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50 Landmark Game Design Innovations
Next Generation has put together a lengthy list of landmark game design innovations that many of your favorite games probably wouldn't exist without. They break them out into self-contained units, though it's sometimes ambiguous how they're demarcating game design elements. Just the same, it's an interesting look at where game industry trends have led us: "23. Gestural interfaces. Many cultures imbue gestures with supernatural or symbolic power, from Catholics crossing themselves to the mudras of Hindu and Buddhist iconography. Magic is often invoked with gestures, too--that's part of what magic wands are for. The problem with a lot of videogame magic is that clicking icons and pushing buttons feels more technical than magical. The gestural interface is a comparatively recent invention that gives us a non-verbal, non-technical way to express ourselves. Best-known example: Wii controller. Probable first use: Black & White, 2001."
Is this the place to point out that as of today, Eve-Online is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux?
Not many games have officially supported all three. That's a big step.
~wx
sig?
The level of Nintendo fanboyism is reaching absurd levels here. Out of all those 50 things listed they have to fixate on the Wii one?
Role Playing
------------
whether it's obvious or not, the whole computer gaming model for player vs enemy combat is still largely the same as the dungeons & dragons model. The controls may vary from game to game, but it's largely choose the weapon, roll the dice, and survive the encounter by having more hit points left than your enemy does. Before this was implemented in videogames, you had the one-shot kill gameplay of space invaders or the hunt the wumpus "you're dead" text adventures.
Side Scrolling Screens
I'm not enough of a historian to say what game came up with it first, but the exploration possibilities of side-scrolling created really big worlds to explore.
Let's face it, most action games are about force. Even when confronted with overwhelmingly powerful enemies, your only option is to avoid their killing shots while grinding away at them or searching for their vulnerable spots. In stealth play the idea is to never even let the enemies know you're there, and it requires a completely different approach from the usual Rambo-style mayhem. Best-known early example: Thief: The Dark Project, 1998. First use: unknown.
Really? Not Metal Gear? 1987 for the original, or also 1998 (according to Wikipedia, two months before Thief: The Dark Project) for Metal Gear Solid?
In the article, it says that it is unknown where this innovation came from, but I would hazard a guess that it was players of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake 1 who customized their control setup to this way. It makes sense because before these games, there wasn't the concept of a computer game with full 3D where you look up and down and can have your character move forwards, backwards, left, and right at equal speeds.
No, this is the place to mention that, and then your peers will vote for it here.
Also, while it's nice to see widespread support, Vendetta Online has been doing this for quite a while, and you can find a comprehensive list of Linux-supporting MMO's here. Submitting that as a story would have born that out, no doubt.
Why do they say BK invented "coupled avatars" when I'm sure DKC came out first?
I always preferred to use ESDF for movement keys instead of WASD, for two main reasons. First, since F is one of the home keys, it makes it easy to be sure your fingers are in the right position without looking down at the keyboard, since the F normally has a raised nub on it. Second, shifting the movement keys over to the right one from WASD adds 3 more keys that are easy to hit with your pinky for binding to useful game actions.
37. Construction and management simulations. Both LEGO blocks and business management games predate the computer, but videogames put the two ideas together for the first time. Best-known early example: SimCity, 1989. Probable first use: Utopia for the Mattel Intellivision, 1982.
I just want to point out here how awesome Utopia was... I swear that a Flash game based on it would sweep the globe up into its time-wasting clutches.
That is all.
Kevin
An Interesting article. I would, however, disagree with a couple, particularly #21. I've yet to see a good Voice Recognition game, they all seem to be iffy at best and rarely fun because you have to repeat the command 6 or 7 times before it's properly heard. When was the last time you saw a game with voice recognition (and I mean actually recognizing it as a word, not Boogie's system) on the shelves? I haven't seen any in years, the last one I heard good reviews for was Bridge Commander, and the Voice Recognition was a side thing (and a poorly working one).
#45 isn't really that innovative either. Games for Girls tend to take old engines, modify them, and tack on some 'girly' graphics, then release the game (that isn't worth more than a couple of bucks) for the same price as a brand new, high quality game. The majority of girl gamers I know avoid them like the plague because they tend to be so awful, and because they usually borrow their game mechanics from better mainstream games, which means you can get the same gameplay, with better graphics and polish, and without the advertising and horrible dialog, for about the same price.
