Video Games: The Movie Page #6

---

why those aliens were falling

out of the sky,

we didn't care why

those aliens were falling

out of the sky,

we just wanted to shoot them.

But, nowadays, not only do we know

why those aliens

are falling out of the sky,

we know the names of their moms

and we know

their future children's names

and we know we have

to destroy all of them.

I feel like games

as they've developed

throughout time, have kept a lot of

the same traits,

they've just sort of,

um, manipulated how they act

in the game world,

because people have

different desires for games.

They want to be more involved, they don't

want to just sit down and sit at a bar

for a little while and play Pong,

they want to actually be invested

in that game world a little more.

In the beginning, it was simply

the industry understanding,

"What are these mechanics?

How do players interact

with an interactive medium?"

As we started to understand

those rules a little bit better,

other aspects of crafting something

really high-end or beautiful

get worked in.

And so, high-end graphics

start to become more relevant

because we're, you know,

learning how visuals

interact with the storytelling

and interact with the gameplay.

In those days,

the game designer's main job

was to create the rules

of a game, that is all.

It was very much

like chess or cards.

In the '90s with PlayStation

and more powerful

technology arriving,

we had the gift of expression.

Games became 3-D,

characters could talk,

music could be created,

characters could emote

through detailed

facial expressions.

In the late '80s and early '90s

the industry was reinvigorated

with new technology,

new customers, and new talent.

A renaissance in game design

was arriving,

which not only gave birth

to some of

the greatest video games

of all time,

but eventually a new industry

that would generate

billions of dollars

and a new generation

of game designers.

In the fall of 1972, a small group

of computer science students

at Stanford University's

Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

got the idea to convene

the very first

"Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics"

with the use of the computer lab's

very own PDP-10.

Contestants fought it out

on the machine's, at the time,

impressive 10-inch raster display.

Two events were held:

A five-man free-for-all,

and a team competition.

In Spacewar,

five distinctively

rendered vessels,

nicknamed "Pointy Fins",

"Roundback", "Birdie",

"Funny Fins", and "Flatback",

battled to the death

in the display's circular arena,

dominated by a star,

whose gravitational pull

drew them to the center.

This was the very first

video game tournament

and the beginning of a community

that would soon become a culture.

In my dorm room,

we would throw cables

over the balcony down

to other people's computers

and start these kind of

home-brewed LAN competitions

where we were playing

all kinds of games

from shooters to RTSs to anything

that we could just play together.

Doom was like a bomb

dropped on my 20s.

I lived in a house with

a bunch of other geeky guys

that I used to play

Dungeons and Dragons with

and we first got Doom

and built a LAN in our house

and we had network cable

going from each room

and oh, my God, that was all we did

for, like, the next year,

I could swear,

it was just play Doom

and Doom 2, four players.

And just something

about blowing your friend

in half and then hearing him

in the next room, like,

curse at you, like,

nothing is more satisfying.

Growing up in America,

the one place you go

was the mall,

I was like that as a child

and I remember there was

an arcade at the mall

near our house called

The Dream Machine

and it was this stygian

cave of noise

and all these portals

to all these other worlds

you could go in and out of,

Mr. Do!, Dragon's Lair,

Joust, Centipede, Frogger,

all of them.

And every time

a new game would show up,

I would be around it and on it

and there would

be crowds around it.

And, eventually, to the point

where fighting games

became a thing later on.

You would literally go up

and put your quarter

next in line and try and take down

that one kid who's kicking

everybody's butt as Chun-Li.

There was a time period

where kids in arcade games

who could rule,

like, at Chuck E. Cheese

or at the mall arcade or at the,

in my case a lot of time,

the bowling center,

people would crowd around you

if you were owning a game.

A global society was born.

A society that now not only plays

and connects online,

but has produced

life-long friendships,

thriving communities,

even marriages.

And this community

doesn't just exist

for entertainment's sake.

Gamers are not only one of the

most connected and vocal groups,

they are some of the most loyal.

Friendships forged

within a game experience

somehow yield a bond

that isn't easily broken.

One of the things

that is really exciting

about games in general

is that they've evolved

far beyond

the local community aspect

of being able to, you know,

just play the game

or enjoy your game with some

of your local friends

into truly global experiences

where you can share your passion

with people all around the world.

I love the connectivity,

I have lifelong friends

that I've met online

and we started out

just playing together

and then ended up, you know,

meeting up for competitions

or just meeting

to go hand out and kind of actually

meet each other in person

and it sounds silly,

but a lot of those friendships

are really solidified

around that joint experience

that you have

while you're playing a game

and I think that

that's something special,

it's something magical.

That's something I saw working

kinda in the internet industry

all through the '90s

and the early '00s was people, um,

who would meet other people online

and become really enamored

with them

and sometimes move to another city

to try living with this person

or, you know,

people would get married

or meet that way

and that's a whole new kind

of human relationship

that didn't exist 10

or 15 years ago.

It's like a new thing,

people can meet

and fall in love

and not have ever met

in the real world.

I can't tell you how many stories we've

gotten of people being hookups because of...

people eventually getting married

because of the game,

people that have gone through

you know,

some sort of horrible

medical condition

that they've had to deal with

and the games

kind of let them work through that.

I see that, you know,

deaths of key characters

really affected people

and made them cry in the game,

or they got tattoos

of the logo of the game

on their bodies,

or a man and his wife

met on Xbox Live playing the game

and now they

play co-op every night.

There are kids out there

who exist now

because their parents met

in World of Warcraft, you know?

Like, um, video games

have changed the, you know,

the course of human evolution

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes