CATS Research – Video Games
Introduction
For my CATS Research I have chosen to research video games and how they have changed over the years. Games have been evolving for years as technology advances, going from the earliest evidence of games, 49 small carved painted stones that were discovered in southeast Turkey in a Başur Höyük burial mound 5,000 years ago. To the present that has developed so much that we now have Virtual Reality (VR).
Board Games
Board games are games played on a board (simple right?) The earliest known board games were often played by upper class citizens over 5,000 years ago and they were also often used and diplomatic gifts to keep the peace between areas of power. One of the oldest games that we still play today is the simple game of Tic-tac-toe or Noughts and Crosses, this was played by The Roman Empire around 1st century BC but it was called terni lapilli (Three Pebbles at a Time) instead. Unlike modern Tic-tac-toe they only had 3 X’s or O’s to place down and had to change their positions to keep playing otherwise they would loose and be out of the game. Dice was also not a modern invention, they are probably some of the oldest gaming tools known to man. When archaeologists in during an excavation in southeast Iran they discovered a 3,000 year old set of dice, although we are not sure what exactly were the games that they played but they got ever increasingly popular. They were usually carved out of bone or cast in plastic and were used in the most popular game in casinos and would remain well into the 21st century. The game that they would play is called Craps and is the most profitable game for the casinos and people don’t seem to know when to stop playing. Dice has also been implemented in far more things besides games such as; schools, they would be used in math related question like probability, homes; they would be used for games the family would create themselves. In later years there would be more types of dice created with more dots that even go up to 20. There are many more board games that we still continue to play to this day some of these games are; Go, this is a game that was created in Korea from the year 200 B.C. Nine Men’s Morris, this is a game that many people think it may have originated in mediaeval England but some speculate that it may stem from the great roman empire. Chess, this well known board game originated from India sometime around 600 A.D. and around that same time, the game Backgammon was created in Iran which included the invention of dice. Snakes and ladders, this popular children’s board game probably originated in India in the 16th Century which obviously includes the use of dice to give probability and chance. Even though these board games were played centuries before our time, the first ever commercially available board game wasn’t available until the 1800’s and it was produced by a man called George Fox in his hometown of England. The board game was called “the Mansion of Happiness” and was pretty much a racing game a little similar to Ludo. The oldest board game company that still survives to this day is a company called Milton Bradley who were formed in 1860 and their games include; Connect 4, Downfall, and Hungry Hungry Hippos.
Card games are a much later invention and the use of a deck of cards was most likely in Ancient China and would have been around the Tang Dynasty (6th century A.D. – 9th century A.D.). Cards didn’t reach Europe until the 14th century and their decks would have been very similar to Tarot cards which are still used today, you can even find ones with the images you would find on mediaeval ones. The common four-suit (clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts) deck that is used today was created in France around the time of 1480 and the oldest game we still play with cards today is a game called Cribbage, which was created in the 17th century. But Bridge didn’t come until the early 19th century. In the 1990s, card games became popular again and games such as ‘Magic! The Gathering’ was introduced to the world and becoming increasingly incredibly popular. They would also extend to trumps – a popular card game that spread around schools like wildfire, branching to different versions of the game such as trumps dinosaurs, trumps cars, trumps spacecraft, the versions are seemingly endless. To play the game you shuffle and deal the deck so both players have half a deck, compare the statistics of their topmost cards, and win or lose accordingly.
Modern board games have gotten more and more complex over time. An example of this is Dungeons and Dragons a quest game where a RPG (role playing game) game is created by following set rules to create a custom adventure for player designed characters to explore. This can be very complicated because there are books over a thousand pages long that explain the rules of creating the game, creating the characters, playing the game and much more. There is also a lot simpler modern board games people play, such as Cards Against Humanity. In this game players shuffle the word cards and are shared out to one another and then the sentence cards are shuffled and placed in the middle of the room and a card is drawn. The players then must use their word cards to choose the most funny word to go with that sentence. The player with the funniest word wins.
Old Video Games
The first electronic game was created even before the creation of the computer. A patent was filed all the way back in the year 1947 for a “Cathode ray tube amusement device”. In the United States in the 1950s not many people were playing computer games on mainframe systems because they were far too expensive for common folk. The first ever games console that was created was the Magnavox Odyssey and was released in 1972. In 1978 arcade games began to emerge, games such as Pacman and Space Invaders and eventually became very popular in the 1980s and around that time a few more consoles were created but unfortunately there was a crash in the American gaming industry that killed off most of the game companies that were around in 1983. Then the Japanese held the torch and began creating video games and as console gaming became more and more popular, arcade games got more and more unpopular. Games and games consoles like this were very popular when they were introduced because back then nobody had ever seen anything quite like it but if it were not for games like this we would not have video games like we have today.
One of my still favourite old video games is Super Mario Brothers. This is a game about an Italian plumber in overalls named Mario and his job is to rescue Princess Peach from the evil King Koopa, Bowser. This is the third game to feature Mario and was created in 1985. This was created the best they could at the time using 8Bit pixel graphics.
Modern Video Games
Modern video games are the best they’ve ever been in this day and age, with updated graphics, controls, and much more. Past video games have always been in 2d but now our games consoles can handle more information allowing 3d games to be created, an old but modern example of this would be Super Mario 64 that was created for the Nintendo 64 and was the first 3d Mario game created but the graphic were still bad but at the time they were the best they’ve ever been. Now we have 3d games that almost look real. The latest Mario game yet to be released is Super Mario Odyssey and the graphics and controls are superb, everything looks so smooth and otherworldly. Video games these days have also implemented voice recognition to help create a better experience for the player and increasing their interactivity with the game.
The future for games is never ending. Currently, virtual reality (VR) has been trending for the past couple of years, even going beyond the gaming industry to help with Hospitals and research as well as education in schools. Augmented reality (AR) has also played a big part in the gaming industry with games such as Pokémon Go that has players walking around their neighbourhood looking for Pokémon to catch. This also can be implemented into the Medical Industry to help better examine X-Ray Results and such.
When technology advances we will look back to consoles such as a PS4 and consider it a relic.
References:
Wikipedia (2017) en.wikipedia.org Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_games (accessed 01/01/2018).
Wikipedia (2017) en.wikipedia.org Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_game (accessed 01/01/2018).
Wikipedia (2017) en.wikipedia.org Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games (accessed 01/01/2018).
Janaki Kumar, Mario Herger and Rikke Dam (2016) interaction-design.org Available at: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/a-brief-history-of-games (accessed 01/01/2017)
Michael Connor 