sound. I think that above all else, good, compelling gameplay is the defining factor in a games success but all the other factors that have been mentioned throughout this essay are also important and I think this will remain true in the future.
Playing computer games has become a part of modern culture and is becoming more and more so all the time. Gaming has become a social event with people playing together more than on their own. As well as playing together on the internet and in arcades, people play games at parties and in night clubs. Children today are spending much more time playing video games than they are reading books. Some people say this is a bad thing while others say that games are educational and stimulating. Adults are also playing games much more than in the past, especially as the new generation have grown up with computer games from an early age and continue to play in adulthood. One thing is for sure however and that is that computer games are here to stay and will continue to evolve, develop and be successful for many years to come.
Thanks for reading
Brew
I will be looking at why some games are so successful and what a game needs to be a success. I will also be looking at the history of the gaming industry, the most successful games from the past and present, different consumer markets for computer games, advertising and promotion, different genres of game and aspects of gameplay, graphics, sound, addictiveness etc and how these can effect a game’s success.
In the beginning….
It is difficult to define exactly when the computers games industry really started. The very first computer game was ‘Space War’, created in 1961 by a team of programmers in America. The game was designed on a machine called the PDP-1 and was stored on a roll of white tape, which was fed into the machine to play the game. The game involved two players duelling in spaceships and attempting to destroy the other persons ship. The game was surprisingly advanced considering it was the first ever game, however it did require a machine the size of a refrigerator to play that cost $120,000 US dollars and was extremely complicated to operate. Never the less, the game can still be considered successful as it helped the company making the PDP-1 to sell machines by demonstrating what it could do. The game has now acquired a cult status and because it was never copyrighted, it has spawned thousands of clones and emulators that are still played today on modern PC’s.
In 1971 Space War was re-created by a company called ‘Atari’ in a game called ‘Computer Space’ that would become the first coin operated arcade machine. The machine failed to be successful however as it was too complicated for drunk people in bars to play due to the complex control system. Therefore Atari decided that in order for an arcade game to be successful it had to be very simple to use.
The next stage in the evolution of computer games was in 1972, with the invention of the first affordable home games machine called the ‘Odyssey’, made by a company called Magnavox. The basis for the machine was a game called ‘Pong’, an on-screen version of table tennis (ping-pong), that had previously been released as an arcade machine to great success by Atari. It was a played by two players, each with a controller consisting of two knobs. One controlled the up and down movement of the paddle while the other controlled the amount of spin on the ball. Pong was the first truly successful computer game and it made millions of dollars for Atari and Magnavox. Its huge success was due to its simplicity and being something new and exciting as no-one had ever played electronic games before. It could be enjoyed by people of all ages, genders and walks of life and was extremely playable and addictive. The instructions on the machine were legendarily simple, ‘Avoid missing ball for high score’. Pong is a true classic successful game that has been re-developed into countless new guises through the years, all proving to be successful.
In 1977 Atari released the first cartridge based game system called the ‘Atari 2600’ selling for $250. Although successful when released its true success came when it introduced the first home version of the game ‘Space Invaders’ in 1980. This is one of the most successful games there has ever been and the first game to introduce the high score system. This gave the player an aim, being to beat the high scores of other players. The game was made by a Japanese company called ‘Taito’. It was the first game to released worldwide and when released into the arcades in 1978 the game was a phenomenon. It caused coin shortages in Japan and school truancy in America and has pulled in over $500 million over the years.
A year after the release of Space Invaders another classic was released proving to be even more successful. ‘Asteroids’ as it was called was one of the first games to use vector-based graphics as opposed to pixels. It involved controlling a space ship that has to shoot asteroids and break them down into smaller and smaller pieces until they are destroyed. Asteroids was a perfect synergy between simplicity and intense gameplay. It also refined the high score system to allow players to place their initials by their scores for all to see, an idea that has been adopted by all arcade games ever since.
The next huge success was ‘Pac Man’ released by the Japanese company ‘Namco’ in 1980. Pac Man was the single most financially successful arcade game ever made and the first game to be as popular with females as it was with males. This was down to the fact that it was the first game to introduce a named character that was cute and appealing to women and young children. Pac Man was also the first game to be accompanied by an advertising and merchandising campaign and the first game to become an integral part of popular culture. There was a cartoon produced called the ‘Pac Man show’ along with t-shirts, cuddly toys, mugs, cereals, bed covers, books, posters, board games and countless other merchandising. The character also graced the covers of magazines and featured in many articles and features in the press and on television.
The final key game to the early era of computer games was ‘Donkey Kong’, later evolving into the name ‘Mario Bros’ made by the Japanese company ‘Nintendo’. The game was based on the film ‘King Kong’. Learning from the success of Pac Man, the game featured a named character called Mario and later his brother ‘Luigi’, leading to another vast wave of merchandising with every imaginable tie-in product. Donkey Kong became the biggest selling arcade machine of 1981 spawning countless spin-off games. The character Mario went on to be the dominating face of video games for the next 10 years. The game also pioneered the first real genre of games other than space based shoot ’em ups as it was the first platform game, i.e. manoeuvring a character viewed from the side around various platforms by jumping and avoiding or killing enemies.
Other important games in the early years were Berserk (1980), the first game to kill someone. An 18 year old man suffered a heart attack while playing the game in an amusement arcade. Death Race (1976) was the first game to cause controversy over violent content. It was a driving game involving running down stick men for points and was banned following protests and pressure on political parties. Both of these games however, achieved success through this publicity despite it being negative. Dragons Lair (1983) was the first game to use film samples in a game making for amazing graphics and it was successful because of this novelty, even if the gameplay was not all that great.
Consoles and Computers…..
This section will set the scene for the following sections giving a brief story of the evolution of computers and games consoles from the early 1980s up to the present day. The following sections will then look in more detail at the different genres of games, how they came about and the most successful games in these genres and why.
The Consoles
Following a slump in the industry from 1983-1984 when many companies went out of business due to declining sales, 1986 saw the release of the of the Nintendo Entertainment System ‘NES’ and the Sega Master System ‘SMS’. This was the beginning of a war that would last well into the next decade. In the year of release however Nintendo dominated the market. The NES console was sold with the Super Mario Bros game (a more advanced version of the arcade Mario Bros) which, backed up by intensive advertising, ensured huge sales of the console. Nintendo continued to dominate over the next few years with the release of the ‘Gameboy’ handheld console sold with the hugely addictive and popular puzzle game ‘Tetris’ in 1989. In the same year Sega released the first 16-bit console, the ‘Megadrive/Genesis’, with the arcade conversion of the arcade it ‘Altered Beast’, marketing the system as a ‘true arcade experience’. Another 16-bit console called the TurboGrafx 16 that featured the first games to be stored on CD. Despite both these machines being successful, Nintendo continued to outsell the competition.
1990 proved to be the most successful year ever for Nintendo with the release of ‘Super Mario Bros 3’. This went on to be the biggest selling cartridge game ever. Another console was also released in this year. The ‘Neo-Geo’ was the first 24-bit machine and featured sound and graphics far superior to any of the other machines. It proved to be a financial flop however due to the huge selling price, which was much more expensive than the other consoles.
The war heated up in 1991 with Sega releasing the game ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’, featuring a cute but cool hedgehog character called Sonic. Supported by a horde of merchandising they hoped to knock Mario off the top spot. Nintendo launched their 16 bit ‘Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) with yet another new Mario game ‘Super Mario World’ and the Mario/Sonic battle began. By 1992, with the release of ‘Sonic 2’ sales were almost equal and Sonic was proving a real threat to the future success of Mario.
In 1993 Atari re-entered the market with the first 64 bit machine, the ‘Jaguar’ manufactured by IBM. The game ‘Mortal Combat’ sparked new controversy over the violence in games and the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) was created to rate the level of violence in games. Sega were now outselling Nintendo but they fought back releasing the highly advanced ‘Donkey Kong Country’, which went on to be the best selling game of the year.
The new generation of consoles were launched in 1995. Sega was first with the 32 bit ‘Saturn’. Sony entered the market with its ‘Playstation’ also 32 bit and Nintendo released the 64-bit ‘N64’.
Sony reduced the price of the Playstation in 1996 forcing Sega to follow suit with the Saturn. Nintendo sold its billionth cartridge while Atari went out of business following the disappointing sales of the Jaguar. By the end of the year Sony were on top making in excess of $12 million per day over the Christmas period. During the next year sales of the Playstation continued to skyrocket closely followed by the N64 while Saturn sales plummeted.
In 1998 Sega launched the 64-bit internet compatible ‘Dreamcast’ in an attempt to regain control of the market and achieved reasonable success pushing them back up with the Playstation and N64 in terms of sales. Nintendo extended the life of the Gameboy with the release of a colour version. Prices of both the consoles and the games continue to fall through 1999 and 2000 with the top three consoles all retailing at around $100 with the games as low as $10. Then at the end of 2000 Sony released the first of yet another new generation consoles. The ‘Playstation 2’ is a 128 bit machine that can play DVDs and is also compatible with existing Playstation games. The demand for the new console is so high that all machines are already sold on advanced order before they reach the shops. As the machines begin to run out, online auctions are selling the console at prices over $1000. As Dreamcast sales hit a slump, Sega announced that it would cease production of the machine in March 2001.
The final stages in console history came in 2002 as computer games become increasingly popular and more a part of modern culture. The first films based entirely on computer games, ‘Tomb Raider’ and ‘Final Fantasy’ are released with work underway on many other films based on games. Microsoft finally releases the long awaited ‘X-Box’, as a competitor for the Playstation 2, featuring a windows powered engine capable of PC quality gaming. To complete the story Nintendo launched the ‘Gameboy Advanced’, a successor to the Gameboy Colour, and the ‘Gamecube’ as their answer to the PS2 and X-Box. The Gamecube uses advanced forms of DVD disc, which are smaller and can hold more information. Nintendo hoped this would become the standard in the future.
Computers
At the same time as the consoles, home computers were also developing into a gameplaying force to be reckoned with. The ‘Commodore 64’ and ‘Sinclair ZX Spectrum’ were the first affordable home computers and the games were cheap to buy and easy to program and stored on cassette. Hundreds of games were made and released with a few notable successes such as the platform game ‘Manic Minor’, featuring Monty Python style humour and the highly addictive ‘Jet Pac’ shoot-em-up.
In 1981 two new future giants entered the market. IBM launched the first ‘PC’ powered by an operating system called ‘MSDOS’ created by Microsoft. In 1984 the Apple Macintosh was released as a rival to the PC starting another battle in the computer industry similar to the Sega/Nintendo war in the console industry. The Mac featured the first graphical user interface (icons and buttons etc) which people found much easier to use than MSDOS. Microsoft fought back a year later in 1985 with the release of the first version of Windows.
Despite these giants entering the market, these early Macs and PC's were designed almost entirely for work and business and very few games were available for them. Commodore took advantage of this by introducing the ‘Amiga 500’ (right) in 1987. This affordable home computer was much cheaper than the Macs and PC’s on the market and much more suited to gaming. Before long however PCs began to fight back. As they became more advanced and parents began to see the educational benefit of new features such as CD ROMs and multi-media, the PC began to become more and more popular. Games developers began to utilise the PCs hardware to produce games that were stored on CD ROM that could be much more advanced than the floppy-disk games on the Amiga.
The birth of the Internet and its rise to popularity through the early 1990s ensured that the boom in PCs continued and games developers now had the ability to make games that could be played over the internet. Combined with other advantages over consoles such as large hard drives and powerful graphics chips, the PC began to compete with the consoles in the gaming market and have continued to do so to the present day. The only rival to the PC in today’s computer market is the latest generation of Apple Macintosh computers such as the ‘I-Mac’ and ‘Power Mac’. Macs however are made mostly for design and graphics work along with sound and video editing although they are compatible with many PC games. Both PCs and Macs are continuing to evolve at a rapid rate with faster processors, more powerful graphics chips and new hardware allowing for more highly advanced games to be created.
The Games…
Having looked at the story of the machines available to play games, it is now time to look at the games themselves. The first games were designed for the mass market, i.e. they were aimed at as many different types of people as possible. As the popularity of games increased, developers attempted to focus on certain specific markets for games. Thus the birth of the different genres of game.
