Deconstructing Computer Games - Super Mario

Learning objective: To create a Power point presentation based on a game of your choice which explains the game play elements.

Computer games are created with recurring gameplay elements.
Here we will look at a number of these within the 2D Super Mario games.

Following on from this you will choose a game that you know well and create a Power Point Presentation which describes the same elements of that game.

The Super Mario games focus on Mario's adventures in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom and all its various locales. 

Gameplay often centers around progressing through various levels set in these locales, where Mario jumps on and defeats a number of enemies. 
The games usually feature simple plots; the most common theme is that of Bowser, the primary antagonist, kidnapping Princess Peach, whom Mario rescues. This can be said to be the game objective.

Super Mario Bros. established many gameplay concepts and elements prevalent in nearly everySuper Mario game, including a multitude of power-ups and items that bestow Mario with special abilities such as shooting fire and ice, growing to huge heights, and shrinking to micro size.
Over 262 million copies of games in the Super Mario series have been sold worldwide, making it the best-selling video game franchise.

Gameplay:

In the 2D games of the Super Mario series, gameplay primarily involves jumping on enemies and avoiding enemy attacks. In later 3D games, close quarters fights were incorporated. Intense emphasis on reaching various goals permeates the series; such goals include defeating enemies, reaching specific points, or solving puzzles. Throughout the series, collecting power-ups has been an integral part of the gameplay.

2D games have a certain number of hidden items and secret warp pipes. Early 2D games used levels with only one exit, then forcing the player to advance to the next sequential level. Super Mario Bros. 3 was the first game to use an overworld. In the game, levels are shown on a map, and the player can take different paths through the game. The order in which all these elements are arranged is not necessarily linear, which often allows the player to skip them or play them in different order. 

Super Mario World introduced levels with multiple exits. Unlike in Super Mario Bros. 3, where once a level is cleared, the player can choose the next level in the overworld, inSuper Mario World, the way the player exits the level dictates which path opens to player in the overworld.

Player Characters

Super Mario 

Jumping

Mario's special jumping abilities are a consistent element in the series. Mario can jump to considerable heights. The ability would evolve throughout the games, starting with the introduction of supercharged jumps in Super Mario Bros. 2 and spin jump in Super Mario World. Super Mario 64 introduced jumps such as the triple jump, wall kick, backflip and long jump, some of which would be featured in later games, including the New Super Mario Bros. sub-series.

Non Player Characters

Yoshi

The dinosaur character Yoshi has appeared as a mount to Mario in several Super Mario games since Super Mario World. Miyamoto had originally wished for Mario to be able to ride a dinosaur in Super Mario Bros., but this wasn't possible due to the technical restraints of the system. Yoshis generally provide varying abilities including eating enemies, flying and breathing fire.

Feedback

Item Blocks

Item blocks originated from the game Super Mario Bros. In that game and many of its sequels, such blocks contain either coins or power-ups, which aid the player's progress.

Mushroom Power-Ups

Mushroom power-ups appear in almost every Super Mario game. The most iconic of these is the Super Mushroom. Usually, it's about the size of Mario, and has an ivory stalk below a red and white (originally red and orange) spotted cap, giving it a striking resemblance to the real world Amanita muscaria. 

Collecting one of these increases Mario's size, allowing him to break certain blocks and take an extra hit of damage (upon which he reverts to his small size.)"

1-Ups

1-Up Mushrooms are common items that appear in the games and were introduced in Super Mario Bros. These mushrooms have green caps with white spots (originally orange caps with green spots). When Mario picks up one of these mushrooms, he is given an extra life. In Super Mario Bros., 1-Up Mushrooms are sometimes hidden in invisible item blocks. 3D games feature mushrooms that only appear if Mario walks over a certain spot, as in Super Mario 64, along with stationary 1-Up Mushrooms. 1-Ups can take other forms, such as the 3-up Moon

Rewards

Power Stars and course tokens

The Power Star is an item Mario needs to collect from levels in order to progress in some games of the series, such as Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy. They are typically either found in certain locations or awarded for clearing certain objectives. The Shine Sprites in Super Mario Sunshine serve a similar purpose. In Super Mario Land 2, there are six Golden Coin tokens that must be collected to finish the game.

Coins

Coins are often littered throughout Super Mario levels, with benefits occurring with collecting them. Most Super Mario games award the player an extra life once a certain amount of yellow coins, commonly 50 or 100, are collected.

Invincibility

Invincibility is a power featured frequently in the series that is usually granted by a star item, and is accompanied by a common music track. The Starman (or Super Star) is an anthropomorphised, flashing star in 2D Super Mario games and was introduced in Super Mario Bros. When Mario touches it, it temporarily grants him invincibility from enemies and, in some titles, increased speed. 

Flying

Flight is a power granted by various means in the series. It made its debut with the magic carpet item in Super Mario Bros. 2.. The Super Leaf item in Super Mario Bros. 3 also allowed flight. When collected, Mario has the unique ability to fly when running at full power. 

Animal/power suits

Suits that grant Mario various powers (mostly animal-based) have featured in various games. The Tanooki Suit is an item that also debuted in Super Mario Bros. 3. It has the same powers as the Super Leaf, but Mario has the ability to change into an invincible statue for about 5 seconds.

Projectile flowers

Special flowers that provide a source of projectiles are another recurring element in the series. A Fire Flower, introduced in Super Mario Bros., transforms Mario into Fire Mario. Fire Mario can throw bouncing fireballs at enemies, using them as weapons. 

Artificial Intelligence

Bowser

Is the game's antagonist, he kidnaps Princess Peach and imprisons her. He breathes out fireballs and uses his tail to fight Mario as he tries to rescue the Princess.

You Need to create a Power Point Presentation based on a game of your choice.
Your presentation should include the following elements which make up the game play:

Name and producer of the game.

1. Objective.

2. Game Play Theme.

3. Player Characters

4. Non Player Characters

5. Story.

6. Sounds.

7. Feedback.

8. Rewards.

9. Artificial Intelligence.

10. A brief summary of why this game was chosen.

Task 02 Components of early games

Using this link:

http://www.freeinvaders.org/

Experience the arcade game Space Invaders then write a report on the game.

You need to consider and write about the following:

Design; worlds, characters, graphics in general.

Sound effects.

Difficulty.

Scoring, feedback and rewards.

Using this link:

http://www.freekong.org/

Experience the arcade game Donkey Kong then write a report on the game.

You need to consider and write about the following:

Design; worlds, characters.

Sound effects.

Difficulty

Scoring; feedback and rewards.

Compare this game to the previous game. Is it easier? More enjoyable?

Using this link:

http://www.toplaying.com/games/play-for-free-cars-supersprint-3894.html

Experience the arcade game Supersprint then write a report on the game.

You need to consider and write about the following:

Design; worlds, characters.

Sound effects.

Difficulty

Scoring; feedback and rewards.

Compare this game to the previous game. Is it easier? More enjoyable?

Write a paragraph on each. Around 120 words.

Task 01 Research

Task 01: Use the links below to research some facts about the history of computer games:

There are quite a number of websites devoted to the history of computer games.

Here are some:

www.emuunlim.com/doteaters/index.htm

Gives a description of the early developments of computer games until around 1985.

www.videogamecritic.net

A site with brief reviews and images of many of the games produced for the various consoles, ranging from the Atari 2600 to the PlayStation 3.

www.gameinnovation.org.

Interesting site with an overview of many gameplay innovations and the first games that used them.

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/history-of-computer-games--2

Useful timeline

Year 9 History of Games Questionnaire 01 Mr Ealey

1.  In what year did Physicist Willy Higinbotham invent the first video game?

2. Which newly founded company created the hugely successful arcade game Pong in 1972?

3. What was the first game to use vector graphics?

4. What was the name of the first colour game?

5. After dropping out of college in 1972, which company did Steve Jobs work for?

6. What was the name of the first home video system?

7. What was the name of the first arcade game to track and display high scores?

8. In 1979, what game was the first to allow users to enter three character initials, enabling high scorers’ names to be saved?

9. Why did the game Death Race cause the controversy that caused it to be withdrawn in 1976?

10. Find and show images of the following game interfaces:

Pacman (1980)

Donkey Kong (1981)

Space Invaders (1978)

Mario Brothers (1983)

11. In what years where these games released?

Super Breakout – Atari

Space Wars - Cinematronics

01 Computer Games - A History

To design the computer games of the future, you need to understand the games of the present. The games of the present are rooted in the games of the past. 
Here is a brief overview of the most important developments in computer games over the past fifty years. 

These changes can globally be categorized in a number of different types, which all influenced each other:

Changes in the hardware for playing games. These developments had a huge effect on what was possible in computer games and, hence, enabled the game designers to make different and more fascinating games. We went from devices with minimal computing power, memory, and graphics to the consoles of today with special 3D graphics cards, DVD disks to store game data, and Internet connectivity.

