Anime Criticize my computer history timeline

[felipepepe]

Updated my journal timeline to have better year divisions & include the CPC.

 

[PlanHex]

Oh, that's because the timeline is spread across the book, like chapter divisions. You'll read the 1975-1979 page, then all the RPG reviews from that time, then the 1980-1984 page, and so on...

So before reading about Dragon Quest in the 1985-89 page you'll have already read (or flipped through) entire reviews about Ultima & Wizardry.

Ah ok, the gamasutra article gave me the impression it was also meant to be a stand-alone thing "the kids" could use for reference outside of the book itself.

 

[felipepepe]

Well, they can... but it's not the main focus.

 

[Mr. Pink]

There ought to be some mention of all the failed consoles of the early 90s back when every company had money to burn and tried to make their own platform the next big thing. Casio, Panasonic, Bandai, Philips and Fujitsu come to mind. the section about the 90s makes it seem like as if nintendo dominated the market unchallenged.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I remember me Viglen fondly, wonder whatever happened to them?

I think they got taken over or rebranded as Stone. They seem to still specialise in the educational sector and we have some at work.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

There ought to be some mention of all the failed consoles of the early 90s back when every company had money to burn and tried to make their own platform the next big thing. Casio, Panasonic, Bandai, Philips and Fujitsu come to mind. the section about the 90s makes it seem like as if nintendo dominated the market unchallenged.

Like the two consoles that ran on VHS tapes?

Meet the Action Max:

(I don't know how that remote should be held either.)

 

[mondblut]

Meet the Action Max:

(I don't know how that remote should be held either.)

Jesus jumping on a pogo stick. I want some of the powder they were snorting, too.

 

[PlanHex]

Goddamn, that's the worst joystick I've ever seen. Wouldn't it start tilting every time you have to move south-westerly?

 

[Dexter]

You should really let someone proofread these. As others have already said "Here comes the new challengers", "but its expensive", "allowed students from campus all over the US", "the clones would actually overthrown IBM", "becoming an pop culture icon", "the dawn of internet" "graphic cards", "not only bought in a record number of players", "with a very simple games", "boon of games", "micro transactions systems" your use of "lead" instead of "led" in several pictures etc. make it look kinda awkward in that third-worldian trying to write in god's language way.

Also try to stay away from superlatives when trying to be exact or explaining things e.g. "World of Warcraft took the entire genre for itself in 2004" or "It would become the quintessential indie game".

Other than that it's very US-centric as some people have said, the "video game crash" is mainly a US meme, and for instance in Eastern Europe and many former Soviet Bloc territories people didn't have Nintendo or SEGA and any IBM PC clones were as or more expensive than cars, so they mostly had to settle for the various ZX Spectrum clones till the early to mid-90s and when you talked about "gaming" in these areas through the late 80s and early 90s it was mostly copied audio-cassettes handed around at school or similar with BASIC-based games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones#Unofficial_clones

 

[Freddie]

Amstrad definitely belongs there. Obscure stuff in Europe at least were Spectravideo and MSX.

For Commodore 1530 to the 'toaster' 1541 would demonstrate evolution in media. C-cassette to 5¼" floppy to 3½" floppy, each step brought these closer to PC, and from gaming perspective made new things possible. (1541 made Gold Box series possible for example).

For consoles Vectrex is bizarre case. You don't believe how good it's vector graphics actually looked unless you played one.

Very nice touch with PDP-10, that definitely should stay in.

 

[felipepepe]

There ought to be some mention of all the failed consoles of the early 90s back when every company had money to burn and tried to make their own platform the next big thing. Casio, Panasonic, Bandai, Philips and Fujitsu come to mind. the section about the 90s makes it seem like as if nintendo dominated the market unchallenged.

Good point, will try to squeeze something more, but there's already a quick mention:

"but less-known consoles such as the TurboGrafx-16, Phillips CD-I, NeoGeo and 3DO were also fighting for a spot in the sun."

Also, the View-Master had SEVEN games in total, so it's really just a footnote curiosity, like the Xbox One

You should really let someone proofread these.

I have no problem letting people proofread it, but first I need a finished version. Not gonna worry about that while I'm still changing the text every day or so.

And it's tricky not be be US-centric... the situation in every fucking country was kinda different and I have a very limited word count, so where you draw the line? Like, Brazil had a very complex situation due to the military dictatorship forbidding the importation of foreign computers, but it's a country that's irrelevant in the global game market, so why bother... so at which point the situation in Eastern Europe becomes relevant when talking about 80's games? The 1983 Crash only happened in the US, but it's a key factor in why Atari and all these other consoles died.

 

[Karellen]

One trend I don't see mentioned that might be worth saying a word or two about is "shareware". Game development might've turned increasingly professional in the 80s, but all the while you also had software that was produced with the deliberate intent to be shared, and the ability to do that with games is (in my opinion) a major element that made the home computers of this era so distinct from consoles, as a gaming platform.