The rest are actually pretty accurate. I was plesantly surprised to see so many good ideas listed, and even more surprised to see a good old game I had completely forgotten (PaRapper) mentioned.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Really, I think this game deserves mention in both 40 (rythym, dance, and music) and 22 (specialized I/O for music). It certainly predates the ones that are mentioned for each of those. Sure, most of us played World Class Track Meet on the power pad, but we had heard of dance aerobics.
Frankly, it seems that this article was just not concerned with many of the innovations that came out of the 8bit NES.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm surprised with all the research they did into this, they can't select a first use of stealth in a game... unless its SO stealthy it eludes them...
Stealth, as we would know it today would probably require at least 8-bit sophistication, unless there was a "Sneak up" command in Zork or something. My best guess at it would be the original Metal Gear. Metal Gear Solid wouldn't be what it is today if not for the original game. The whole first part of the game is avoiding detection, until you can get your hands on a good weapon.
Of course, by "probable first use: Black & White" they meant to say Super Glove Ball.
Or any other game designed to use the Power Glove. ( and to a lesser extent the stillborn "U-Force" )
Things like "reversible time" were built into some early games implicitly, such as Zelda (screw up a puzzle? Leave and come back and you're golden), or explicitly, such as in Lufia 2 (1998), which literally had a room-reset spell you could cast. Other early Final Fantasy games (FF5, 1992, I believe is the earliest) had time spells that let you restart battles as if you'd never fought them.
#1 : The earliest computer games didn't offer exploration.
Yeah, except Ken Thompson's 1967 Space Travel game which involved exploring a vector-graphics solar system.
You just got troll'd!
The first minigame I ever saw was in Major Havoc, which came out in 1983. As you approached the space station for the next battle, you had a little Breakout game to play in the lower right corner of the screen. When you cleared it, you got an extra guy. I don't know how popular it ever was or how well known, but there you are, and at least moderately early.
Physics puzzles? 1992? Since the article doesn't confine itself to graphic games, that's not even close. Try KINEMA. The book the listing on that page was taken from was published in 1978, but I saw it a year earlier on a timesharing system my high school was connected to. Yeah, it looks like a quiz, but there are quiz games too, and everyone called this a game.
I wonder if this guy ever even played Dragon's Lair. It didn't use a CD-ROM because it predated them, and the animated scenes wouldn't have fit on one anyway; it used a laserdisc. The picture wasn't "tiny, grainy", it was very high-quality hand-drawn animation -- by Don Bluth, for God's sake.
The article makes it sound as if the "brag board" was something the game industry invented. Actually, it had been around for decades -- albeit informally, and probably illegally. When you scored amazingly well on a pinball machine, you recorded it by carving the score and your initials into the frame around the backglass. Preferably while the manager of the establishment hosting the game wasn't looking. The tradition carried on into coin-op video games. Building it into the machine did two things. It prevented lying about your score, and it saved wear on the game cabinets.
And the brethren went away edified.
Absolutely. I've never understood the WASD setup - it simply doesn't make since. I've been converting my friends to ESDF for several years and it's like a light bulb going off in their head every time. Good to know there's someone else on the crusade. Maybe someday the game designers will include it as a default option.
Here's to progress - CHEERS!
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Uhm, yeah so Majesty. Anyone seen anything like it since?
They have got to be joking. Did Metal Gear honestly escape their attention? (On second thought, that is very appropriate.)
Why bother.
The first use of this was probably Rogue, which is older than River Raid.
AccountKiller
Why the article focuses only on video games, I don't know. But it called itself "innovations in game design", and didn't have anything at all to say -- good, bad, whatever -- about anything non-computerized. Consider the evolution of the game of chess, for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_chess The queen and the bishop both evolved from previously weak pieces. Why? What did the rule changes bring? Surely there is something to be learned here. Why is the Queen a rook and a bishop? Why not a rook and a knight? Why is there no uberqueen (can move like queen or knight)? All of these speak to a certain issue of balance of power -- offhand, I'd say that the rules changes were intended to speed the game up, without making first-mover advantage too powerful. What does that say about game design? Nothing that the authors mention.