Platform Games
Platform games were one of the first genres of game and have evolved from the side scrolling ‘left, right, jump’ games of the past into the complex three-dimensional worlds of today. Although most platform games are console based, they were also popular on computers, especially the early ones such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Mario, the star of the first platform game Mario Bros, has been the subject of the most financially successful platform games. Super Mario Bros 3, released on the NES in 1990 was the defining game in the genre setting the standard for platform games in the future. It featured a large and varied world with something new on almost every level. The graphics were cute and cartoony and the music was catchy. The gameplay was great because there were plenty of new abilities to perform as the game progressed and lots of secrets and mini games to be found to keep the player entertained. The game also featured a code system so that players could continue from the level they had previously reached, instead of having to restart the game from scratch. The game sat at the top of the best-seller lists for months and sold over 17 million copies. The game was followed by Super Mario World proving to be hit on the SNES and Gameboy. Mario has stood the test of time with hit games on all of the Nintendo consoles. Mario’s rival in the platform genre was Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog who also featured in a string of successive hits on the SMS, Megadrive, Gamegear, Saturn and Dreamcast. Another hugely successful Nintendo platformer was ‘Donkey Kong Country’ on the SNES, released in 1993. The game featured revolutionary graphics for a 16-bit machine. Although the game was still 2D, the sprites were extremely detailed and well rendered. The graphics were the main selling point of the game but it was also very playable with good gameplay and followed the golden rules of platform games laid down by Super Mario Bros 3. A number of other platform hits were spin offs of Disney films and cartoons such as ‘The Lion King’, ‘Aladdin’, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc. The main reason for the success of these games was due to the characters being already popular and well known.
With the release of the Playstation and similar CD based consoles in the mid 90’s, platform games were evolving to make use of new hardware capabilities. ‘Crash Bandicoot’ on the Playstation was one of the first 3D platformers and a huge hit on its release as was the sequel. Instead of moving left and right across the screen you actually moved forward through the game with a view from behind the character. This idea later evolved into games such as ‘Tomb Raider’ and its sequels taking the 3D idea to another level being fully 3D with a camera that moved around to different angles depending on your position. Tomb Raider and the main character ‘Lara Croft, went on to achieve massive success and a huge amount of merchandising, even creating a movie based on the game. The platform game is still evolving to this day and the huge variety of styles of platformer makes the genre popular with a wide variety of people.
Sports/Simulation
This genre covers a huge range of games from city building simulators to football games. One of the first games in this genre to achieve success was ‘Atari Football’, a top down table style arcade machine where players moved players around using a rotating ball. Games were later released to simulate flight, pinball, boards games, card games, driving, tank warfare, basketball, tennis, golf, athletics, shooting and almost any other sport or activity you could think of. Simulation games have always been popular in arcades, in particular driving games, which are particularly popular with males who like having the opportunity to drive like maniacs.
Driving games are also popular on consoles and home computers, especially since 3D graphics chips came about allowing spectacular graphics and a real feeling of speed. Games like ‘Gran Turismo’ and ‘Sega Rally’ proved to be best sellers on the Dreamcast and Playstation while ‘Colin McRae Rally’ on the PC achieved similar success. As censorship laws became more relaxed, controversial games such as ‘Carmageddon’, ‘Destruction Derby’, ‘Driver’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto’ were released where rather than driving to win a race, the aim was to steal cars, kill pedestrians, or generally drive illegally. Grand Theft Auto was particularly successful due to its originality and it could technically be classed as a genre in its own right.
Sports simulators are more aimed at particular groups of people, i.e. people that are into that particular sport. Cricket games for example are unlikely to sell well in the US or Japan, but are popular here in the UK and Australia in the same way as American football games are not really successful outside of the US.
True simulators are normally limited to the power of the home PC. Games such as Microsoft’s ‘Flight Simulator’, ‘Golf’ and ‘Formula 1’, feature incredibly realistic and complex gameplay. which makes it very similar to doing the real thing. These types of games are aimed at and popular with the older generation of game player.
In recent years extreme sports games have become some of the most popular games on the market as the interest in extreme sports in general has increased and it being considered fashionable and hip. Snowboarding games such as ‘Cool Boarders’ and ‘Snow Surfers’ have achieved massive sales, as have skating and BMX simulators like ‘Tony Hawks Pro Skater’ and ‘Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX’.
Simulation games are immensely popular in today’s market with ‘Gran Turismo 3’ and ‘Tony Hawks 3’ currently topping the best sellers list on the Playstation 2.
The other type of simulator is the business or management simulator. Although they are usually classed as simulators, these type of games would also fit into the strategy genre. These type of games are normally made for the PC. This sub-genre began with Sid Meier’s classic ‘Sim City’ back in the early 90s. The aim of this game was to take an empty plot of land and turn it into a booming commercial city while making a profit and constantly improving facilities to keep the citizens happy. A whole series of similar games followed with varying degrees of success. Games involving managing railroads, theme parks, pizza restaurants, hospitals, farms, parks and many other aspects of business and diplomacy such as the stock market and politics soon began to be released. There is even a hit game called ‘The Sims’ that simulates everyday life and managing a household of people through relationships, getting a job, DIY etc. Games like this are popular because they can be played over and over again in different ways and using different tactics giving them lasting playability.
Puzzle
If there is one defining game in the puzzle genre then it has to be ‘Tetris’. Designed by Russian programmer Alex Pajitnov in 1985. The game is a true classic and its simple but extremely addictive style has been copied countless times since. It was the game that made the Gameboy such a phenomenon success as it was popular with people of all ages, in particular businessmen who bought the Gameboy simply so that they could play Tetris while commuting.
Another hit puzzle game was ‘Lemmings’. It was a completely original game involving guiding a group of suicide loving lemmings through levels safely and was successful on almost all consoles and computer systems. Like Tetris, Lemmings was very addictive and many sequels to the game have been made.
RPG / Adventure
Dating back to the very beginning of video games, this genre developed from the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ concept. As many early programmers were also keen D&D gamers they began to create text based adventures in a similar style to the game where players would be given a description of their environment and could type various commands or actions for their character to perform. The genre later evolved into two different types of game. RPG (Role Playing Games) stuck more with the D&D concepts such as gaining experience to gain higher levels and having various statistics that would determine how the character would perform in certain actions or battles. These type of games were for the hardcore RPG player who enjoyed spending hour upon hour with their character completing quests and building up their stats. ‘The Bards Tale’ was one of the first RPGs but it was not until the ‘Ultima’ series of games that the genre really took off. The game was played from a top down point of view through a vast and immersive world and true enthusiasts would spend hours playing the game.
The first massively successful RPG was ‘The Legend of Zelda’ on the NES bringing the genre to the consoles. The game was in a similar style to Ultima but was simplified for the mass markets with less of a focus on statistics and more of a focus on graphics and story and the game had later hit sequels such as ‘Zelda 64’ on the N64.
‘Final Fantasy 7’ and its later sequels on the Playstation were top sellers in the late 90’s, featuring much improved graphics than previous games and a turn based combat system with a much bigger focus on the story of the game. PC RPGs such as ‘Diablo’ and its sequel ‘Diablo 2’ were also massive sellers and were much more action based with a focus on the combat rather than the story.
The other type of game in the genre is the ‘adventure’ game. These type of games are similar in that they involve a detailed story but instead of having statistics and combat, the game is played by solving a serious of lateral thinking puzzles using objects collected during the way. They normally involve humorous conversations and situations and cartoon style graphics. Amongst the biggest hits were the ‘Monkey Island’ series telling the story of wannabe pirate ‘Guybrush Threepwood’. The ‘Discworld’ games based on the books by Terry Pratchett were also best sellers. These type of games are aimed more at the mass market of gamers rather than the D&D loving RPG gamers.
Perhaps the most successful adventure game series however was ‘Myst’. The game was very different to the Monkey Island style games. Instead of being cartoony and humorous it was dark and mysterious featuring stunning 3D graphics and mind- bendingly complex puzzles. The game was massive hit all over the world and a popular game to be sold with PCs as it demonstrated their graphical capability.
Shooting Games
Shooting games were THE first genre of computer games and most of the early arcade games were space-based shoot’em’ups. Many early console games were also shooters. The advent of the ‘Light Gun’ meant that arcade machines could me made where the gamer could progress through the game by shooting at enemies on the screen using a life like gun firing a beam of light at the screen that could detect hits. Versions of these were later released for the consoles and games like ‘Time Crisis’ and ‘House of the Dead’ are among the most popular.
The major breakthrough in the genre came with the game ‘Doom’ on the PC in the early 90’s. Although ‘Castle Wolfenstein’ was the original ‘first person shooter’ (FPS), Doom was the first to reach the mass market. Doom also pioneered the ‘Death Match’ where players could battle against each other over the internet and it soon became the most popular game being played on the internet. As graphics cards and processors got more powerful, so the FPS became more advanced. ‘Quake’ and ‘Half-life’ in 1996 took the 3D graphics to a new level while ‘Unreal Tournament’ expanded on the multiplayer aspects with new game modes such as ‘capture the flag’ and other team or clan based modes.
Some companies decided to combine the action of the FPS with an element of strategy to create games like the ‘Rainbow 6’ series. Although played in first person perspective these games were realistic combat simulators, which required tactical and strategical thinking and are popular amongst military enthusiasts.
Although the classic shoot ’em up has all but had its day, FPS continue to be massive and are still the most popular game to be played online, especially as connections have got faster.
Fighting
Fighting games or beat ’em ups as they are sometimes known were another genre that was born in the arcades. The first games were walk and fight games such as ‘Double Dragon’ and ‘Altered Beast’ where players would progress forwards through a scrolling level beating up enemies and picking up various weapons until they had to fight a boss at the end of the level. The games soon found their way onto the consoles and as well as arcade conversions, console manufactures began producing games of their own such as ‘Streets of Rage’ on the Megadrive. The fighting game really took off however with the release of Capcoms ‘Streetfighter 2’ in the early 90s. It was different to previous fighting games as it was played on just one screen with two characters facing each other and fighting it out over a set number of rounds. The game was a smash in the arcades and topped the best-seller list for a long time until a number of copycat games began to be released.
Fighting games, like FPS games, have often been the subject of controversy over video game violence. ‘Mortal Kombat’ was released shortly after SF2 and although it featured similar game play, the graphics, instead of being cartoon style, were photo realistic. The game also featured bloodthirsty ‘Fatality’ moves where the victorious player would actually kill the loser with a variety of gory moves involving a lot of blood.
These one on one fighting games remained popular on the consoles as they evolved through to the new generation machines as they were popular games for playing at parties or socially and a large group of people could play ‘winner stays on’ tournaments etc. Today’s fighting games are usually 3D as opposed to the 2D games like SF2. Games like the ‘Tekken’ series feature changing camera angles to make the combat more realistic.
Strategy
This is probably one of the most varied genres and my personal favourite. This genre is the thinking mans game. The first successful strategy game was Sid Meier’s ‘Civilisation’ in 1990 on the PC. It was a turn based strategy game where players took control of the first settlers of a new stone age civilisation and had to build an empire that would last until the space age. The player had to conduct diplomacy and trade with other empires as well as conducting war and defence. The player also had conduct research into new technology and construct city improvements and even wonders of the world. There were countless different ways of playing the game and each time was a new experience. Its later sequels were also great games and very successful and countless copycat games have been made using the same style of gameplay.
While Civilisation was turn based, the first ‘real time strategy’ (RTS) game was ‘Dune 2’, made by Westwood Studios. The game was based on the classic science fiction film ‘Dune’ and was to set the standard for a plethora of RTS games in the future. The game involved harvesting spice in order to earn money. This money could then be spent on buildings such as base defences, refineries, power stations, barracks, tank factories etc. When the appropriate buildings were constructed, players could begin building units to form an army with which they could attack their opponents. RTS games involved more action and quick thinking than turn based games like Civilisation as whatever the player was doing, their enemy would be constantly building and attacking. Though Dune 2 was a success, it was ‘Command and Conquer’ that really got people into RTS. Also made by Westwood Studios, C&C brought the genre to the Internet allowing players to compete against other human players rather than the computer controlled opponents in single player mode. A number of successors to C&C were also big hits such as ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Tiberian Sun’. While these games focused on space age units and weaponry, RTS games like ‘Warcraft’ and Age of Empires’ focused on medieval warfare. There are many other variations on the RTS game such as ‘Commandos’ where the player takes control of just a small squad of men instead of an entire army. There are a vast amount of strategy games on the PC market today and they are beginning to make their way to the consoles.