 Changes in interaction devices. Over the years the devices we use to control the games have also changed. Early game consoles had special rotating knobs or simple joysticks and a few buttons. Nowadays game controllers have multiple joysticks, and lots of buttons. And in recent years this has been extended with devices that measure movement, like the Wii controllers of Nintendo or the Kinect system of Microsoft. Obviously these had a strong impact on the game play.

 Changes in the software tools available. Initially game developers wrote every line of code themselves (often in assembly language) and drew every pixel of the artwork. Nowadays extensive game engines and other middleware packages are available allowing for much more sophisticated games. And artist, animators, and level designers use advanced tools that help them to create complicated artwork efficiently.

 Changes in the game business. Game companies have considerably changed over the past fifty years. While initially games were developed primarily by individuals, nowadays there are huge teams of specialists working on a single game. Development budgets have grown from a few thousand dollars to tens of millions of dollars per game. Also educational programs have appeared to train the professionals needed by the game industry.

 Changed in the demographics of the players. While initially games were primarily played by young males, this has considerably changed in recent years. The number of female players is

1close to the number of male players, and the age of players ranges from 4 to 100. This has led to new genres of games.

 Diversification. Initially, computer games were primarily played on arcade machines. Over the years the variety of platforms increased considerably. Nowadays we play games on consoles, personal computers, handheld devices, telephones, TV set-top boxes, etc. Also the type of players has diversified, as has the ways people like to play (for example casual, online, or hard- core). All of these devices and ways of play come with their own business models and development budgets.

 Changes in the design of games. All these changes have in turn led to considerable changes in the design of games. Game designers used the new hardware and interaction devices to create new forms of immersive gameplay. They created games that attracted different demographics. And they started to better understand better what makes an interesting game.

The past of computer games changes every day so a document about it can never be up-to-date.

Chronology

These are  some of the major milestones in the history of computer games that everybody should know.

1950 – 1959

Most people consider the real first interactive computer game to be Tennis for Two, developed in 1958 by nuclear physicist William Higginbotham for visitors of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. His game was meant to instruct players about the effects of gravity. Of course these early developers never realized the potential of games, partly because of the huge amount of equipment that was required.

1960 – 1969

Another early game was Spacewar! developed in 1961 by MIT student Steve Russell on a PDP1 computer1. A number of other games were created on this machine by students, including Lunar Landing.

In the second half of the decade a number of people and companies started to seriously consider the commercial exploitation of computer games. In 1966 Sega releases the arcade game Periscope which, although not really a computer game, did show the possibilities of arcade game machines. And Ralph Baer started researching interactive television, which led to the Odyssey game console, released in 1972.

1970 – 1979

This is often referred to as the golden age for video arcade games. The first commercial exploitation of computer games came through the arcade machines. These machines were allowed to cost a considerable amount of money, making it commercially feasible to exploit computer games. The first arcade computer game Computer Space appeared in 1971 but was not a commercial success.
 The creators though did not give up, founded Atari, and in 1972 produced the Pong game which was a huge commercial success. (One of the interesting stories is that when they put their first machine in a bar, within two weeks it was reported to have broken down. But the actual problem was that due to the huge number of quarters that were thrown in, the pay-slot system had stopped working.)

Soon Atari was followed by many other companies and new interesting games were created. Breakout appeared in 1976, and also Space Wars that for the first time used vector graphics.
In 1978 color was introduced and Space Invaders was produced by Midway.

i

In 1979 Asteroids appeared (with 50.000 machines sold worldwide the biggest success), and in 1980 the highly popular game Pac-Man was created. (It was originally named Puck-Man but the distributor was afraid people might scratch away part of the letter P. Another interesting story is that the game led to a coin shortage in Japan.)

A noteworthy game was Death Race that appeared in 1976. In this game you had to control a car and your goal was to run down as many “gremlins” as you could. Even though the graphics was pixilated with the gremlins looking like stick men, the game caused a lot of controversy which led to its end.

Also home consoles were starting to appear that could be connected to the TV set. The first was the Odyssey in 1972 of which about 100.000 units were sold. It could only move some dots on the screen and used plastic overlays for the TV to add colored playfields.

In 1976 the Channel F system appeared that for the first time used cartridges for the games, making it possible to play different games on the same system, which was a very important innovation. The big step though came in 1977 when Atari introduced the VCS system (also named the Atari 2600). Initially it did not sell very well, because the device was expensive and the games were not very good, but the turning point came in 1980 when Atari started to bundle the game Space Invaders with the device. It shows that in the end it is not the hardware that counts but the games. In total over 1000 different game cartridges were produced for the VCS. Over 30 million devices were sold and hundreds of millions of games.

