How Video Games Changed the World Page #7

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complexity in control systems.

It was one of the first games to

introduce the idea of special moves,

so each of the colourful characters

have their own way of fighting.

To perform, say,

Ryu's Rising Dragon Fist,

your fingers have to perform quite

a complex dance on the controllers.

You have to memorise then perform

this move at lightning speed,

which makes it a bit like

mastering a musical instrument.

Someone playing Street Fighter II

is making hundreds of strategic

decisions at lightning speed.

It's basically scissors,

paper, stone,

but on a bewilderingly

complex scale.

People playing Street Fighter II now,

they're still really competitive,

and they're doing

frame-by-frame analysis

of where the vulnerable windows are,

and when you can use which attack,

and what blocks what

and what doesn't block what

and it's, um, it's just crazy.

That's why it's so satisfying

when you win.

You aren't simply thumping

someone in the face.

You're outwitting

and outperforming them,

while thumping them in the face.

Street Fighter II influenced

a whole raft of other "beat 'em ups"

of growing complexity, such

as the phenomenal Tekken series,

which, as you can see,

became increasingly more violent.

Still, at least no-one's ever

inspired to actually do that

kind of thing in real life, as

a consequence of playing the game.

I remember, when I was a kid,

my brothers, um,

made me fight with another kid

and it was just like a little

kind of spar with another

young kid that was my age.

Everybody thought

I was going to lose and, um...

I actually

used Tekken moves to win!

It was so dumb,

but I actually won!

With my dodgy little

Eddy Gordo moves.

My missus still laughs at me about

that, like, I remember my brother

saying it around the table and I was

like, "Oh, sh*t, I actually did it!"

That's how much I was into Tekken!

It's so wrong!

Oh, well, at least they're just

kicking and punching each other.

It's not like games are full of

people running around shooting guns!

By 1993, there have been a few games

in which you shoot people with guns

from a first-person perspective,

like the fun Nazi-culling excursion

Wolfenstein 3D,

but it was the release

of our next game

that truly cemented

their place in history.

Doom was a flabbergasting,

ultraviolent descent

into bloody hell!

The first time I saw Doom,

my jaw was on the floor,

it was absolutely stunning!

Doom was one of the big "holy sh*t"

moments in games history.

I remember, I had been working

at PC Gamer for about a year

when that had come out

and, you know,

we were experienced

video game people.

You know, we all did that

for a living.

And Doom was

one of those moments where,

the first time we saw it,

we were like, "What is this?"

The modern-day shooter is

Doom, essentially.

Id Design effectively created

the first-person shooter,

with Wolfenstein, before Doom.

Doom popularised it, because it was

the perfect implementation, I think,

at that time of the idea of seeing,

of you inhabiting the character,

and the camera view

being your view of the world.

In fact, this ground-breaking

first-person viewpoint

was actually a happy accident.

The reason why we made the games

first-person when we started was

because it took less processor time

to actually not draw

a character in front of you,

so the game can go faster

because of it.

There was something very, um...

How can I describe it? ..lonely..

..about Doom.

I know, it's not a shock for some

people to imagine computer players,

computer game players

as being lonely,

but Doom was one of those games

I used to dream about, you know.

There was a feeling of real isolation

to it, you know, and, er,

I found that quite powerful at times.

Isolation is scary. Doom was scary.

Very scary! Honestly!

Young people hearing

older people talk about...

how Doom was scary must be like, you

know when you read those stories how

when people saw the first cinema

and would see a train coming,

and they would run out of

the cinema, you know what I mean,

you hear those stories and

laugh and think, "These idiots!

"They thought

it was a real train coming!"

But you know, things can have

an incredible effect on you,

when you're first experiencing them.

The reason why Doom was

terrifying for me was

because there were doors in it

that could open and shut.

That, you know, seems like caveman

staff, like being scared of that,

like, "Eugh!" being scared

of a shadow or something,

but the fact that there were doors,

and you could hear things

behind the doors,

that was an incredible

kind of leap forward,

that was an incredible,

um, an incredible thing!

One of the things

that makes Doom scary is just,

obviously, the darkness in the game

and it's also scary in that,

um, enemies,

you can hear them wandering around,

so you know they're there somewhere

and just hearing that,

not seeing it, is a scary thing.

And also, you know that

you could go through a hallway

and accidentally step on the

wrong thing and, all of a sudden,

a wall opens up next to you

and stuff is coming out at you.

Doom was packed with

so many innovations,

it was almost embarrassing,

but its biggest innovation of all

was the immersive

and compelling multiplayer mode.

I can remember, I was actually

working at a game development studio,

and one day we all went in

one Saturday, we all went in

and set up the computers, um,

set up the local area networks,

that we could all play Doom together,

and it was my first experience

of being in a game world with

a whole bunch of friends playing

together, beating enemies, er...

and being aware of each other,

that whole idea of telepresence,

being aware of each other in

a game world, it was fascinating

and so, so compelling and we just

played for 12 hours straight.

The beauty of video games

is that it, um,

it adds... it adds a dimension to

friendship that nothing else does.

Going to see a film with your friends

is nothing compared

to being in a shoot 'em up

or a game with your friends

and Doom was the first game that

really allowed us to experience that.

Yeah, although it's hard not to

notice that experience is

kind of violent and, in this regard,

Doom was a child of its time.

By 1993, technology had improved to

the point where in-game characters

could be represented,

albeit crudely, by real people,

as in the notorious

Mortal Kombat here,

And the sight of

these "real" people

maiming and mutilating each other

was a step too far, for some.

When a player wins, the so-called

"death sequence" begins.

The game narrator instructs

the player "to finish...",

and I quote, "finish his opponent."

The player may then choose

a method of murder, ranging from

ripping a heart out, to pulling

off the head of the opponent

with spinal-cord attached.

Every generation seems to have

some sort of cultural moral panic,

whether it's, you know,

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