;)
Or how about the introduction of playing cards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_cards Why four suits? The Indian decks referenced can have many more. Why four suits, and why the specific ones we have? Standardization. Consider the vast variety of games played with a deck of cards; how many use nonstandard decks? Very few. But there are far more interesting things about card games -- as evidenced by the fact that poker bots suck.
Video games have been around for a few decades. Chess has been around for the better part of a millenium. Even though I may not be able to answer all the questions I just raised, I knew that they were there. To barely even mention games that are not electronic, in an article on 50 landmark game design innovations seems to me to be the height of folly, or perhaps hubris. (Anyone care to apply game theory to my managing the odds of getting modded troll for that last remark?
While on LAN parties my friends used to complain about my "unplayable" (to them) key setup. I always use the ASD part, but map the advance to button two on the mouse, fire to button one, and secondary fire to button three. Plus I had a trackball, which is great for maneuverability and saves milliseconds of dragging the mouse around, also less RSD injuries. I guess the best layout is the one that works for one, and it's a great advantage I feel PC games have over consoles.
+Raider of the lost BBS
I think the next leap will be to that configureable keyboard that is out, with every key layed out perfectly for my hand.
You do realize that the EVE installer is actually installing Cedega, right?
And I like .OEU -- same keys as ESDF, but in Dvorak.
I type on a Kinesis contoured keyboard, in Dvorak key layout. The kinesis is wicked sick for FPS gaming; aside from the ergonomics that minimize finger traverse distances, having six keys around the left thumb makes for a lot of bindable actions.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
You included the problem in your own solution.
While the fact that Linux doesn't require bleeding-edge hardware is an asset, when the statement is turned around to "you don't need new hardware because Linux won't run any software that requires that hardware in the first place", then the asset becomes a liability. Why should I be restricted from the new goodies because of my OS choice?
This is a problem of "circular logic" of GPU manufacturers not making Linux drivers because there are no games for Linux, and game publishers don't make games for Linux because there are no drivers for them to run on.
The initial attempt to break the cycle is the hardest to achieve, and is least likely to bring profit. It takes some balls to be the first to challenge an existing monopoly and be open to alternatives (which EVE is doing right now), which is why as a consumer I'm willing to be part of funding that cycle-breaking, both for moral reasons and my own practical ones (I want new games for my Linux, dammit).
Completely agree. Keyboards are designed to have your fingers over ASDF. So, unless you have a bad keyboard, ESDF will always be the most efficient position (with the normal arrangement of movement keys) for your left hand.
Who ordered that?
First use is actually most likely Darwinia.
We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
Doesn't it bother your finger that one of the keys has the raised bit though? If it were the middle key I think that might work, but it'd drive me fucking nuts if it were asymmetrical. Please tell me that it's not just me, or I might have to call my shrink again!
The Farewell Tour II
It's just you. :)
Seriously though, we all get weirded out by different things. If the raised bit bothers you, why not move another key to the right and go with RDFG?
The biggest problem with these key layouts is rebinding all the game's keys. Also, you'd be amazed how many games hardcode the default keymap into the tutorial. "Press R to reload!" no, R makes me go forward. That doesn't help at all! Stupid game >:(
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Most annoying thing I've ever found in pinball machines were a couple that actually overflowed back to zero on the display and did the same damn thing internally!
So for a few of those it was the trick to get as close to 999,999,999 (or whichever equivalent thereof) without actually going over. For some of those machines it was fairly easy (just tilt the sucker), but others were amazingly tilt proof, and god it sucked when the ball would hit just that one bumper on the way down.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
While ESDF may have its uses, it is not usable for me. Having a German keyboard, the left shift key would be to far to the left to be comfortable, mainly because German keyboards have an additional key between left shift and Y (which is Z on a US keyboard). Also, it places my pinky above the Windows key, which I don't want to accidentally press while playing a game. Using WASD, my pinky is above the Ctrl and Shift key.
Well at least hardcoding is slightly better than what tends to happen on consoles when they don't want to build in dynamic tutorials (which is stupid since there are so few buttons). With those they just go, "Now push the [jump] button to jump." or something similarly ridiculous.
As for weird alternatives to WASD, I've always wondered if it'd be possible to learn how to play Vi-style, maybe F for forward, D for backward, and then A/S for left/right, or something like that. Anyone want to learn and tell us how hard it is?