Advertising, Marketing and Promotion…
In the early days of computer games, advertising was much less important than it is in today’ market. The first games achieved success through their novelty and the fact that they were the only thing on the market. They became popular through hype and word of mouth. As more and more games came onto the market sales were no longer assured. Manufacturers and developers now had to compete with rival companies to make the most successful games and to market them to the people. The main aim of advertising is to raise awareness of the product. Computer games manufacturers have used many methods to achieve this aim throughout the years. The four biggest players in the video games advertising world were the four companies that have made the most money from the industry, Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. In the computer industry there are many more big players but the biggest three are Microsoft, IBM and Apple although their advertising focus was on the business opportunities of computers as opposed to the games.
Atari dominated the gaming industry from 1971 until about 1982. They had both the most successful arcade machines and the biggest selling console as well as the most popular and biggest selling games. Atari’s main target market was males aged between 14 and 28 but they also developed advertising to incorporate other groups into their market. They advertised through the mass media (TV, radio, newspapers) as well as through posters and billboards. There were also magazines devoted to Atari games where potential gamers could read reviews of Atari games and find out when new releases would be on the market. Atari also created brand awareness through sponsorship of sports and music events giving the brand a ‘cool’ image and helping to promote this to its target audience. They also created publicity , which, positive or negative, still raised awareness of the company. An example of this is the legal action they took against Magnetron over the copyrights to the game ‘Pong’. Despite losing this lawsuit, Atari sales went up as a result of the publicity. Atari were also involved in a number of other legal actions over copyright infringements.
By 1985 Nintendo had successfully pushed Atari off the top spot and into a steady decline that result in them ultimately going bankrupt. The success of Donkey Kong had made Nintendo a household name and when they released the NES they used their familiar Mario character to great promotional success. Nintendo’s target market was wider that Atari’s with much of their merchandising aimed at younger children, both male and female, as young as 6 or 7. The cartoon and later the film starring Mario further increased the characters popularity and it became the ‘in thing’ for kids to have the latest Mario merchandise, be it school bags, lunch boxes, watches or wallpaper. Like Atari, Nintendo used mass media advertising, sponsorship, specialist magazines and publicity, all with a definite focus on their mascot ‘Mario’. Nintendo had what was close to a monopoly situation through the late 80’s and early 90’s until they began to face competition from Sega.
Sega brought computer game advertising into the 90s. Their advertising was slick, cool, fast paced and clever. Before long the company was considered much cooler than Nintendo, as was Sega’s own mascot, ‘Sonic’. While Mario was still popular with the very young kids, Sonic was more popular with teenagers and young adults. Sega used the same marketing methods as Nintendo competing with them in every area. The two companies fought head to head in a similar way to ‘McDonalds and ‘Burger King’ or ‘Pepsi and ‘Coca-cola’. Sega’s commercials contained feature by feature comparisons between the Megadrive and the SNES with personal ‘below the belt’ attacks. Nintendo attempted to fight back with similar advertisements but it seemed Sega were always one step ahead. While Sega designed more sophisticated games aimed at older gamers, they ended up stealing much of the market for younger gamers as well who wanted to play the same games as their older brothers etc. Playing video games was no longer referred to as playing Nintendo. Now people were playing Sega.
When Sony entered the market with their Playstation in 1995 they took a revolutionary approach to advertising. After initial commercials and advertising conducted in a similar way to the Sega adverts of the early 90s to establish the brand and the machine, they opted for a much more surreal approach to advertising. Their commercials portrayed the Playstation as a kind of cult using the different shaped symbols on the control pad buttons in various surreal and comical situations. Sony were soon outselling Sega and Nintendo. With the launch of the Playstation 2 in 2001, they changed their advertising and came up with a new slogan, ‘The third place’. Their commercials now became even more surreal, advertising the gaming experience as a kind of new surreal dimension where anything can happen. When Microsoft launched the X-Box, they copied this style of advertising. These new generation consoles are no longer aimed at the youth market but at adults as well.
Games developers themselves also advertise their games. Although some big titles are advertised on television, most advertising for specific games takes place in magazines and on the internet. Favourable reviews are essential to a successful game and therefore the games have to be good for people to buy them.
As well advertising the games, consoles and computers themselves, many games now feature advertising for other products within the game itself. Sports games for example feature banners and logos around the track or field as there is at real sporting events. Other games also feature branded products or advertisements in the background or even as vital elements of gameplay. Whether this is good or bad for the gaming industry is debatable. It may bring in more money for games developers but will this money be spent on improving the game? On the other hand, do players want to be bombarded with corporate logos and brand names while they are gaming?
Conclusion…
So what does make a financially successful game? The games we have looked at throughout this essay have achieved success in many different ways. I think it is a combination of factors that make a really successful game, but what that combination is depends on the games target audience and the context in which they are to be played. Arcade games for example need to simple to play but complex to master. Games developers learnt lessons from games like ‘Computer Space’ being too complex to play, especially after alcohol. Games that were too easy to master however, meant people would spend too much time playing the game without having to put more money in. They also need to be competitive, either by allowing two or players to play simultaneously against each other or by having the option of recording high scores. The level of challenge is an important factor in all games, as if there was no challenge there would be no point in playing the game. Graphics and addictive gameplay are also important aspects of arcade games. Graphics to attract people to the machines and addictiveness to keep people coming back.
Originality can often bring success to a game as people are always looking to play something new that they haven’t seen before. The pioneering games in a genre, i.e. those that invent the genre or take it to a new level are often the most successful. Doom for example was massive because it was the first experience people had of an FPS game. Quake was also successful because it took FPS to a new level graphically and with its realistic gameplay. On the other hand, instead of being original, developers can copy the idea of another successful game so that they know they have a winning format. This often leads to copyright infringements and legal action such as in the case of Atari and Magnavox. Developers therefore have to be careful to make the game substantially different as to avoid breaking the law.
Once a company has produced a successful game, it can prolong its success is through sequels. Most people who enjoyed the original game would buy the sequel hoping for something similar or better. Good examples of a successful series of sequels are the Tombraider, Mario and Final Fantasy series’. Their success was due to constant improvement of graphics, gameplay, sound and other features between games. Instead of developing a full-blown sequel, another way of prolonging the life of a game is through expansion packs. These add new levels, characters or missions to an existing game and can also increase the sales of the game itself as it is thrust back into the limelight. Sid Meier’s ‘The Sims’, for example, has had a number of successful expansion packs released to expand the scope of the game, each supported by advertising campaigns.
Another route to success that has been followed by games developers is to base a game on an existing product or character. If a game is based on a currently popular film or TV show, it is almost guaranteed success, even if the game is not that great. A recent example of a top selling game based on existing brand is ‘Harry Potter’. The film was a multi million dollar blockbuster and the game was released while the hype for the film was still strong, sending it straight to the top of the charts. The Pokemon phenomenon was another example of games developers taking advantage of a craze that was obsessing children all over the world. A number of Pokemon games were released and children, wanting to collect every possible Pokemon related item, bought the games in their millions.
Publicity, both good and bad, is another factor that can have a big effect on the sales of a game and unlike traditional advertising it doesn’t cost any money. Games that have caused sufficient controversy to make them newsworthy can reach a worldwide audience without having to spend a penny by featuring taboo subjects such as sex or extreme violence. This sparks people’s natural curiosity and desire to see for themselves exactly why the game is so controversial and so they buy the game. A recent example is the game ‘Hooligan: Storm over Europe’, the aim of which is to control a group of football hooligans and cause general mayhem in various European cities. Coming soon after a number of real life incidents of hooliganism featured in the news, the developers knew the game was bound to attract media attention and therefore encourage people to buy the game. The right advertising methods and marketing are also a key part of selling a game. Companies that have got the mix right have gone on to reap the rewards such as Nintendo with Mario, Sega with Sonic and Sony with Lara Croft. The characters were cleverly marketed through merchandising, TV shows and even films to ingrain them into part of popular culture.
At the end of the day, however, in order for a game to be truly financially successful, it just has to be a really great game. A game that people really want to play and really enjoy. A game that receives good reviews and write-ups and that people recommend to their friends. Graphics and sound are important but not essential as some of the highest grossing games such as ‘Pac Man’, ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Pong’ featured relatively basic graphics and sound. I think that above all else, good, compelling gameplay is the defining factor in a games success but all the other factors that have been mentioned throughout this essay are also important and I think this will remain true in the future.
Playing computer games has become a part of modern culture and is becoming more and more so all the time. Gaming has become a social event with people playing together more than on their own. As well as playing together on the internet and in arcades, people play games at parties and in night clubs. Children today are spending much more time playing video games than they are reading books. Some people say this is a bad thing while others say that games are educational and stimulating. Adults are also playing games much more than in the past, especially as the new generation have grown up with computer games from an early age and continue to play in adulthood. One thing is for sure however and that is that computer games are here to stay and will continue to evolve, develop and be successful for many years to come.
Thanks for reading
Brew
It's so long to the extent that I don't want to read it but let me still say it's good because I feel bad if it isn't good and you spent so long writting all that. Wait here it comes....
Good post!:)
Good post!:)
The computer games industry is one of the fastest growing and evolving industries on the planet and there is a vast amount of money to be made by designing and developing successful games. Successful that is, in that there are a large number of copies sold and a large financial gain to the companies that manufacture, design and produce them.
I will be looking at why some games are so successful and what a game needs to be a success. I will also be looking at the history of the gaming industry, the most successful games from the past and present, different consumer markets for computer games, advertising and promotion, different genres of game and aspects of gameplay, graphics, sound, addictiveness etc and how these can effect a game’s success.
In the beginning….
It is difficult to define exactly when the computers games industry really started. The very first computer game was ‘Space War’, created in 1961 by a team of programmers in America. The game was designed on a machine called the PDP-1 and was stored on a roll of white tape, which was fed into the machine to play the game. The game involved two players duelling in spaceships and attempting to destroy the other persons ship. The game was surprisingly advanced considering it was the first ever game, however it did require a machine the size of a refrigerator to play that cost $120,000 US dollars and was extremely complicated to operate. Never the less, the game can still be considered successful as it helped the company making the PDP-1 to sell machines by demonstrating what it could do. The game has now acquired a cult status and because it was never copyrighted, it has spawned thousands of clones and emulators that are still played today on modern PC’s.
In 1971 Space War was re-created by a company called ‘Atari’ in a game called ‘Computer Space’ that would become the first coin operated arcade machine. The machine failed to be successful however as it was too complicated for drunk people in bars to play due to the complex control system. Therefore Atari decided that in order for an arcade game to be successful it had to be very simple to use.
The next stage in the evolution of computer games was in 1972, with the invention of the first affordable home games machine called the ‘Odyssey’, made by a company called Magnavox. The basis for the machine was a game called ‘Pong’, an on-screen version of table tennis (ping-pong), that had previously been released as an arcade machine to great success by Atari. It was a played by two players, each with a controller consisting of two knobs. One controlled the up and down movement of the paddle while the other controlled the amount of spin on the ball. Pong was the first truly successful computer game and it made millions of dollars for Atari and Magnavox. Its huge success was due to its simplicity and being something new and exciting as no-one had ever played electronic games before. It could be enjoyed by people of all ages, genders and walks of life and was extremely playable and addictive. The instructions on the machine were legendarily simple, ‘Avoid missing ball for high score’. Pong is a true classic successful game that has been re-developed into countless new guises through the years, all proving to be successful.
In 1977 Atari released the first cartridge based game system called the ‘Atari 2600’ selling for $250. Although successful when released its true success came when it introduced the first home version of the game ‘Space Invaders’ in 1980. This is one of the most successful games there has ever been and the first game to introduce the high score system. This gave the player an aim, being to beat the high scores of other players. The game was made by a Japanese company called ‘Taito’. It was the first game to released worldwide and when released into the arcades in 1978 the game was a phenomenon. It caused coin shortages in Japan and school truancy in America and has pulled in over $500 million over the years.
A year after the release of Space Invaders another classic was released proving to be even more successful. ‘Asteroids’ as it was called was one of the first games to use vector-based graphics as opposed to pixels. It involved controlling a space ship that has to shoot asteroids and break them down into smaller and smaller pieces until they are destroyed. Asteroids was a perfect synergy between simplicity and intense gameplay. It also refined the high score system to allow players to place their initials by their scores for all to see, an idea that has been adopted by all arcade games ever since.
The next huge success was ‘Pac Man’ released by the Japanese company ‘Namco’ in 1980. Pac Man was the single most financially successful arcade game ever made and the first game to be as popular with females as it was with males. This was down to the fact that it was the first game to introduce a named character that was cute and appealing to women and young children. Pac Man was also the first game to be accompanied by an advertising and merchandising campaign and the first game to become an integral part of popular culture. There was a cartoon produced called the ‘Pac Man show’ along with t-shirts, cuddly toys, mugs, cereals, bed covers, books, posters, board games and countless other merchandising. The character also graced the covers of magazines and featured in many articles and features in the press and on television.