I would think that this is also where the less successful home computer platforms come in, as far as significance to gaming history goes. I don't really know, personally, about the rest, but on the Macintosh, from the late 80s all the way up to the turn of the millenium, shareware games were a lot more significant than they were on the PC - a lot of commercial games just weren't ever ported over to the Mac so it was, in effect, a kind of parallel ecosystem where shareware developers could have their day in the limelight. The majority of the games I played as a child on the Mac were actually shareware games, and design-wise a lot of those games were kind of unusual and followed a different trajectory than the PC and console markets where commercial games were the biggest thing. In that regard the Mac also served as a kind of haven for outmoded design ideas, which let games like Escape Velocity and Realmz gain a lot of prominence even when the rest of the world was moving on.

 

[felipepepe]

Great point, added a bit on shareware to the 1990-1994 page:

With more people having dial-up connections and access to BBSes, “shareware” began to spread – games like Epic Pinball, Duke Nukem and Doom, as well as several applications, could all be tried for free then fully unlocked by registering them via mail. It was a way for small studios to circumvent retailers and market their games directly. Eventually many game magazines began to include CD-ROMs filled with shareware titles, as well as demos and game trailers, helping them spread even more.

 

[Burning Bridges]

"2000 to 2004: The rise of the more gaming industry?" No mention of the decline? No mention how Microsoft almost killed their own gaming platform? No mention that 90% of gamers these days are downright morons? Are you a fucking shilltard? Fuck this shit.

 

[felipepepe]

"2000 to 2004: The rise of the more gaming industry?" No mention of the decline? No mention how Microsoft almost killed their own gaming platform? No mention that 90% of gamers these days are downright morons? Are you a fucking shilltard? Fuck this shit.

Did you even read it? I mention all the great PC game devs closing down, EA buying everyone and the consoles taking over. Then on 2005-2009 there's how all games were AAA mass-market titles of casual stuff made for the biggest audience possible, talk on how games stagnated and became franchises to milk out, with mid-sized studios being crushed and gamers interested in more niche titles being left out.

Do you need a fucking quest compass saying "THAT IS DECLINE!!1111" to see it's critical?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

"2000 to 2004: The rise of the more gaming industry?" No mention of the decline? No mention how Microsoft almost killed their own gaming platform? No mention that 90% of gamers these days are downright morons? Are you a fucking shilltard? Fuck this shit.

Did you even read it? I mention all the great PC game devs closing down, EA buying everyone and the consoles taking over. Then on 2005-2009 there's how all games were AAA mass-market titles of casual stuff made for the biggest audience possible, talk on how games stagnated and became franchises to milk out, with mid-sized studios being crushed and gamers interested in more niche titles being left out.

Do you need a fucking quest compass saying "THAT IS DECLINE!!1111" to see it's critical?

Burning Bridges is a certified edgetard.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Shill down bro. I am not interested in reading this kind of rose tinted shit, let alone from a codexer.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

When you mention casual games in 2000-2004, you should specifically mention Runescape in the browser game list. At least for an RPG book I'd consider important since it was the first free graphical browser RPG worth a damn. It was the final nail in the coffin for MUDs, and I'd even go as far to say it helped pave the way for WoW by giving the casual market an easily accessible fast paced MMORPG in 2001. I'd at least say it's worthy of a shout out.

Also everything I've seen of the book has been great in direction, but generally is going to need a good proof-read/editing before I'd say it's done. Waiting until the primary content is done is fine though.

 

[Freddie]

And it's tricky not be be US-centric... the situation in every fucking country was kinda different and I have a very limited word count, so where you draw the line? Like, Brazil had a very complex situation due to the military dictatorship forbidding the importation of foreign computers, but it's a country that's irrelevant in the global game market, so why bother... so at which point the situation in Eastern Europe becomes relevant when talking about 80's games? The 1983 Crash only happened in the US, but it's a key factor in why Atari and all these other consoles died.

From historical perspective these things have huge value. It's worth a mention what the situation was in Brazil, in Latin America and behind the iron curtain. There were computers, there were PEOPLE who understood that technology and it's possibilities and had a vision of the future. There was a black market, there was the scene and the demo scene.
International connections might have been illegal, very expensive at least and how many had a modem to begin with to connect to any BBS? So Radio was one mean of piracy, software distributed on cassettes were transmitted over radio. Then there were tape trading and local black market. And it all matters because we wouldn't have CD Project and the Witcher series, or Space Rangers or in more general sense, Cryengine, and many other studios and their innovation (Silent Storm for example) which later formed in former Warsaw pact countries, without these factors.

It was kinda revision of what people did in MIT and PDP-10 in the 70's in convoluted (by necessity) and very fucked up way, but still, it absolutely was influential.

What comes to scene, I think it's also worth a mention that even bad business decisions played a part, after all piracy was big factor in what killed the Commodore.

You might also solve the problem with all the niche machines by approaching your history book from this angle. Commodore had huge scene, games for free. Niche manufacturers tried to learn from that, by using cartridges for example, but didn't had a chance because market was already saturated and very few people buying a new computer simply didn't had incentive to get platform that didn't had a scene.