These early devices were extremely limited in their hardware. For example, the Atari VCS initially had only 1 Kilobyte of memory for both the program (written in Assembly language) and the data. Programming interesting game play on them was a very challenging task.

1980 – 1989

The number of games increased rapidly. Many famous games were produced in this decade, like Zork (1980), Donkey Kong (1981), Pole Position (1982), Pitfall (1982), Mario Bros. (1983), Dragon’s Lair (1983), King’Quest (1984), Elite (1984), The Legend of Zelda (1986), Metroid (1986), Mega Man (1987), Final Fantasy (1987), Metal Gear (1987), Popoulos (1989) and Prince of Persia (1989).

Zork (1980) 

Mario Bros. (1983)

Donkey Kong (1981)

The Legend of Zelda (1986)

Final Fantasy (1987)

Mega Man (1987)

Because of the success of companies like Atari, others soon followed. 

Mattel introduced the IntelliVision in 1980 and in 1982 the ColecoVision appeared. Many companies appeared creating games for the various consoles, often of poor quality. 

Atari, who was the market leader at that point, made some huge mistakes with games like E.T. that cost them millions of dollars and lost them the trust of their customers. (Atari bought the rights for E.T. from Spielberg for a reputed twenty-odd million dollars. To have the game ready for Christmas they had only six weeks to produce it. They managed but produced a game that is often cited as the worst game of all time.)

E. T. (1982)

As a result, consumers became confused and disappointed. Many companies in the U.S. went bankrupt or stepped out of the game business. 

As a result, the focal point of game production shifted to Japan.

Another reason for the crash was the introduction of new game computers. 
Cheap personal computers appeared that were particularly suited for games because of their memory, graphics and sound capabilities.

Probably the most famous are Radio Shack’s TRS-80, the VIC-20, the ZX80 and the Commodore 64.

Radio Shack’s TRS-80

Commodore 64

Atari also entered this market with their very popular Atari ST that was introduced in 1985. Games for these computers were easier to copy, because of floppy disks or cassette tapes. 

This also made it possible to save game progress, which allowed for more complex games. Before, the player always had to start the game from the beginning.

The crash of the console market made it possible for other companies to enter this market. 

Nintendo introduced their Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 and the Sega Master System followed a year later. 
The NES came bundled with Super Mario Bros. and was an immediate success. Even though the Sega Master System was technological much more advanced than the NES, the NES was the most popular because of the high quality and uniqueness of its games (enforced by Nintendo through very strict publishing deals). It again showed that it is the games that matter, not the hardware. 

These devices had new gamepads with the directional-pad (or D-pad) rather than joysticks or turning knobs, that changed the way in which games could be played.

At the end of this decade an important new development happened. Nintendo introduced the Game Boy in 1989 as the first handheld gaming system. It came bundled with the game Tetris that made it very popular. 

Tetris was designed by the Russian scientist Alexei Pajitnov and is considered the most addictive game ever. (Even though there is some clear design error in it; when the player has trouble playing the game Tetris becomes harder because the blocks pile up, while it would be more logical to help the player and make the game easier.)

For a long time Nintendo was the prime producer of handhelds.

1990 – 1999

This decade saw a huge increase in the power of the game consoles, while at the same moment the popularity of the game arcade machines declined because they were no longer of superior quality. Sega introduced its Mega Drive, also called the Genesis, in 1989 soon followed by the Nintendo Super NES. Both were very successful. They were 16-bit systems with a much faster processor and more memory (64K for the Genesis and 128K for the Super NES). They had special hardware for drawing sprites and a higher screen resolution than previous consoles. While Nintendo had Mario as their main character, Sega introduced Sonic the Hedgedog. There were some other systems around but Sega and Nintendo had the majority of the market.

Between 1994 and 1996 the next generation of game consoles appeared. Sega introduced the Saturn in 1994 and Nintendo the N64 in 1996. The newcomer was Sony who released the PlayStation in 1994. (There were some others but they had a small market share.) They used faster 32 or 64 bit processors and had much more memory (2-4 Mb). They also had special hardware for 3D graphics (although still

8rather limited). The Saturn could draw 500.000 polygons per second, the PlayStation 360.000 and the N64 100.000 (or 500.000 with lower accuracy). They also had much improved sound systems, increasing the immergence in the games. The Saturn and PlayStation has a CD drive, giving games the possibility to have much more data. Nintendo continued to use the cartridge system because they claimed it would load faster. The N64 had the possibility to connect four controllers. Nintendo clearly started to focus on games that are played with the whole family. Something they have continued with great success since. The PlayStation was the easiest to program, which might be one of the factors that led to the huge number of titles that became available for it. Because of the 3D graphics and the increased expectations of the players the cost of producing games started to grow considerably. Game budgets of half a million dollars or more became common.