The final key game to the early era of computer games was ‘Donkey Kong’, later evolving into the name ‘Mario Bros’ made by the Japanese company ‘Nintendo’. The game was based on the film ‘King Kong’. Learning from the success of Pac Man, the game featured a named character called Mario and later his brother ‘Luigi’, leading to another vast wave of merchandising with every imaginable tie-in product. Donkey Kong became the biggest selling arcade machine of 1981 spawning countless spin-off games. The character Mario went on to be the dominating face of video games for the next 10 years. The game also pioneered the first real genre of games other than space based shoot ’em ups as it was the first platform game, i.e. manoeuvring a character viewed from the side around various platforms by jumping and avoiding or killing enemies.
Other important games in the early years were Berserk (1980), the first game to kill someone. An 18 year old man suffered a heart attack while playing the game in an amusement arcade. Death Race (1976) was the first game to cause controversy over violent content. It was a driving game involving running down stick men for points and was banned following protests and pressure on political parties. Both of these games however, achieved success through this publicity despite it being negative. Dragons Lair (1983) was the first game to use film samples in a game making for amazing graphics and it was successful because of this novelty, even if the gameplay was not all that great.
Consoles and Computers…..
This section will set the scene for the following sections giving a brief story of the evolution of computers and games consoles from the early 1980s up to the present day. The following sections will then look in more detail at the different genres of games, how they came about and the most successful games in these genres and why.
The Consoles
Following a slump in the industry from 1983-1984 when many companies went out of business due to declining sales, 1986 saw the release of the of the Nintendo Entertainment System ‘NES’ and the Sega Master System ‘SMS’. This was the beginning of a war that would last well into the next decade. In the year of release however Nintendo dominated the market. The NES console was sold with the Super Mario Bros game (a more advanced version of the arcade Mario Bros) which, backed up by intensive advertising, ensured huge sales of the console. Nintendo continued to dominate over the next few years with the release of the ‘Gameboy’ handheld console sold with the hugely addictive and popular puzzle game ‘Tetris’ in 1989. In the same year Sega released the first 16-bit console, the ‘Megadrive/Genesis’, with the arcade conversion of the arcade it ‘Altered Beast’, marketing the system as a ‘true arcade experience’. Another 16-bit console called the TurboGrafx 16 that featured the first games to be stored on CD. Despite both these machines being successful, Nintendo continued to outsell the competition.
1990 proved to be the most successful year ever for Nintendo with the release of ‘Super Mario Bros 3’. This went on to be the biggest selling cartridge game ever. Another console was also released in this year. The ‘Neo-Geo’ was the first 24-bit machine and featured sound and graphics far superior to any of the other machines. It proved to be a financial flop however due to the huge selling price, which was much more expensive than the other consoles.
The war heated up in 1991 with Sega releasing the game ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’, featuring a cute but cool hedgehog character called Sonic. Supported by a horde of merchandising they hoped to knock Mario off the top spot. Nintendo launched their 16 bit ‘Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) with yet another new Mario game ‘Super Mario World’ and the Mario/Sonic battle began. By 1992, with the release of ‘Sonic 2’ sales were almost equal and Sonic was proving a real threat to the future success of Mario.
In 1993 Atari re-entered the market with the first 64 bit machine, the ‘Jaguar’ manufactured by IBM. The game ‘Mortal Combat’ sparked new controversy over the violence in games and the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) was created to rate the level of violence in games. Sega were now outselling Nintendo but they fought back releasing the highly advanced ‘Donkey Kong Country’, which went on to be the best selling game of the year.
The new generation of consoles were launched in 1995. Sega was first with the 32 bit ‘Saturn’. Sony entered the market with its ‘Playstation’ also 32 bit and Nintendo released the 64-bit ‘N64’.
Sony reduced the price of the Playstation in 1996 forcing Sega to follow suit with the Saturn. Nintendo sold its billionth cartridge while Atari went out of business following the disappointing sales of the Jaguar. By the end of the year Sony were on top making in excess of $12 million per day over the Christmas period. During the next year sales of the Playstation continued to skyrocket closely followed by the N64 while Saturn sales plummeted.
In 1998 Sega launched the 64-bit internet compatible ‘Dreamcast’ in an attempt to regain control of the market and achieved reasonable success pushing them back up with the Playstation and N64 in terms of sales. Nintendo extended the life of the Gameboy with the release of a colour version. Prices of both the consoles and the games continue to fall through 1999 and 2000 with the top three consoles all retailing at around $100 with the games as low as $10. Then at the end of 2000 Sony released the first of yet another new generation consoles. The ‘Playstation 2’ is a 128 bit machine that can play DVDs and is also compatible with existing Playstation games. The demand for the new console is so high that all machines are already sold on advanced order before they reach the shops. As the machines begin to run out, online auctions are selling the console at prices over $1000. As Dreamcast sales hit a slump, Sega announced that it would cease production of the machine in March 2001.
The final stages in console history came in 2002 as computer games become increasingly popular and more a part of modern culture. The first films based entirely on computer games, ‘Tomb Raider’ and ‘Final Fantasy’ are released with work underway on many other films based on games. Microsoft finally releases the long awaited ‘X-Box’, as a competitor for the Playstation 2, featuring a windows powered engine capable of PC quality gaming. To complete the story Nintendo launched the ‘Gameboy Advanced’, a successor to the Gameboy Colour, and the ‘Gamecube’ as their answer to the PS2 and X-Box. The Gamecube uses advanced forms of DVD disc, which are smaller and can hold more information. Nintendo hoped this would become the standard in the future.
Computers
At the same time as the consoles, home computers were also developing into a gameplaying force to be reckoned with. The ‘Commodore 64’ and ‘Sinclair ZX Spectrum’ were the first affordable home computers and the games were cheap to buy and easy to program and stored on cassette. Hundreds of games were made and released with a few notable successes such as the platform game ‘Manic Minor’, featuring Monty Python style humour and the highly addictive ‘Jet Pac’ shoot-em-up.
In 1981 two new future giants entered the market. IBM launched the first ‘PC’ powered by an operating system called ‘MSDOS’ created by Microsoft. In 1984 the Apple Macintosh was released as a rival to the PC starting another battle in the computer industry similar to the Sega/Nintendo war in the console industry. The Mac featured the first graphical user interface (icons and buttons etc) which people found much easier to use than MSDOS. Microsoft fought back a year later in 1985 with the release of the first version of Windows.
Despite these giants entering the market, these early Macs and PC's were designed almost entirely for work and business and very few games were available for them. Commodore took advantage of this by introducing the ‘Amiga 500’ (right) in 1987. This affordable home computer was much cheaper than the Macs and PC’s on the market and much more suited to gaming. Before long however PCs began to fight back. As they became more advanced and parents began to see the educational benefit of new features such as CD ROMs and multi-media, the PC began to become more and more popular. Games developers began to utilise the PCs hardware to produce games that were stored on CD ROM that could be much more advanced than the floppy-disk games on the Amiga.
The birth of the Internet and its rise to popularity through the early 1990s ensured that the boom in PCs continued and games developers now had the ability to make games that could be played over the internet. Combined with other advantages over consoles such as large hard drives and powerful graphics chips, the PC began to compete with the consoles in the gaming market and have continued to do so to the present day. The only rival to the PC in today’s computer market is the latest generation of Apple Macintosh computers such as the ‘I-Mac’ and ‘Power Mac’. Macs however are made mostly for design and graphics work along with sound and video editing although they are compatible with many PC games. Both PCs and Macs are continuing to evolve at a rapid rate with faster processors, more powerful graphics chips and new hardware allowing for more highly advanced games to be created.
The Games…
Having looked at the story of the machines available to play games, it is now time to look at the games themselves. The first games were designed for the mass market, i.e. they were aimed at as many different types of people as possible. As the popularity of games increased, developers attempted to focus on certain specific markets for games. Thus the birth of the different genres of game.
Platform Games
Platform games were one of the first genres of game and have evolved from the side scrolling ‘left, right, jump’ games of the past into the complex three-dimensional worlds of today. Although most platform games are console based, they were also popular on computers, especially the early ones such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Mario, the star of the first platform game Mario Bros, has been the subject of the most financially successful platform games. Super Mario Bros 3, released on the NES in 1990 was the defining game in the genre setting the standard for platform games in the future. It featured a large and varied world with something new on almost every level. The graphics were cute and cartoony and the music was catchy. The gameplay was great because there were plenty of new abilities to perform as the game progressed and lots of secrets and mini games to be found to keep the player entertained. The game also featured a code system so that players could continue from the level they had previously reached, instead of having to restart the game from scratch. The game sat at the top of the best-seller lists for months and sold over 17 million copies. The game was followed by Super Mario World proving to be hit on the SNES and Gameboy. Mario has stood the test of time with hit games on all of the Nintendo consoles. Mario’s rival in the platform genre was Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog who also featured in a string of successive hits on the SMS, Megadrive, Gamegear, Saturn and Dreamcast. Another hugely successful Nintendo platformer was ‘Donkey Kong Country’ on the SNES, released in 1993. The game featured revolutionary graphics for a 16-bit machine. Although the game was still 2D, the sprites were extremely detailed and well rendered. The graphics were the main selling point of the game but it was also very playable with good gameplay and followed the golden rules of platform games laid down by Super Mario Bros 3. A number of other platform hits were spin offs of Disney films and cartoons such as ‘The Lion King’, ‘Aladdin’, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc. The main reason for the success of these games was due to the characters being already popular and well known.
With the release of the Playstation and similar CD based consoles in the mid 90’s, platform games were evolving to make use of new hardware capabilities. ‘Crash Bandicoot’ on the Playstation was one of the first 3D platformers and a huge hit on its release as was the sequel. Instead of moving left and right across the screen you actually moved forward through the game with a view from behind the character. This idea later evolved into games such as ‘Tomb Raider’ and its sequels taking the 3D idea to another level being fully 3D with a camera that moved around to different angles depending on your position. Tomb Raider and the main character ‘Lara Croft, went on to achieve massive success and a huge amount of merchandising, even creating a movie based on the game. The platform game is still evolving to this day and the huge variety of styles of platformer makes the genre popular with a wide variety of people.
Sports/Simulation
This genre covers a huge range of games from city building simulators to football games. One of the first games in this genre to achieve success was ‘Atari Football’, a top down table style arcade machine where players moved players around using a rotating ball. Games were later released to simulate flight, pinball, boards games, card games, driving, tank warfare, basketball, tennis, golf, athletics, shooting and almost any other sport or activity you could think of. Simulation games have always been popular in arcades, in particular driving games, which are particularly popular with males who like having the opportunity to drive like maniacs.
Driving games are also popular on consoles and home computers, especially since 3D graphics chips came about allowing spectacular graphics and a real feeling of speed. Games like ‘Gran Turismo’ and ‘Sega Rally’ proved to be best sellers on the Dreamcast and Playstation while ‘Colin McRae Rally’ on the PC achieved similar success. As censorship laws became more relaxed, controversial games such as ‘Carmageddon’, ‘Destruction Derby’, ‘Driver’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto’ were released where rather than driving to win a race, the aim was to steal cars, kill pedestrians, or generally drive illegally. Grand Theft Auto was particularly successful due to its originality and it could technically be classed as a genre in its own right.
Sports simulators are more aimed at particular groups of people, i.e. people that are into that particular sport. Cricket games for example are unlikely to sell well in the US or Japan, but are popular here in the UK and Australia in the same way as American football games are not really successful outside of the US.
True simulators are normally limited to the power of the home PC. Games such as Microsoft’s ‘Flight Simulator’, ‘Golf’ and ‘Formula 1’, feature incredibly realistic and complex gameplay. which makes it very similar to doing the real thing. These types of games are aimed at and popular with the older generation of game player.
In recent years extreme sports games have become some of the most popular games on the market as the interest in extreme sports in general has increased and it being considered fashionable and hip. Snowboarding games such as ‘Cool Boarders’ and ‘Snow Surfers’ have achieved massive sales, as have skating and BMX simulators like ‘Tony Hawks Pro Skater’ and ‘Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX’.
Simulation games are immensely popular in today’s market with ‘Gran Turismo 3’ and ‘Tony Hawks 3’ currently topping the best sellers list on the Playstation 2.
