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• Go West! Red Dead Redemption and How to Get Cowboys and Indians Right

  By the time videogames had evolved beyond batting a ball back and forth across a digital net, the Western had already lost much of its cultural currency. The Lone Ranger’s audience had ridden off into the sunset, replaced by minds and eyes hungry for space instead of the frontier. That’s why we have Spacewar! in 1961 and not Stagecoach!. The last quarter of the 20th century’s appetite for science fiction is most certainly why Bald Space Marine is the icon he is in 2009’s gaming landscape, but I don’t think it fully explains why games have yet to produce a spectacular Western. Why is it that after decades of creation, there isn’t a game about cowboys sitting on Top One Hundred Games of All Time lists? Why is Oregon Trail the entire canon of frontier gaming? Rockstar’s Red Dead Revolver seemed like a contender before it released in 2004. The game certainly sold well, one and a half million copies according to publisher Take-Two, but its critical reception was lukewarm. Despite Red Dead’s grand narrative ambitions — bounty hunting protagonist Red Harlow and his quest for revenge are Louis L’Amour vintage — and seemingly fitting open world play, it wasn’t the defining videogame Western it could have been. Now, it could have been the game’s troubled development that kept it from greatness. It started as a Capcom game in 2000, stalled out, and was sold to Rockstar, where it apparently became a Frankenstein’s monster of legacy code and newer features. I think the real problem is that the Grand Theft Auto-styled open world is not the foundation for a great Western. Read More... Posted Feb 04 2009, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, capcom, rockstar, shadow of the colossus, team ico, grand theft auto, spacewar!, take two, Red dead revolver, trico, Oregon trail, red dead redemption

• The Videogame Ages, part 2

  In part one of The Videogame Ages, I discussed the inadequacy of “generation” language in gaming, and laid out The Golden Age of gaming. In part two, I look at the Silver and Bronze ages before taking a look at the modern era and the future. The Silver Age – 1983 to 1996 8-Bit, 16-Bit, Early Handheld, Early 3D, Advanced PC and Arcade The silver age of games is defined by expansion, in not just playability but breadth of experience. When home computers became affordable and home consoles began diversifying, games started transforming from immediate, single-mechanic experiences into more lasting forms. Silver age games were still about escalating challenge, but high scores ceased being the goal, replaced by definitive endings. Games started becoming more explicitly narrative-driven, as aesthetic justification on consoles and as the focus of many PC games (see the entire adventure game genre.) Portable gaming also started to rise to prominence during this period, early single-screen LCD games replaced by multi-game consoles like the Game Boy and Atari Lynx. Arcade and PC game technology pulled far away from home consoles, but all games were shifted from the rough visual abstraction of golden age games, into more aesthetically recognizable presentations – albeit still cartoonish impressionistic rather than realistic. The rise of polygonal 3D graphics, both real-time full 3D (Yu Suzuki’s Virtua series) and pre-rendered (Myst, etc.), at the end of the silver age marks the transition to bronze. In 1996, with the release of Mario 64, Tomb Raider, and Quake, the silver age comes to a close. Read More... Posted Oct 27 2008, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, boom blox, little big planet, game boy, halo 3, nes, PC, half-life, mac, mario 64, atari, Playstation, super mario bros, nolan bushnell, spore, tomb raider, 8-bit, 16-bit, quake, mmo, arcade, famicom, littlebigplanet, spacewar!, bob dvorak, golden age, 128-bit, Magnavox odyssey, myst, bronze age, silver age, pong, 32-bit, tennis for two

• The Videogame Ages, part 1

  This past Friday, I tried to slip a little piece of language into a discussion about game emulation that I was wary about using at all. At this point, the go-to boundaries for discussing videogames’ admittedly small history is console-technology generations. We say 8-Bit or 16-Bit because these are easy identifiers based on competing, contemporary technologies. But the language “The 8-Bit Generation” doesn’t account for arcade technology, PC games, or portable gaming. Now that Bob Dvorak’s Tennis for Two is officially fifty years-old, I think we can finally start applying broader terms to gaming’s evolutionary eras. Obviously history is fluid, and chances are these classifications won’t hold true in 2050, but for now they work. The Hesiodic ages, as laid out here, consider games on every platform; the rigid parameters of home consoles, the advanced nature of PC and Mac gaming throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, the fast strides made by arcade technology throughout that same period, and the predominantly inferior technology available in handheld gaming. Unlike Hesiod’s Ages of Man, however, the videogame ages are (mostly) a positive progression. Please note: these are not strict definitions. This is a discussion, and I want everyone to make their opinions heard in the comments section. Now then, onward to the Golden Age. Read More... Posted Oct 27 2008, 05:30 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, boom blox, little big planet, game boy, halo 3, nes, PC, half-life, mac, mario 64, atari, Playstation, super mario bros, nolan bushnell, spore, tomb raider, 8-bit, 16-bit, quake, mmo, arcade, famicom, littlebigplanet, spacewar!, bob dvorak, golden age, 128-bit, Magnavox odyssey, myst, bronze age, silver age, pong, 32-bit, tennis for two