During this decade also the PC games became mature. The PC was getting a considerable advantage over the consoles. They were much more powerful. Their graphics resolution was better, they had more memory, they had hard disks to store game data, and they had a much higher processor speed. Many great games were produced for PCs, for example Lemmings, Sim City (by the now famous Will Wright), Civilization(by Sid Meier), Popoulos (by Peter Molyneux), Tomb Raider, Quake, Half-life, and Grand Theft Auto. Most of these continue to have successful sequels.

PCs could stream video and music from the CD. This led to a new generation of games that relied on good integration of Full Motion Video (FMV) and excellent sound tracks and environmental sound effects. An important example was Myst (1993) with it beautiful pre-rendered scenes and atmospheric sound effects. Another example is Command & Conquer (1995) that used FMV to tell to story.

Another advantage of PCs for gaming was that they had a mouse and keyboard. This allowed for games in which the player has to quickly point to locations on the screen, and for games that required many different commands. Real time strategy games, like Command & Conquer needed such a pointing device for easy play as did the point-and-click adventures that became popular, like Monkey Island. Keyboards were for example crucial in the many complicated flight simulators. Many PCs also had modems, making it possible to play games against people at other locations. This led to the rise of the many massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG), which is still primarily the domain of the PC.

One of the problems of PC games was that it was initially very difficult to install them, in particular when most people were still using DOS. There were always issues with the many different sound and video drivers and it required some expert knowledge from the players about DOS. As a result, games on these devices became something of the nerds; an image that kept hanging around computer games for a long time. It also made the games hard to develop as the developers had to create games that would work on many different specs and different type of e.g. sound cards. Games normally came with a huge collection of drivers to make them work on all these different devices. This all improved considerably when people started to use Windows 95 and in particular when Microsoft release DirectX (1995) which could be used to abstract away from the underlying hardware. It boosted the developments of Windows games.

While console games were played primarily in the living room, PCs were normally located in the study room. This led to a different kind of gamers (often male and slightly older) and a different type of games that were darker and could be played in isolation. In 1993, the game Mortal Combat created a huge uprising in the U.S. because of its offensive visuals including the showing of blood. It led to congressional hearings and the start of the discussion about the effect (and banning) of violence in computer games that has not stopped since. It also led to the first official rating system of games (the ESBR).

There was a drive to create 3D looking games, but most PCs did not have 3D graphics hardware. So extremely clever programmers tried to do fake 3D in software. Probably the most well-known game in this genre was Doom created in 1993 by John Carmack and John Romero. It is often considered the first first-person shooter, although there were others before. But it definitely was the most popular one. Although in some sense just a simple maze game, the first-person view, combined with the horror-style

10graphics created a very immersive experience and made the game extremely popular. Initially the creators used the shareware model to sell their game and they were extremely surprised by the success.

The success of games like Doom also led to an increased interest in 3D graphics cards for the PC. Because of the increased interest prices dropped which in turn increased the sales. As a result more and more games supported these graphics cards which again increased interest. Soon a 3D graphics card became a standard ingredient of a gaming PC. But it was difficult for game developers because they had to create games that would work well on PCs with largely varied graphics capabilities. Developing games for consoles was a lot easier in this respect (and still is).

Also the handheld got a new generation. In 1998 Nintendo produced the Game Boy Color. It was about twice as fast as the Game Boy, had four times as much memory and featured a color display of 160x144 pixels. It could communicate with other devices. An important game that was produced for the Game Boy Color was Pokémon in 1998. It was a simplified (Japanese) RPG game. Such games have been popular throughout the world for a very wide audience. The focus is on character development, creating a team, and fighting battles; normally in a separate screen with many different special moves. Pokémon added to this an important collecting aspect. Players wanted to collect all the Pokémon in the game. Nintendo created two versions, Red and Blue, and to collect all the Pokémon you had to connect up with somebody with the other version and exchange Pokémon. This became a big hype, supported by trading cards, comics, etc. In the first ten years 140 million copies of the game were sold.