The other type of simulator is the business or management simulator. Although they are usually classed as simulators, these type of games would also fit into the strategy genre. These type of games are normally made for the PC. This sub-genre began with Sid Meier’s classic ‘Sim City’ back in the early 90s. The aim of this game was to take an empty plot of land and turn it into a booming commercial city while making a profit and constantly improving facilities to keep the citizens happy. A whole series of similar games followed with varying degrees of success. Games involving managing railroads, theme parks, pizza restaurants, hospitals, farms, parks and many other aspects of business and diplomacy such as the stock market and politics soon began to be released. There is even a hit game called ‘The Sims’ that simulates everyday life and managing a household of people through relationships, getting a job, DIY etc. Games like this are popular because they can be played over and over again in different ways and using different tactics giving them lasting playability.
Puzzle
If there is one defining game in the puzzle genre then it has to be ‘Tetris’. Designed by Russian programmer Alex Pajitnov in 1985. The game is a true classic and its simple but extremely addictive style has been copied countless times since. It was the game that made the Gameboy such a phenomenon success as it was popular with people of all ages, in particular businessmen who bought the Gameboy simply so that they could play Tetris while commuting.
Another hit puzzle game was ‘Lemmings’. It was a completely original game involving guiding a group of suicide loving lemmings through levels safely and was successful on almost all consoles and computer systems. Like Tetris, Lemmings was very addictive and many sequels to the game have been made.
RPG / Adventure
Dating back to the very beginning of video games, this genre developed from the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ concept. As many early programmers were also keen D&D gamers they began to create text based adventures in a similar style to the game where players would be given a description of their environment and could type various commands or actions for their character to perform. The genre later evolved into two different types of game. RPG (Role Playing Games) stuck more with the D&D concepts such as gaining experience to gain higher levels and having various statistics that would determine how the character would perform in certain actions or battles. These type of games were for the hardcore RPG player who enjoyed spending hour upon hour with their character completing quests and building up their stats. ‘The Bards Tale’ was one of the first RPGs but it was not until the ‘Ultima’ series of games that the genre really took off. The game was played from a top down point of view through a vast and immersive world and true enthusiasts would spend hours playing the game.
The first massively successful RPG was ‘The Legend of Zelda’ on the NES bringing the genre to the consoles. The game was in a similar style to Ultima but was simplified for the mass markets with less of a focus on statistics and more of a focus on graphics and story and the game had later hit sequels such as ‘Zelda 64’ on the N64.
‘Final Fantasy 7’ and its later sequels on the Playstation were top sellers in the late 90’s, featuring much improved graphics than previous games and a turn based combat system with a much bigger focus on the story of the game. PC RPGs such as ‘Diablo’ and its sequel ‘Diablo 2’ were also massive sellers and were much more action based with a focus on the combat rather than the story.
The other type of game in the genre is the ‘adventure’ game. These type of games are similar in that they involve a detailed story but instead of having statistics and combat, the game is played by solving a serious of lateral thinking puzzles using objects collected during the way. They normally involve humorous conversations and situations and cartoon style graphics. Amongst the biggest hits were the ‘Monkey Island’ series telling the story of wannabe pirate ‘Guybrush Threepwood’. The ‘Discworld’ games based on the books by Terry Pratchett were also best sellers. These type of games are aimed more at the mass market of gamers rather than the D&D loving RPG gamers.
Perhaps the most successful adventure game series however was ‘Myst’. The game was very different to the Monkey Island style games. Instead of being cartoony and humorous it was dark and mysterious featuring stunning 3D graphics and mind- bendingly complex puzzles. The game was massive hit all over the world and a popular game to be sold with PCs as it demonstrated their graphical capability.
Shooting Games
Shooting games were THE first genre of computer games and most of the early arcade games were space-based shoot’em’ups. Many early console games were also shooters. The advent of the ‘Light Gun’ meant that arcade machines could me made where the gamer could progress through the game by shooting at enemies on the screen using a life like gun firing a beam of light at the screen that could detect hits. Versions of these were later released for the consoles and games like ‘Time Crisis’ and ‘House of the Dead’ are among the most popular.
The major breakthrough in the genre came with the game ‘Doom’ on the PC in the early 90’s. Although ‘Castle Wolfenstein’ was the original ‘first person shooter’ (FPS), Doom was the first to reach the mass market. Doom also pioneered the ‘Death Match’ where players could battle against each other over the internet and it soon became the most popular game being played on the internet. As graphics cards and processors got more powerful, so the FPS became more advanced. ‘Quake’ and ‘Half-life’ in 1996 took the 3D graphics to a new level while ‘Unreal Tournament’ expanded on the multiplayer aspects with new game modes such as ‘capture the flag’ and other team or clan based modes.
Some companies decided to combine the action of the FPS with an element of strategy to create games like the ‘Rainbow 6’ series. Although played in first person perspective these games were realistic combat simulators, which required tactical and strategical thinking and are popular amongst military enthusiasts.
Although the classic shoot ’em up has all but had its day, FPS continue to be massive and are still the most popular game to be played online, especially as connections have got faster.
Fighting
Fighting games or beat ’em ups as they are sometimes known were another genre that was born in the arcades. The first games were walk and fight games such as ‘Double Dragon’ and ‘Altered Beast’ where players would progress forwards through a scrolling level beating up enemies and picking up various weapons until they had to fight a boss at the end of the level. The games soon found their way onto the consoles and as well as arcade conversions, console manufactures began producing games of their own such as ‘Streets of Rage’ on the Megadrive. The fighting game really took off however with the release of Capcoms ‘Streetfighter 2’ in the early 90s. It was different to previous fighting games as it was played on just one screen with two characters facing each other and fighting it out over a set number of rounds. The game was a smash in the arcades and topped the best-seller list for a long time until a number of copycat games began to be released.
Fighting games, like FPS games, have often been the subject of controversy over video game violence. ‘Mortal Kombat’ was released shortly after SF2 and although it featured similar game play, the graphics, instead of being cartoon style, were photo realistic. The game also featured bloodthirsty ‘Fatality’ moves where the victorious player would actually kill the loser with a variety of gory moves involving a lot of blood.
These one on one fighting games remained popular on the consoles as they evolved through to the new generation machines as they were popular games for playing at parties or socially and a large group of people could play ‘winner stays on’ tournaments etc. Today’s fighting games are usually 3D as opposed to the 2D games like SF2. Games like the ‘Tekken’ series feature changing camera angles to make the combat more realistic.
Strategy
This is probably one of the most varied genres and my personal favourite. This genre is the thinking mans game. The first successful strategy game was Sid Meier’s ‘Civilisation’ in 1990 on the PC. It was a turn based strategy game where players took control of the first settlers of a new stone age civilisation and had to build an empire that would last until the space age. The player had to conduct diplomacy and trade with other empires as well as conducting war and defence. The player also had conduct research into new technology and construct city improvements and even wonders of the world. There were countless different ways of playing the game and each time was a new experience. Its later sequels were also great games and very successful and countless copycat games have been made using the same style of gameplay.
While Civilisation was turn based, the first ‘real time strategy’ (RTS) game was ‘Dune 2’, made by Westwood Studios. The game was based on the classic science fiction film ‘Dune’ and was to set the standard for a plethora of RTS games in the future. The game involved harvesting spice in order to earn money. This money could then be spent on buildings such as base defences, refineries, power stations, barracks, tank factories etc. When the appropriate buildings were constructed, players could begin building units to form an army with which they could attack their opponents. RTS games involved more action and quick thinking than turn based games like Civilisation as whatever the player was doing, their enemy would be constantly building and attacking. Though Dune 2 was a success, it was ‘Command and Conquer’ that really got people into RTS. Also made by Westwood Studios, C&C brought the genre to the Internet allowing players to compete against other human players rather than the computer controlled opponents in single player mode. A number of successors to C&C were also big hits such as ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Tiberian Sun’. While these games focused on space age units and weaponry, RTS games like ‘Warcraft’ and Age of Empires’ focused on medieval warfare. There are many other variations on the RTS game such as ‘Commandos’ where the player takes control of just a small squad of men instead of an entire army. There are a vast amount of strategy games on the PC market today and they are beginning to make their way to the consoles.
Advertising, Marketing and Promotion…
In the early days of computer games, advertising was much less important than it is in today’ market. The first games achieved success through their novelty and the fact that they were the only thing on the market. They became popular through hype and word of mouth. As more and more games came onto the market sales were no longer assured. Manufacturers and developers now had to compete with rival companies to make the most successful games and to market them to the people. The main aim of advertising is to raise awareness of the product. Computer games manufacturers have used many methods to achieve this aim throughout the years. The four biggest players in the video games advertising world were the four companies that have made the most money from the industry, Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. In the computer industry there are many more big players but the biggest three are Microsoft, IBM and Apple although their advertising focus was on the business opportunities of computers as opposed to the games.
Atari dominated the gaming industry from 1971 until about 1982. They had both the most successful arcade machines and the biggest selling console as well as the most popular and biggest selling games. Atari’s main target market was males aged between 14 and 28 but they also developed advertising to incorporate other groups into their market. They advertised through the mass media (TV, radio, newspapers) as well as through posters and billboards. There were also magazines devoted to Atari games where potential gamers could read reviews of Atari games and find out when new releases would be on the market. Atari also created brand awareness through sponsorship of sports and music events giving the brand a ‘cool’ image and helping to promote this to its target audience. They also created publicity , which, positive or negative, still raised awareness of the company. An example of this is the legal action they took against Magnetron over the copyrights to the game ‘Pong’. Despite losing this lawsuit, Atari sales went up as a result of the publicity. Atari were also involved in a number of other legal actions over copyright infringements.
By 1985 Nintendo had successfully pushed Atari off the top spot and into a steady decline that result in them ultimately going bankrupt. The success of Donkey Kong had made Nintendo a household name and when they released the NES they used their familiar Mario character to great promotional success. Nintendo’s target market was wider that Atari’s with much of their merchandising aimed at younger children, both male and female, as young as 6 or 7. The cartoon and later the film starring Mario further increased the characters popularity and it became the ‘in thing’ for kids to have the latest Mario merchandise, be it school bags, lunch boxes, watches or wallpaper. Like Atari, Nintendo used mass media advertising, sponsorship, specialist magazines and publicity, all with a definite focus on their mascot ‘Mario’. Nintendo had what was close to a monopoly situation through the late 80’s and early 90’s until they began to face competition from Sega.
Sega brought computer game advertising into the 90s. Their advertising was slick, cool, fast paced and clever. Before long the company was considered much cooler than Nintendo, as was Sega’s own mascot, ‘Sonic’. While Mario was still popular with the very young kids, Sonic was more popular with teenagers and young adults. Sega used the same marketing methods as Nintendo competing with them in every area. The two companies fought head to head in a similar way to ‘McDonalds and ‘Burger King’ or ‘Pepsi and ‘Coca-cola’. Sega’s commercials contained feature by feature comparisons between the Megadrive and the SNES with personal ‘below the belt’ attacks. Nintendo attempted to fight back with similar advertisements but it seemed Sega were always one step ahead. While Sega designed more sophisticated games aimed at older gamers, they ended up stealing much of the market for younger gamers as well who wanted to play the same games as their older brothers etc. Playing video games was no longer referred to as playing Nintendo. Now people were playing Sega.
When Sony entered the market with their Playstation in 1995 they took a revolutionary approach to advertising. After initial commercials and advertising conducted in a similar way to the Sega adverts of the early 90s to establish the brand and the machine, they opted for a much more surreal approach to advertising. Their commercials portrayed the Playstation as a kind of cult using the different shaped symbols on the control pad buttons in various surreal and comical situations. Sony were soon outselling Sega and Nintendo. With the launch of the Playstation 2 in 2001, they changed their advertising and came up with a new slogan, ‘The third place’. Their commercials now became even more surreal, advertising the gaming experience as a kind of new surreal dimension where anything can happen. When Microsoft launched the X-Box, they copied this style of advertising. These new generation consoles are no longer aimed at the youth market but at adults as well.
Games developers themselves also advertise their games. Although some big titles are advertised on television, most advertising for specific games takes place in magazines and on the internet. Favourable reviews are essential to a successful game and therefore the games have to be good for people to buy them.
As well advertising the games, consoles and computers themselves, many games now feature advertising for other products within the game itself. Sports games for example feature banners and logos around the track or field as there is at real sporting events. Other games also feature branded products or advertisements in the background or even as vital elements of gameplay. Whether this is good or bad for the gaming industry is debatable. It may bring in more money for games developers but will this money be spent on improving the game? On the other hand, do players want to be bombarded with corporate logos and brand names while they are gaming?