Now what comes to this thing about your history being America centric, there's nothing wrong with it. They had the best people, who had made the best education and created the best infrastructure. So they had PEOPLE who could do shit, like engineer these machines, people who could create the OS, and people who could write software for them and sell hardware and software all over the world where possible. Claiming otherwise would simply be factually wrong what comes to history, now what use would that sort of publication serve? Even MSX (Japanese) I mentioned in my earlier post was based on American Spectravideo IIRC.

In historical sense, what is important is that former Eastern Block countries, or be that Latin America, are contributing now and how it happened.

So what you can do, I suggest you made separate story like 'Meanwhile in Poland' and collect some trivia from this thread in there and check it against other sources. Tools are important, but back in the day, even I didn't live in a country that was some Eastern Pact shithole, I sometimes listened to Voice of America Europe, Hell, I still remember even their jingle (ViiOE Euuroop) blasting great music and they also had awesome sound, someone really invested in that form of propaganda, but I had also my computer, my floppies full of pirated games, some games I did purchase, and wondered what those poor fuckers about my age in DDR are doing? What are their options?

You can't of course use nostalgia, but if you want to make it less America centric, note people in the scene, even if they were anonymous, their influence in what later made possible the CD Project among other things and destroy the American stereotype of nerd. Because that's not what happened, there were people like there were people today, who can name every PC component, tell details of them, but can't do shit with it. People who can do shit contribute and shape our culture in form of delivering us products Space Rangers, the Witcher or whatever I mentioned earlier.

 

[felipepepe]

So what you can do, I suggest you made separate story like 'Meanwhile in Poland' and collect some trivia from this thread in there and check it against other sources.

Bro, what you're describing would be a great book - "Computer Gaming around the World". I never read a book that good on computer history. Even REPLAY, which I consider the best historical book on gaming (which is not saying much) barely talks about stuff outside the US, Japan and UK. There are indeed amazing stories, like how Brazil had mod scene of pirates dedicated to adding BR HEUHEUEHE teams and narrators into soccer games like Winning Eleven.

However, that's waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond my scope here. This is a book on CRPG History, the timeline is a way to give context to the changes we see on the games, like GUIs, better graphics, console ports, etc...

This is what I wish "game historians" with reach and connections like Frank Cifaldi were doing... much more useful than scanning promotional art and shit like that. :/

 

[Freddie]

So what you can do, I suggest you made separate story like 'Meanwhile in Poland' and collect some trivia from this thread in there and check it against other sources.

Bro, what you're describing would be a great book - "Computer Gaming around the World". I never read a book that good on computer history. Even REPLAY, which I consider the best historical book on gaming (which is not saying much) barely talks about stuff outside the US, Japan and UK. There are indeed amazing stories, like how Brazil had mod scene of pirates dedicated to adding BR HEUHEUEHE teams and narrators into soccer games like Winning Eleven.

However, that's waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond my scope here. This is a book on CRPG History, the timeline is a way to give context to the changes we see on the games, like GUIs, better graphics, console ports, etc...

This is what I wish "game historians" with reach and connections like Frank Cifaldi were doing... much more useful than scanning promotional art and shit like that. :/

I'm not suggesting you make it a book, I took Space Rangers and the Witcher series as examples for a reason that they are cRPG's. Consider making it one page. Example 'Meanwhile in Poland' was perhaps poor one, I meant the whole world. One page is of course tiny for the whole world and entire culture, but in context of your topic, it should be enough. But the means HOW, one way or another, deliver it, and like I tried to convey that kind of approach may solve several issues.

Mod culture is also very interesting, I can see the connection to the scene in sense that lines between piracy and other things can get quite blurred, other is that modding requires skill (more or less) and effort, step towards content creator from cracker or customer. Example worth of paragraph... KotOR 2 restoration project perhaps? and of course there is also DMDX.

It's a pity if 'game historians' focus on stuff like scanning, or course it has historical meaning and it's important that someone is doing work to preserve that aspect of culture, but actual information value is in comparison to game graphics, say games in the 80's, how much had to be done in players imagination.

 

[A horse of course]

Have you ever thought about getting a real job

 

[FeelTheRads]

There ought to be some mention of all the failed consoles of the early 90s back when every company had money to burn and tried to make their own platform the next big thing. Casio, Panasonic, Bandai, Philips and Fujitsu come to mind. the section about the 90s makes it seem like as if nintendo dominated the market unchallenged.

Like the two consoles that ran on VHS tapes?

Meet the Action Max:

(I don't know how that remote should be held either.)

Seems that's not the Action Max, which was light-gun only.

http://www.retroplanet.gr/content/vcr-video-game-consoles

You can also see how the gaypad was used.

 

[commie]

OP should stick to his 'RPG' book. I played this cool RPG called Doom the other day, didn't see it in his book yet you play a ROLE of a Space Marine in it and do a quest to save the world. Inventory management too! It's the predecessor to other Space Marine games like Dawn of War 2 which are in the book so I thought it would be interesting to put the whole series of Space Marine RPG's in one section.

 

[Lostpleb]

I know that you probably get that a lot pepe, but why did you spend all that time elaborating on console games and non-RPGs in a book called "The cRPG Player's Handbook" ?

The project has grown so much in scale, size, and measure. Will you be renaming the book before release?