2000 – 2009

The next generation of game consoles started just before the turn of the century. Sega was the first to produce their Dreamcast. It was the first 128-bit game console and the specs were impressive for those days: It has 26 MB of memory, it had 32 bit surround sound, and it could display 24-bit colors and could draw up to 7 million polygons per second. Its most popular launch title was Virtua Fighter 3 and also the various sport titles were very successful. To compete with the online gaming capabilities of the PC it contained a modem. Even though it sold rather well (5 million devices in the first year) this was not enough because the investments had been huge and, as became common those days, the manufacturers actually made a loss on the devices which had to be compensated by the games sales of

11which they got a considerable percentage. Hence, Sega decided to stop the production in early 2001 and drop out of the console market. They continued making games for other consoles and still do so today.

In 2000 Sony produced its PlayStation 2. The specs were again much higher. The 128-bit processor had 32 MB of memory and it could draw up to 65 million polygons per second. It had excellent sound qualities, a network adapter and a double layered DVD drive that could also play movie DVDs. The later feature was responsible for quite a lot of the early sales as the PlayStation 2 was cheaper than a normal DVD player. It initially also cost Sony a lot of money because they made a loss on the devices and the people that bought it as a DVD player bought hardly any games. The network adapter made it possible to play online games, but this has never been the PlayStation’s main attraction. Microsoft’s Xbox was much better in this respect.

The PlayStation 2 was backwards compatible with the PlayStation and, hence, immediately a large number of games were available. Although relatively hard to program, soon a large collection of good games appeared for the devices which was an important reason for its immense success. In total close to 150 million units have been sold.

Nintendo followed in 2000 with the GameCube. They decided though to take a different route and did not focus on specs. The machine was considerably weaker (it could “only” draw 20 million polygons per second) and it did not support DVDs nor did it have Internet connectivity. But as a result it was a lot cheaper and more directed towards the more casual gamers. There were some great games for it, like the Legends of Zelda games, Super Monkey Ball and Metal Gear Solid. But there was not really enough content and, hence, the sales were somewhat disappointing (just over 20 million units).

And finally, in 2001, Microsoft entered the market with the Xbox. It is rumored that Microsoft started their own game console after Sony refused to use DirectX in the PlayStation 2. The Xbox was basically a PC in a console box and was a very powerful machine. It had 64 MB of memory, a DVD drive (but it could not play movie DVDs directly), it could draw 30 million polygons per second and had a hard drive and build-in fast Ethernet. One of the top titles was Halo.

The Xbox was in particular good in the online domain. The Xbox Live service offered by Microsoft was a great success. It could be used to see trailers, download demos (to the hard drive) and play online against others. Microsoft had a big advantage in this domain.

The Xbox was too expensive and too late. The PlayStation 2 had already taken the market and there were many more games available for it. Microsoft had to fight an uphill battle. They managed by putting in a huge amount of money but never got even close to the successes of the PlayStation 2. The Xbox sold close to 25 million units. And Microsoft made a total loss on it of 4 billion dollars.

Creating games for the new consoles also became a much more complicated and expensive task. Players (and console manufacturers) demanded increasingly better graphics, movies, great sound tracks, and an increased playing time. Game budgets rose from one to five million dollars per game. This required large teams of programmers, artists, and many more, that were difficult to manage. Many game projects failed or missed their deadlines. Also many completed games were big failures and the competition was fierce. Some companies sadly went bankrupt.

In the meantime gaming on the PC also developed further. Hardcore gamers preferred gaming on a PC because, with the right investment, the graphics quality of the PC was considerably better than on the consoles. Also certain types of games required keyboard and/or mouse to be played in a comfortable way. However, from the perspective of the producers of games, the PC became more and more of a problem. Because of the wide variety of graphics cards, processor speeds, memory, and peripherals, it became increasingly difficult to create games that worked well on all of them. Developers had to choose between sophisticated graphics that only worked on top-of-the-line machines or more moderate graphics but with a larger potential user group. Game series like Age of Empires and Command & Conquer went for the second route because they appealed to a wide audience, while for example the FPS Crysis (2007) went for the best possible graphics and was primarily directed to the hard-core gamers.

Another problem with PC games was that, no matter what the developers tried, games were easily cracked and copied freely. It became harder and harder to make money on PC games. Also the prices of PC games became considerably lower than those of console games. So many developers stopped developing games for the PC, or published them only considerably later than the console versions.

One PC game that should of course be mentioned is The Sims that was first published in 2000 for the PC, and its many sequels. Even though it was developed by the famous Will Wright it was nearly rejected because the publisher could not image that maintaining a family would be fun. How wrong they were. Until now over 70 million units have been sold and new versions and expansions still regularly appear.

Another important development was the rise of the MMORPG games. Of course World of Warcraft (2004) is the most famous of these, although not the largest. That prize goes to Lineage II that is in particular played in South Korea. But WoW is huge with it ten million players spending many hours a day in the world of Azeroth and together paying more than a billion dollars a year for this.