Conclusion…
So what does make a financially successful game? The games we have looked at throughout this essay have achieved success in many different ways. I think it is a combination of factors that make a really successful game, but what that combination is depends on the games target audience and the context in which they are to be played. Arcade games for example need to simple to play but complex to master. Games developers learnt lessons from games like ‘Computer Space’ being too complex to play, especially after alcohol. Games that were too easy to master however, meant people would spend too much time playing the game without having to put more money in. They also need to be competitive, either by allowing two or players to play simultaneously against each other or by having the option of recording high scores. The level of challenge is an important factor in all games, as if there was no challenge there would be no point in playing the game. Graphics and addictive gameplay are also important aspects of arcade games. Graphics to attract people to the machines and addictiveness to keep people coming back.
Originality can often bring success to a game as people are always looking to play something new that they haven’t seen before. The pioneering games in a genre, i.e. those that invent the genre or take it to a new level are often the most successful. Doom for example was massive because it was the first experience people had of an FPS game. Quake was also successful because it took FPS to a new level graphically and with its realistic gameplay. On the other hand, instead of being original, developers can copy the idea of another successful game so that they know they have a winning format. This often leads to copyright infringements and legal action such as in the case of Atari and Magnavox. Developers therefore have to be careful to make the game substantially different as to avoid breaking the law.
Once a company has produced a successful game, it can prolong its success is through sequels. Most people who enjoyed the original game would buy the sequel hoping for something similar or better. Good examples of a successful series of sequels are the Tombraider, Mario and Final Fantasy series’. Their success was due to constant improvement of graphics, gameplay, sound and other features between games. Instead of developing a full-blown sequel, another way of prolonging the life of a game is through expansion packs. These add new levels, characters or missions to an existing game and can also increase the sales of the game itself as it is thrust back into the limelight. Sid Meier’s ‘The Sims’, for example, has had a number of successful expansion packs released to expand the scope of the game, each supported by advertising campaigns.
Another route to success that has been followed by games developers is to base a game on an existing product or character. If a game is based on a currently popular film or TV show, it is almost guaranteed success, even if the game is not that great. A recent example of a top selling game based on existing brand is ‘Harry Potter’. The film was a multi million dollar blockbuster and the game was released while the hype for the film was still strong, sending it straight to the top of the charts. The Pokemon phenomenon was another example of games developers taking advantage of a craze that was obsessing children all over the world. A number of Pokemon games were released and children, wanting to collect every possible Pokemon related item, bought the games in their millions.
Publicity, both good and bad, is another factor that can have a big effect on the sales of a game and unlike traditional advertising it doesn’t cost any money. Games that have caused sufficient controversy to make them newsworthy can reach a worldwide audience without having to spend a penny by featuring taboo subjects such as sex or extreme violence. This sparks people’s natural curiosity and desire to see for themselves exactly why the game is so controversial and so they buy the game. A recent example is the game ‘Hooligan: Storm over Europe’, the aim of which is to control a group of football hooligans and cause general mayhem in various European cities. Coming soon after a number of real life incidents of hooliganism featured in the news, the developers knew the game was bound to attract media attention and therefore encourage people to buy the game. The right advertising methods and marketing are also a key part of selling a game. Companies that have got the mix right have gone on to reap the rewards such as Nintendo with Mario, Sega with Sonic and Sony with Lara Croft. The characters were cleverly marketed through merchandising, TV shows and even films to ingrain them into part of popular culture.
At the end of the day, however, in order for a game to be truly financially successful, it just has to be a really great game. A game that people really want to play and really enjoy. A game that receives good reviews and write-ups and that people recommend to their friends. Graphics and sound are important but not essential as some of the highest grossing games such as ‘Pac Man’, ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Pong’ featured relatively basic graphics and sound. I think that above all else, good, compelling gameplay is the defining factor in a games success but all the other factors that have been mentioned throughout this essay are also important and I think this will remain true in the future.
Playing computer games has become a part of modern culture and is becoming more and more so all the time. Gaming has become a social event with people playing together more than on their own. As well as playing together on the internet and in arcades, people play games at parties and in night clubs. Children today are spending much more time playing video games than they are reading books. Some people say this is a bad thing while others say that games are educational and stimulating. Adults are also playing games much more than in the past, especially as the new generation have grown up with computer games from an early age and continue to play in adulthood. One thing is for sure however and that is that computer games are here to stay and will continue to evolve, develop and be successful for many years to come.
Thanks for reading
Brew
I will be looking at why some games are so successful and what a game needs to be a success. I will also be looking at the history of the gaming industry, the most successful games from the past and present, different consumer markets for computer games, advertising and promotion, different genres of game and aspects of gameplay, graphics, sound, addictiveness etc and how these can effect a game’s success.
In the beginning….
It is difficult to define exactly when the computers games industry really started. The very first computer game was ‘Space War’, created in 1961 by a team of programmers in America. The game was designed on a machine called the PDP-1 and was stored on a roll of white tape, which was fed into the machine to play the game. The game involved two players duelling in spaceships and attempting to destroy the other persons ship. The game was surprisingly advanced considering it was the first ever game, however it did require a machine the size of a refrigerator to play that cost $120,000 US dollars and was extremely complicated to operate. Never the less, the game can still be considered successful as it helped the company making the PDP-1 to sell machines by demonstrating what it could do. The game has now acquired a cult status and because it was never copyrighted, it has spawned thousands of clones and emulators that are still played today on modern PC’s.
In 1971 Space War was re-created by a company called ‘Atari’ in a game called ‘Computer Space’ that would become the first coin operated arcade machine. The machine failed to be successful however as it was too complicated for drunk people in bars to play due to the complex control system. Therefore Atari decided that in order for an arcade game to be successful it had to be very simple to use.
The next stage in the evolution of computer games was in 1972, with the invention of the first affordable home games machine called the ‘Odyssey’, made by a company called Magnavox. The basis for the machine was a game called ‘Pong’, an on-screen version of table tennis (ping-pong), that had previously been released as an arcade machine to great success by Atari. It was a played by two players, each with a controller consisting of two knobs. One controlled the up and down movement of the paddle while the other controlled the amount of spin on the ball. Pong was the first truly successful computer game and it made millions of dollars for Atari and Magnavox. Its huge success was due to its simplicity and being something new and exciting as no-one had ever played electronic games before. It could be enjoyed by people of all ages, genders and walks of life and was extremely playable and addictive. The instructions on the machine were legendarily simple, ‘Avoid missing ball for high score’. Pong is a true classic successful game that has been re-developed into countless new guises through the years, all proving to be successful.
In 1977 Atari released the first cartridge based game system called the ‘Atari 2600’ selling for $250. Although successful when released its true success came when it introduced the first home version of the game ‘Space Invaders’ in 1980. This is one of the most successful games there has ever been and the first game to introduce the high score system. This gave the player an aim, being to beat the high scores of other players. The game was made by a Japanese company called ‘Taito’. It was the first game to released worldwide and when released into the arcades in 1978 the game was a phenomenon. It caused coin shortages in Japan and school truancy in America and has pulled in over $500 million over the years.
A year after the release of Space Invaders another classic was released proving to be even more successful. ‘Asteroids’ as it was called was one of the first games to use vector-based graphics as opposed to pixels. It involved controlling a space ship that has to shoot asteroids and break them down into smaller and smaller pieces until they are destroyed. Asteroids was a perfect synergy between simplicity and intense gameplay. It also refined the high score system to allow players to place their initials by their scores for all to see, an idea that has been adopted by all arcade games ever since.
The next huge success was ‘Pac Man’ released by the Japanese company ‘Namco’ in 1980. Pac Man was the single most financially successful arcade game ever made and the first game to be as popular with females as it was with males. This was down to the fact that it was the first game to introduce a named character that was cute and appealing to women and young children. Pac Man was also the first game to be accompanied by an advertising and merchandising campaign and the first game to become an integral part of popular culture. There was a cartoon produced called the ‘Pac Man show’ along with t-shirts, cuddly toys, mugs, cereals, bed covers, books, posters, board games and countless other merchandising. The character also graced the covers of magazines and featured in many articles and features in the press and on television.
The final key game to the early era of computer games was ‘Donkey Kong’, later evolving into the name ‘Mario Bros’ made by the Japanese company ‘Nintendo’. The game was based on the film ‘King Kong’. Learning from the success of Pac Man, the game featured a named character called Mario and later his brother ‘Luigi’, leading to another vast wave of merchandising with every imaginable tie-in product. Donkey Kong became the biggest selling arcade machine of 1981 spawning countless spin-off games. The character Mario went on to be the dominating face of video games for the next 10 years. The game also pioneered the first real genre of games other than space based shoot ’em ups as it was the first platform game, i.e. manoeuvring a character viewed from the side around various platforms by jumping and avoiding or killing enemies.
Other important games in the early years were Berserk (1980), the first game to kill someone. An 18 year old man suffered a heart attack while playing the game in an amusement arcade. Death Race (1976) was the first game to cause controversy over violent content. It was a driving game involving running down stick men for points and was banned following protests and pressure on political parties. Both of these games however, achieved success through this publicity despite it being negative. Dragons Lair (1983) was the first game to use film samples in a game making for amazing graphics and it was successful because of this novelty, even if the gameplay was not all that great.
Consoles and Computers…..
This section will set the scene for the following sections giving a brief story of the evolution of computers and games consoles from the early 1980s up to the present day. The following sections will then look in more detail at the different genres of games, how they came about and the most successful games in these genres and why.
The Consoles
Following a slump in the industry from 1983-1984 when many companies went out of business due to declining sales, 1986 saw the release of the of the Nintendo Entertainment System ‘NES’ and the Sega Master System ‘SMS’. This was the beginning of a war that would last well into the next decade. In the year of release however Nintendo dominated the market. The NES console was sold with the Super Mario Bros game (a more advanced version of the arcade Mario Bros) which, backed up by intensive advertising, ensured huge sales of the console. Nintendo continued to dominate over the next few years with the release of the ‘Gameboy’ handheld console sold with the hugely addictive and popular puzzle game ‘Tetris’ in 1989. In the same year Sega released the first 16-bit console, the ‘Megadrive/Genesis’, with the arcade conversion of the arcade it ‘Altered Beast’, marketing the system as a ‘true arcade experience’. Another 16-bit console called the TurboGrafx 16 that featured the first games to be stored on CD. Despite both these machines being successful, Nintendo continued to outsell the competition.
1990 proved to be the most successful year ever for Nintendo with the release of ‘Super Mario Bros 3’. This went on to be the biggest selling cartridge game ever. Another console was also released in this year. The ‘Neo-Geo’ was the first 24-bit machine and featured sound and graphics far superior to any of the other machines. It proved to be a financial flop however due to the huge selling price, which was much more expensive than the other consoles.
The war heated up in 1991 with Sega releasing the game ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’, featuring a cute but cool hedgehog character called Sonic. Supported by a horde of merchandising they hoped to knock Mario off the top spot. Nintendo launched their 16 bit ‘Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) with yet another new Mario game ‘Super Mario World’ and the Mario/Sonic battle began. By 1992, with the release of ‘Sonic 2’ sales were almost equal and Sonic was proving a real threat to the future success of Mario.
In 1993 Atari re-entered the market with the first 64 bit machine, the ‘Jaguar’ manufactured by IBM. The game ‘Mortal Combat’ sparked new controversy over the violence in games and the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) was created to rate the level of violence in games. Sega were now outselling Nintendo but they fought back releasing the highly advanced ‘Donkey Kong Country’, which went on to be the best selling game of the year.
The new generation of consoles were launched in 1995. Sega was first with the 32 bit ‘Saturn’. Sony entered the market with its ‘Playstation’ also 32 bit and Nintendo released the 64-bit ‘N64’.
Sony reduced the price of the Playstation in 1996 forcing Sega to follow suit with the Saturn. Nintendo sold its billionth cartridge while Atari went out of business following the disappointing sales of the Jaguar. By the end of the year Sony were on top making in excess of $12 million per day over the Christmas period. During the next year sales of the Playstation continued to skyrocket closely followed by the N64 while Saturn sales plummeted.