Another important development was the rise of casual games. Now that more and more households were getting fast Internet connections more and more people started to use the computers that were traditionally not gamers. These people liked to play a completely different type of games that were easy to learn and could be played in short periods of times. This led to the rise of the casual games that were often written in Flash and could be played directly from the website in a browser. Many of them were free, generating revenues through advertisement. A key example was the highly successful game Bejeweled (2001). Also well-known card games were played a lot as casual games and a number of arcade games returned, often with largely improved visuals and slightly easier gameplay. Also new genres become popular, like the hidden object games in which the player had to locate certain objects in complicated pictures. With the recent rise of social networking sites like Facebook a new genre of social games appeared in which people have to collaborate with friends in their social networks. A key example is Farmville (2009) in which you must manage a virtual farm and exchange good with friends. It has over 80 million active players.

The popularity of handheld gaming devices continued to increase. Nintendo introduced the Game Boy Advance in 2001, with a double screen resolution (240x160 pixels), 16-bit color, eight time the memory and a much faster processor. It was again a big success. Together with the redesigned Game Boy Advance SP over 125 million units were sold. The most popular games were again Pokémon games. Then Nintendo made an amazing step. They introduced the Nintendo DS that featured a double screen, something that had never been seen in gaming devices. Also, the bottom screen was a touch screen leading to completely new forms of play. It also had a microphone that could be used for play (e.g. whistling to your dog in the popular Nintendogs game of which 23 million copies were sold) and a Wi-Fi connection. Nintendo continued to focus on a wider demographic including women and elder people. This also shows from the highly successful game Brain Age (2005), also known as Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training in which the player had to solve many math related exercises. The game directed itself explicitly toward elder people claiming that it would keep their brains young, although that was never scientifically proven. But that did not harm the sales. Over 15 million copies have been sold so far.

Sony also wanted to get a share of the handheld market and introduced the Play Station Portable (PSP) in 2004. This was a very powerful machine with 32 MB of memory, a screen resolution of 480x272 pixels with full 24-bit color, Wi-Fi connectivity, and video disks that made it possible to also play movies on the device. It was more like a multimedia player for video, MP3, and games. As a result it was also heavy and expensive. The games created for it were similar to the PlayStation 2 but players were not that much interested in a portable device that would play the same games as they could play at home (and for which they had to pay again). Also many of the heavy 3D games are not so well suited to play on a handheld device in public places. A number of versions were produced and in 2009 Sony created the PSP Go that had a rather different design and did no longer use video disks but focused fully on downloadable content, much following the iPhone App Store model. In total over 60 million units of the PSP have been sold.

Also people started to play games on their mobile phones. Initially, screens of phones though were small and the devices were rather limited in their specs. Also they did only have the small phone buttons as

15controls. This made it difficult to develop games for them. Added to this came the difficulty that all phones were different. Developers had to create hundreds of version of their games. And selling them was again difficult as this had to go through the telephone companies. Nokia releases in 2003 the N- Gage, which was a phone and a handheld gaming system. Technically the device was good, but the design was rather poor, making it difficult to play games on it. Only 3 million units were sold.

Things changed when the smart phones started to become popular among non-business users. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 this had a huge effect on mobile gaming. The 480x320 screen resolution (on the recent iPhone 4 even 960x640), multi touch screen, and accelerometer made it an excellent device for gaming and challenged the developers to think of new ways of controlling games and new forms of gameplay altogether. But what was the biggest step was the App Store. It allows every developer (and amateur) to create games for the device and sell them through Apple, where 70% of the revenues go to the developer. This made it possible for individuals and very small teams to build up a game development company. No longer were they dependent on the big publishers. The amount of content grew tremendously and prices for games dropped to often just one dollar, completely changing the landscape of mobile gaming. Until now around 75 million iPhones have been sold and close to 10 billion apps have been downloaded for it of which probably half are games.

In 2005 Microsoft started the most recent generation of game consoles with the Xbox 360. This time they did beat Sony who only managed to widely publish their PlayStation 3 in 2007. It was a powerful machine with a tri-core processor, 512 MB of memory, internet connectivity (but Wi-Fi was strangely only an add-on), wireless controllers, and a larger hard disk (except for the cheapest model). It could display full HD images and had a powerful graphics processor that could draw up to 500 million polygons per second.