In 1998 Sega launched the 64-bit internet compatible ‘Dreamcast’ in an attempt to regain control of the market and achieved reasonable success pushing them back up with the Playstation and N64 in terms of sales. Nintendo extended the life of the Gameboy with the release of a colour version. Prices of both the consoles and the games continue to fall through 1999 and 2000 with the top three consoles all retailing at around $100 with the games as low as $10. Then at the end of 2000 Sony released the first of yet another new generation consoles. The ‘Playstation 2’ is a 128 bit machine that can play DVDs and is also compatible with existing Playstation games. The demand for the new console is so high that all machines are already sold on advanced order before they reach the shops. As the machines begin to run out, online auctions are selling the console at prices over $1000. As Dreamcast sales hit a slump, Sega announced that it would cease production of the machine in March 2001.
The final stages in console history came in 2002 as computer games become increasingly popular and more a part of modern culture. The first films based entirely on computer games, ‘Tomb Raider’ and ‘Final Fantasy’ are released with work underway on many other films based on games. Microsoft finally releases the long awaited ‘X-Box’, as a competitor for the Playstation 2, featuring a windows powered engine capable of PC quality gaming. To complete the story Nintendo launched the ‘Gameboy Advanced’, a successor to the Gameboy Colour, and the ‘Gamecube’ as their answer to the PS2 and X-Box. The Gamecube uses advanced forms of DVD disc, which are smaller and can hold more information. Nintendo hoped this would become the standard in the future.
Computers
At the same time as the consoles, home computers were also developing into a gameplaying force to be reckoned with. The ‘Commodore 64’ and ‘Sinclair ZX Spectrum’ were the first affordable home computers and the games were cheap to buy and easy to program and stored on cassette. Hundreds of games were made and released with a few notable successes such as the platform game ‘Manic Minor’, featuring Monty Python style humour and the highly addictive ‘Jet Pac’ shoot-em-up.
In 1981 two new future giants entered the market. IBM launched the first ‘PC’ powered by an operating system called ‘MSDOS’ created by Microsoft. In 1984 the Apple Macintosh was released as a rival to the PC starting another battle in the computer industry similar to the Sega/Nintendo war in the console industry. The Mac featured the first graphical user interface (icons and buttons etc) which people found much easier to use than MSDOS. Microsoft fought back a year later in 1985 with the release of the first version of Windows.
Despite these giants entering the market, these early Macs and PC's were designed almost entirely for work and business and very few games were available for them. Commodore took advantage of this by introducing the ‘Amiga 500’ (right) in 1987. This affordable home computer was much cheaper than the Macs and PC’s on the market and much more suited to gaming. Before long however PCs began to fight back. As they became more advanced and parents began to see the educational benefit of new features such as CD ROMs and multi-media, the PC began to become more and more popular. Games developers began to utilise the PCs hardware to produce games that were stored on CD ROM that could be much more advanced than the floppy-disk games on the Amiga.
The birth of the Internet and its rise to popularity through the early 1990s ensured that the boom in PCs continued and games developers now had the ability to make games that could be played over the internet. Combined with other advantages over consoles such as large hard drives and powerful graphics chips, the PC began to compete with the consoles in the gaming market and have continued to do so to the present day. The only rival to the PC in today’s computer market is the latest generation of Apple Macintosh computers such as the ‘I-Mac’ and ‘Power Mac’. Macs however are made mostly for design and graphics work along with sound and video editing although they are compatible with many PC games. Both PCs and Macs are continuing to evolve at a rapid rate with faster processors, more powerful graphics chips and new hardware allowing for more highly advanced games to be created.
The Games…
Having looked at the story of the machines available to play games, it is now time to look at the games themselves. The first games were designed for the mass market, i.e. they were aimed at as many different types of people as possible. As the popularity of games increased, developers attempted to focus on certain specific markets for games. Thus the birth of the different genres of game.
Platform Games
Platform games were one of the first genres of game and have evolved from the side scrolling ‘left, right, jump’ games of the past into the complex three-dimensional worlds of today. Although most platform games are console based, they were also popular on computers, especially the early ones such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Mario, the star of the first platform game Mario Bros, has been the subject of the most financially successful platform games. Super Mario Bros 3, released on the NES in 1990 was the defining game in the genre setting the standard for platform games in the future. It featured a large and varied world with something new on almost every level. The graphics were cute and cartoony and the music was catchy. The gameplay was great because there were plenty of new abilities to perform as the game progressed and lots of secrets and mini games to be found to keep the player entertained. The game also featured a code system so that players could continue from the level they had previously reached, instead of having to restart the game from scratch. The game sat at the top of the best-seller lists for months and sold over 17 million copies. The game was followed by Super Mario World proving to be hit on the SNES and Gameboy. Mario has stood the test of time with hit games on all of the Nintendo consoles. Mario’s rival in the platform genre was Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog who also featured in a string of successive hits on the SMS, Megadrive, Gamegear, Saturn and Dreamcast. Another hugely successful Nintendo platformer was ‘Donkey Kong Country’ on the SNES, released in 1993. The game featured revolutionary graphics for a 16-bit machine. Although the game was still 2D, the sprites were extremely detailed and well rendered. The graphics were the main selling point of the game but it was also very playable with good gameplay and followed the golden rules of platform games laid down by Super Mario Bros 3. A number of other platform hits were spin offs of Disney films and cartoons such as ‘The Lion King’, ‘Aladdin’, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc. The main reason for the success of these games was due to the characters being already popular and well known.
With the release of the Playstation and similar CD based consoles in the mid 90’s, platform games were evolving to make use of new hardware capabilities. ‘Crash Bandicoot’ on the Playstation was one of the first 3D platformers and a huge hit on its release as was the sequel. Instead of moving left and right across the screen you actually moved forward through the game with a view from behind the character. This idea later evolved into games such as ‘Tomb Raider’ and its sequels taking the 3D idea to another level being fully 3D with a camera that moved around to different angles depending on your position. Tomb Raider and the main character ‘Lara Croft, went on to achieve massive success and a huge amount of merchandising, even creating a movie based on the game. The platform game is still evolving to this day and the huge variety of styles of platformer makes the genre popular with a wide variety of people.
Sports/Simulation
This genre covers a huge range of games from city building simulators to football games. One of the first games in this genre to achieve success was ‘Atari Football’, a top down table style arcade machine where players moved players around using a rotating ball. Games were later released to simulate flight, pinball, boards games, card games, driving, tank warfare, basketball, tennis, golf, athletics, shooting and almost any other sport or activity you could think of. Simulation games have always been popular in arcades, in particular driving games, which are particularly popular with males who like having the opportunity to drive like maniacs.
Driving games are also popular on consoles and home computers, especially since 3D graphics chips came about allowing spectacular graphics and a real feeling of speed. Games like ‘Gran Turismo’ and ‘Sega Rally’ proved to be best sellers on the Dreamcast and Playstation while ‘Colin McRae Rally’ on the PC achieved similar success. As censorship laws became more relaxed, controversial games such as ‘Carmageddon’, ‘Destruction Derby’, ‘Driver’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto’ were released where rather than driving to win a race, the aim was to steal cars, kill pedestrians, or generally drive illegally. Grand Theft Auto was particularly successful due to its originality and it could technically be classed as a genre in its own right.
Sports simulators are more aimed at particular groups of people, i.e. people that are into that particular sport. Cricket games for example are unlikely to sell well in the US or Japan, but are popular here in the UK and Australia in the same way as American football games are not really successful outside of the US.
True simulators are normally limited to the power of the home PC. Games such as Microsoft’s ‘Flight Simulator’, ‘Golf’ and ‘Formula 1’, feature incredibly realistic and complex gameplay. which makes it very similar to doing the real thing. These types of games are aimed at and popular with the older generation of game player.
In recent years extreme sports games have become some of the most popular games on the market as the interest in extreme sports in general has increased and it being considered fashionable and hip. Snowboarding games such as ‘Cool Boarders’ and ‘Snow Surfers’ have achieved massive sales, as have skating and BMX simulators like ‘Tony Hawks Pro Skater’ and ‘Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX’.
Simulation games are immensely popular in today’s market with ‘Gran Turismo 3’ and ‘Tony Hawks 3’ currently topping the best sellers list on the Playstation 2.
The other type of simulator is the business or management simulator. Although they are usually classed as simulators, these type of games would also fit into the strategy genre. These type of games are normally made for the PC. This sub-genre began with Sid Meier’s classic ‘Sim City’ back in the early 90s. The aim of this game was to take an empty plot of land and turn it into a booming commercial city while making a profit and constantly improving facilities to keep the citizens happy. A whole series of similar games followed with varying degrees of success. Games involving managing railroads, theme parks, pizza restaurants, hospitals, farms, parks and many other aspects of business and diplomacy such as the stock market and politics soon began to be released. There is even a hit game called ‘The Sims’ that simulates everyday life and managing a household of people through relationships, getting a job, DIY etc. Games like this are popular because they can be played over and over again in different ways and using different tactics giving them lasting playability.
Puzzle
If there is one defining game in the puzzle genre then it has to be ‘Tetris’. Designed by Russian programmer Alex Pajitnov in 1985. The game is a true classic and its simple but extremely addictive style has been copied countless times since. It was the game that made the Gameboy such a phenomenon success as it was popular with people of all ages, in particular businessmen who bought the Gameboy simply so that they could play Tetris while commuting.
Another hit puzzle game was ‘Lemmings’. It was a completely original game involving guiding a group of suicide loving lemmings through levels safely and was successful on almost all consoles and computer systems. Like Tetris, Lemmings was very addictive and many sequels to the game have been made.
RPG / Adventure
Dating back to the very beginning of video games, this genre developed from the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ concept. As many early programmers were also keen D&D gamers they began to create text based adventures in a similar style to the game where players would be given a description of their environment and could type various commands or actions for their character to perform. The genre later evolved into two different types of game. RPG (Role Playing Games) stuck more with the D&D concepts such as gaining experience to gain higher levels and having various statistics that would determine how the character would perform in certain actions or battles. These type of games were for the hardcore RPG player who enjoyed spending hour upon hour with their character completing quests and building up their stats. ‘The Bards Tale’ was one of the first RPGs but it was not until the ‘Ultima’ series of games that the genre really took off. The game was played from a top down point of view through a vast and immersive world and true enthusiasts would spend hours playing the game.
The first massively successful RPG was ‘The Legend of Zelda’ on the NES bringing the genre to the consoles. The game was in a similar style to Ultima but was simplified for the mass markets with less of a focus on statistics and more of a focus on graphics and story and the game had later hit sequels such as ‘Zelda 64’ on the N64.
‘Final Fantasy 7’ and its later sequels on the Playstation were top sellers in the late 90’s, featuring much improved graphics than previous games and a turn based combat system with a much bigger focus on the story of the game. PC RPGs such as ‘Diablo’ and its sequel ‘Diablo 2’ were also massive sellers and were much more action based with a focus on the combat rather than the story.
The other type of game in the genre is the ‘adventure’ game. These type of games are similar in that they involve a detailed story but instead of having statistics and combat, the game is played by solving a serious of lateral thinking puzzles using objects collected during the way. They normally involve humorous conversations and situations and cartoon style graphics. Amongst the biggest hits were the ‘Monkey Island’ series telling the story of wannabe pirate ‘Guybrush Threepwood’. The ‘Discworld’ games based on the books by Terry Pratchett were also best sellers. These type of games are aimed more at the mass market of gamers rather than the D&D loving RPG gamers.
Perhaps the most successful adventure game series however was ‘Myst’. The game was very different to the Monkey Island style games. Instead of being cartoony and humorous it was dark and mysterious featuring stunning 3D graphics and mind- bendingly complex puzzles. The game was massive hit all over the world and a popular game to be sold with PCs as it demonstrated their graphical capability.
Shooting Games
Shooting games were THE first genre of computer games and most of the early arcade games were space-based shoot’em’ups. Many early console games were also shooters. The advent of the ‘Light Gun’ meant that arcade machines could me made where the gamer could progress through the game by shooting at enemies on the screen using a life like gun firing a beam of light at the screen that could detect hits. Versions of these were later released for the consoles and games like ‘Time Crisis’ and ‘House of the Dead’ are among the most popular.
The major breakthrough in the genre came with the game ‘Doom’ on the PC in the early 90’s. Although ‘Castle Wolfenstein’ was the original ‘first person shooter’ (FPS), Doom was the first to reach the mass market. Doom also pioneered the ‘Death Match’ where players could battle against each other over the internet and it soon became the most popular game being played on the internet. As graphics cards and processors got more powerful, so the FPS became more advanced. ‘Quake’ and ‘Half-life’ in 1996 took the 3D graphics to a new level while ‘Unreal Tournament’ expanded on the multiplayer aspects with new game modes such as ‘capture the flag’ and other team or clan based modes.