Despite quite some problems with hardware failure (the infamous red ring of death) the console soon became popular, in particular because it was the only next generation console around and because there were many good titles available. Halo 3 (2007) was the most successful game for it, selling over 8 million copies. What set the Xbox 360 apart were Xbox Live and the online marketplace. Microsoft also introduce a uniform achievement system for all games with which the player could get points that accumulated to his/her Gamerscore with an online ranking. High score lists always stimulate players to play and by accumulating them over all games this motivation even increases. Up to now around 50 million units have been sold.

Sony took the bold move to produce a new console with a blue-ray player. But they had overestimated the speed with which such players would become common. As a result the devices remained way too expensive. Together with other technical problems this led to a long delay in the introduction of the PlayStation 3. They even largely missed to so import 2006 Christmas season and only had the device widely available during 2007, giving Microsoft a huge advantage. The device was also very expensive with a launch price of 500 dollar. The specs though were impressive with even faster graphics than the Xbox 360. But it took Sony a long time to recover and up till now “only” 40 million units have been sold.

Although promised, backwards compatibility with PlayStation 2 games was not very good. Hence, many people continued to buy the PlayStation 2 with the many excellent games that were available. One of the top games for the PlayStation 3 was Killzone 3 (2009) produced by the Dutch game developer Guerrilla Games.

Nintendo decided to go a completely different direction. Rather than opting for more graphics power they decided to aim for the casual market and completely redefined the way to control games with their Wii system that was introduced in 2006. The machine did not even support HD graphics; it did not contain a hard disk and was a lot less powerful. But the controller was revolutionary. Looking more like a remote control, it registered the movement of the player which could then be used to steer the game

17characters. Initially there was a lot of skepticism about this and many game journalists predicted it would mean the end of Nintendo, but they were very wrong. With its cheap price and ease of use it soon became the most popular console with more than 75 million units sold. And contrary to Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo actually made a profit on selling the device.

The games produced for the Wii were also rather different, exploiting the new possibilities and introducing many mini-games. Already the bundled Wii Sports was a great game to play followed by Wii Play of which over 25 million copies were sold. It were in particular the games produced by Nintendo itself that sold very well, probably because they best knew how to effectively use the new interface possibilities and they knew the audience to which the device was targeted. More than 500 million Wii games had been sold worldwide at the end of 2009.

Nintendo continued this focus on casual games and physical interaction with the introduction of Wii Fit that came with a balance board that measured your weight distribution. It again introduced a new way of controlling games and tapped into the exercise and health hype. It was again a big success with close to 25 million copies being sold.

2010 – 2011

Only in 2010 did Microsoft and Sony respond to the success of the control mechanism of the Wii. Sony introduced the Move that had similar (but better) functionality. Microsoft went quite a step further with the introduction of Kinect that measured full body movement using cameras. Although lots of games have appeared for these systems it is still too early to tell whether they are successful. Many of the games concentrate on dancing or fitness but slowly other titles are appearing as well.

Although the current generation of game consoles is already more than five years old there is still no new generation at the horizon. Only Nintendo has announced its Wii U that is expected to appear in the second half of 2012. The graphics capabilities of the Wii are far behind the Xbox 360 and PS 3 and with the fast adoption of large full HD televisions Nintendo had to create a system with better capabilities. The system will introduce a new controller that contains an embedded touch screen leading to many new interaction possibilities.

Sony and Microsoft are reluctant because of the huge development and launch costs involved. Also, consoles are normally sold below the production price leading to an initial loss that will take a long time to recover. Currently console manufacturers are looking at the cloud for future gaming. In the end it would be cheaper if the games would run on huge server farms and the images would then be streamed to thin clients at the customers. This requires fast broadband and a guaranteed performance, something that is not possible now for a large number of customers but, with the right investment, could become the standard of the future. Whether this will be successful is still doubtful but companies like Microsoft invest a lot of money in it.

Mobile gaming became even more important this decade. The game Angry Birds is probably the biggest success with over 100 million downloads. The success of the iPhone is copied by others. Android phones with their Marketplace are now outperforming the iPhone and Microsoft is pushing Windows Phone 7 with its deal with Nokia. In 2012 Windows 8 is expected to appear that will integrate phones, tablets, notebooks, and desktop machines.

Another important development are the tablets, led by the Apple iPad that appeared in 2010 and has already been followed by the iPad 2. Many manufacturers are now producing tablets, most running Android. People expect 2012 to be the year of the tablets with prices dropping considerably. Tablets are also very capable of playing games. With their larger screen and faster processors they are excellent gaming devices. Unfortunately a big legal fight has appeared between the manufacturers about patents and model rights. This might seriously hamper innovation.