Some companies decided to combine the action of the FPS with an element of strategy to create games like the ‘Rainbow 6’ series. Although played in first person perspective these games were realistic combat simulators, which required tactical and strategical thinking and are popular amongst military enthusiasts.
Although the classic shoot ’em up has all but had its day, FPS continue to be massive and are still the most popular game to be played online, especially as connections have got faster.
Fighting
Fighting games or beat ’em ups as they are sometimes known were another genre that was born in the arcades. The first games were walk and fight games such as ‘Double Dragon’ and ‘Altered Beast’ where players would progress forwards through a scrolling level beating up enemies and picking up various weapons until they had to fight a boss at the end of the level. The games soon found their way onto the consoles and as well as arcade conversions, console manufactures began producing games of their own such as ‘Streets of Rage’ on the Megadrive. The fighting game really took off however with the release of Capcoms ‘Streetfighter 2’ in the early 90s. It was different to previous fighting games as it was played on just one screen with two characters facing each other and fighting it out over a set number of rounds. The game was a smash in the arcades and topped the best-seller list for a long time until a number of copycat games began to be released.
Fighting games, like FPS games, have often been the subject of controversy over video game violence. ‘Mortal Kombat’ was released shortly after SF2 and although it featured similar game play, the graphics, instead of being cartoon style, were photo realistic. The game also featured bloodthirsty ‘Fatality’ moves where the victorious player would actually kill the loser with a variety of gory moves involving a lot of blood.
These one on one fighting games remained popular on the consoles as they evolved through to the new generation machines as they were popular games for playing at parties or socially and a large group of people could play ‘winner stays on’ tournaments etc. Today’s fighting games are usually 3D as opposed to the 2D games like SF2. Games like the ‘Tekken’ series feature changing camera angles to make the combat more realistic.
Strategy
This is probably one of the most varied genres and my personal favourite. This genre is the thinking mans game. The first successful strategy game was Sid Meier’s ‘Civilisation’ in 1990 on the PC. It was a turn based strategy game where players took control of the first settlers of a new stone age civilisation and had to build an empire that would last until the space age. The player had to conduct diplomacy and trade with other empires as well as conducting war and defence. The player also had conduct research into new technology and construct city improvements and even wonders of the world. There were countless different ways of playing the game and each time was a new experience. Its later sequels were also great games and very successful and countless copycat games have been made using the same style of gameplay.
While Civilisation was turn based, the first ‘real time strategy’ (RTS) game was ‘Dune 2’, made by Westwood Studios. The game was based on the classic science fiction film ‘Dune’ and was to set the standard for a plethora of RTS games in the future. The game involved harvesting spice in order to earn money. This money could then be spent on buildings such as base defences, refineries, power stations, barracks, tank factories etc. When the appropriate buildings were constructed, players could begin building units to form an army with which they could attack their opponents. RTS games involved more action and quick thinking than turn based games like Civilisation as whatever the player was doing, their enemy would be constantly building and attacking. Though Dune 2 was a success, it was ‘Command and Conquer’ that really got people into RTS. Also made by Westwood Studios, C&C brought the genre to the Internet allowing players to compete against other human players rather than the computer controlled opponents in single player mode. A number of successors to C&C were also big hits such as ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Tiberian Sun’. While these games focused on space age units and weaponry, RTS games like ‘Warcraft’ and Age of Empires’ focused on medieval warfare. There are many other variations on the RTS game such as ‘Commandos’ where the player takes control of just a small squad of men instead of an entire army. There are a vast amount of strategy games on the PC market today and they are beginning to make their way to the consoles.
Advertising, Marketing and Promotion…
In the early days of computer games, advertising was much less important than it is in today’ market. The first games achieved success through their novelty and the fact that they were the only thing on the market. They became popular through hype and word of mouth. As more and more games came onto the market sales were no longer assured. Manufacturers and developers now had to compete with rival companies to make the most successful games and to market them to the people. The main aim of advertising is to raise awareness of the product. Computer games manufacturers have used many methods to achieve this aim throughout the years. The four biggest players in the video games advertising world were the four companies that have made the most money from the industry, Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. In the computer industry there are many more big players but the biggest three are Microsoft, IBM and Apple although their advertising focus was on the business opportunities of computers as opposed to the games.
Atari dominated the gaming industry from 1971 until about 1982. They had both the most successful arcade machines and the biggest selling console as well as the most popular and biggest selling games. Atari’s main target market was males aged between 14 and 28 but they also developed advertising to incorporate other groups into their market. They advertised through the mass media (TV, radio, newspapers) as well as through posters and billboards. There were also magazines devoted to Atari games where potential gamers could read reviews of Atari games and find out when new releases would be on the market. Atari also created brand awareness through sponsorship of sports and music events giving the brand a ‘cool’ image and helping to promote this to its target audience. They also created publicity , which, positive or negative, still raised awareness of the company. An example of this is the legal action they took against Magnetron over the copyrights to the game ‘Pong’. Despite losing this lawsuit, Atari sales went up as a result of the publicity. Atari were also involved in a number of other legal actions over copyright infringements.
By 1985 Nintendo had successfully pushed Atari off the top spot and into a steady decline that result in them ultimately going bankrupt. The success of Donkey Kong had made Nintendo a household name and when they released the NES they used their familiar Mario character to great promotional success. Nintendo’s target market was wider that Atari’s with much of their merchandising aimed at younger children, both male and female, as young as 6 or 7. The cartoon and later the film starring Mario further increased the characters popularity and it became the ‘in thing’ for kids to have the latest Mario merchandise, be it school bags, lunch boxes, watches or wallpaper. Like Atari, Nintendo used mass media advertising, sponsorship, specialist magazines and publicity, all with a definite focus on their mascot ‘Mario’. Nintendo had what was close to a monopoly situation through the late 80’s and early 90’s until they began to face competition from Sega.
Sega brought computer game advertising into the 90s. Their advertising was slick, cool, fast paced and clever. Before long the company was considered much cooler than Nintendo, as was Sega’s own mascot, ‘Sonic’. While Mario was still popular with the very young kids, Sonic was more popular with teenagers and young adults. Sega used the same marketing methods as Nintendo competing with them in every area. The two companies fought head to head in a similar way to ‘McDonalds and ‘Burger King’ or ‘Pepsi and ‘Coca-cola’. Sega’s commercials contained feature by feature comparisons between the Megadrive and the SNES with personal ‘below the belt’ attacks. Nintendo attempted to fight back with similar advertisements but it seemed Sega were always one step ahead. While Sega designed more sophisticated games aimed at older gamers, they ended up stealing much of the market for younger gamers as well who wanted to play the same games as their older brothers etc. Playing video games was no longer referred to as playing Nintendo. Now people were playing Sega.
When Sony entered the market with their Playstation in 1995 they took a revolutionary approach to advertising. After initial commercials and advertising conducted in a similar way to the Sega adverts of the early 90s to establish the brand and the machine, they opted for a much more surreal approach to advertising. Their commercials portrayed the Playstation as a kind of cult using the different shaped symbols on the control pad buttons in various surreal and comical situations. Sony were soon outselling Sega and Nintendo. With the launch of the Playstation 2 in 2001, they changed their advertising and came up with a new slogan, ‘The third place’. Their commercials now became even more surreal, advertising the gaming experience as a kind of new surreal dimension where anything can happen. When Microsoft launched the X-Box, they copied this style of advertising. These new generation consoles are no longer aimed at the youth market but at adults as well.
Games developers themselves also advertise their games. Although some big titles are advertised on television, most advertising for specific games takes place in magazines and on the internet. Favourable reviews are essential to a successful game and therefore the games have to be good for people to buy them.
As well advertising the games, consoles and computers themselves, many games now feature advertising for other products within the game itself. Sports games for example feature banners and logos around the track or field as there is at real sporting events. Other games also feature branded products or advertisements in the background or even as vital elements of gameplay. Whether this is good or bad for the gaming industry is debatable. It may bring in more money for games developers but will this money be spent on improving the game? On the other hand, do players want to be bombarded with corporate logos and brand names while they are gaming?
Conclusion…
So what does make a financially successful game? The games we have looked at throughout this essay have achieved success in many different ways. I think it is a combination of factors that make a really successful game, but what that combination is depends on the games target audience and the context in which they are to be played. Arcade games for example need to simple to play but complex to master. Games developers learnt lessons from games like ‘Computer Space’ being too complex to play, especially after alcohol. Games that were too easy to master however, meant people would spend too much time playing the game without having to put more money in. They also need to be competitive, either by allowing two or players to play simultaneously against each other or by having the option of recording high scores. The level of challenge is an important factor in all games, as if there was no challenge there would be no point in playing the game. Graphics and addictive gameplay are also important aspects of arcade games. Graphics to attract people to the machines and addictiveness to keep people coming back.
Originality can often bring success to a game as people are always looking to play something new that they haven’t seen before. The pioneering games in a genre, i.e. those that invent the genre or take it to a new level are often the most successful. Doom for example was massive because it was the first experience people had of an FPS game. Quake was also successful because it took FPS to a new level graphically and with its realistic gameplay. On the other hand, instead of being original, developers can copy the idea of another successful game so that they know they have a winning format. This often leads to copyright infringements and legal action such as in the case of Atari and Magnavox. Developers therefore have to be careful to make the game substantially different as to avoid breaking the law.
Once a company has produced a successful game, it can prolong its success is through sequels. Most people who enjoyed the original game would buy the sequel hoping for something similar or better. Good examples of a successful series of sequels are the Tombraider, Mario and Final Fantasy series’. Their success was due to constant improvement of graphics, gameplay, sound and other features between games. Instead of developing a full-blown sequel, another way of prolonging the life of a game is through expansion packs. These add new levels, characters or missions to an existing game and can also increase the sales of the game itself as it is thrust back into the limelight. Sid Meier’s ‘The Sims’, for example, has had a number of successful expansion packs released to expand the scope of the game, each supported by advertising campaigns.
Another route to success that has been followed by games developers is to base a game on an existing product or character. If a game is based on a currently popular film or TV show, it is almost guaranteed success, even if the game is not that great. A recent example of a top selling game based on existing brand is ‘Harry Potter’. The film was a multi million dollar blockbuster and the game was released while the hype for the film was still strong, sending it straight to the top of the charts. The Pokemon phenomenon was another example of games developers taking advantage of a craze that was obsessing children all over the world. A number of Pokemon games were released and children, wanting to collect every possible Pokemon related item, bought the games in their millions.
Publicity, both good and bad, is another factor that can have a big effect on the sales of a game and unlike traditional advertising it doesn’t cost any money. Games that have caused sufficient controversy to make them newsworthy can reach a worldwide audience without having to spend a penny by featuring taboo subjects such as sex or extreme violence. This sparks people’s natural curiosity and desire to see for themselves exactly why the game is so controversial and so they buy the game. A recent example is the game ‘Hooligan: Storm over Europe’, the aim of which is to control a group of football hooligans and cause general mayhem in various European cities. Coming soon after a number of real life incidents of hooliganism featured in the news, the developers knew the game was bound to attract media attention and therefore encourage people to buy the game. The right advertising methods and marketing are also a key part of selling a game. Companies that have got the mix right have gone on to reap the rewards such as Nintendo with Mario, Sega with Sonic and Sony with Lara Croft. The characters were cleverly marketed through merchandising, TV shows and even films to ingrain them into part of popular culture.
At the end of the day, however, in order for a game to be truly financially successful, it just has to be a really great game. A game that people really want to play and really enjoy. A game that receives good reviews and write-ups and that people recommend to their friends. Graphics and sound are important but not essential as some of the highest grossing games such as ‘Pac Man’, ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Pong’ featured relatively basic graphics and sound. I think that above all else, good, compelling gameplay is the defining factor in a games success but all the other factors that have been mentioned throughout this essay are also important and I think this will remain true in the future.
Playing computer games has become a part of modern culture and is becoming more and more so all the time. Gaming has become a social event with people playing together more than on their own. As well as playing together on the internet and in arcades, people play games at parties and in night clubs. Children today are spending much more time playing video games than they are reading books. Some people say this is a bad thing while others say that games are educational and stimulating. Adults are also playing games much more than in the past, especially as the new generation have grown up with computer games from an early age and continue to play in adulthood. One thing is for sure however and that is that computer games are here to stay and will continue to evolve, develop and be successful for many years to come.
Thanks for reading
Brew