The Farewell Tour II
Old Mac keyboards had something similar to that - instead of an upside-down-T-shaped directional pad, the had the four arrow keys in the bottom-left, in a row. I no longer remember what order they were in (besides "awful".)
It was usable, once you got used to it, but not intuitive in any way whatsoever. I'm not sure anyone used it enough to determine if it was actually better.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
14. Coupled avatars....Possible first use: Banjo-Kazooie, 1998.
Hasn't this guy ever heard of Head Over Heels, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Over_Heels_(video_game)?
Quite a few of the possible first uses are a bit out of kilter with video game history, and some of the fifty just plain pointless, although the author acknowledges this.
"Feel the force, mother fucker." (Shaft Windu)
Someone in the comments on the article mentions The Sentinel (1986) but I can't believe Hacker (1985) slipped by them - hell, that game was one of the things that inspired my love of technology in my youth, putting me where i am today (alongside William Gibsons Neuromancer).
Stealth in Games meant a different level of strategy and thinking than the running around and bludgeoning your way to victory method found nearly everywhere else - stealth and smarts were much more in line with my personality.
I've been wanting a re-imagining of the hacker with modern ideas to come out for years, actually - anyone seen anything worthy?
I'm close, but not quite that. I use F for forward, C for backward, S for strafe left and D for strafe right, A for crouch. I don't have a hard time at it and I have done it since Quake I. I tried for a setup that is natural and has more keys available. Even though it does bother me to have two separate fingers on opposing actions at all times (strafe L/R) I find it easy to remember in a clutch and very responsive.
Contrary to popular belief, hit points don't actually have anything to do with roleplaying. There are plenty of excellent RPGs that don't use hit points, and there are plenty of games with hit points that don't bother with roleplaying. Videogames, for example.
I've never liked WASD either, but for a different reason. It leaves my fingers too close together.
Try it out. First place your fingers on WASD. Then try moving your thumb to X. Much more relaxing position for your hand, no?
I'll have to try ESCF though, as you do have point there.
Another alternate layout that I love is A[shift]ZX. Its from Skynet (first game I didn't use the arrow keys on) and I really like how it lets you space your fingers out a bit more thanks to the shift key being larger. WASD and ESDF are nice for the amount of buttons you have available around your fingers. I have rather long spindly fingers so maybe with shorter fingers WASD etc would be more comfortable.
Your all heathens and I'll convert you to the one true layout! d: j/k
(I hear some people use ASDF, now thats crazy.)
wow, PaRappa the Rapper! that pic brought it all rushing back to me... crack, crack, crack, the egg into the bowl!
An engineer is just an intricate machine that turns coffee into money.
The first game I remember playing that used mouse look by default was Bullfrog's Magic Carpet. I think the horizontal movements were mapped to the arrow keys instead of WADS but it's close enough. Not sure if it was the first game to do so, but it was released in 1994 before Descent and the SkyNet game.
1. Open Adventure - Legend of Zelda
2. Getting an Airship - Final Fantasy
3. 3rd person 3D - Mario 64
4. Best non-joystick - DDR
5. Captivating Story - Final Fantasy 2
6. 100+ hours to Complete - Final Fantasy 3
7. Online RTS - Command and Conquer
8. Online RPG - CircleMud
9. Online FPS - Halo 2
10. Multiplayer Coop - Secret of Mana
11. 2-player Game - Super Mario Kart
12. 4-player Game - Super Bomberman 2
13. 4-player Hardcore - Smash Bros.Melee
14. Career Mode - Rock 'N Roll Racing
15. Depth of Strategy - Starcraft
16. Depth of Gameplay. - Soul Calibur
17. Depth of Environment - Grand Theft Auto 3
18. True to life - Gran Turismo
19. Powerups - Mega Man
20. Making Sports Fun - Tie: Base Wars / Wii Sports
The first party game was probably Party Mix for the Atari 2600 + the Starpath Supercharger add-on. That was 16 years before the original Mario Party.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I would think that a game such as Sacrifice would at least come up when dealing with gestures for in game actions. This game had mouse gestures and was released in 2000. I haven't dug deeper, but it is possible there was a game before it with gestures. A little due diligence would have benefited some of the other categories as well, especially when they simply put 'unknown' for lack of obviously wanting to do some research.
Well, since we're talking key setups, I use an odd one. First of all, I'm a lefty, so I have my right hand on the keyboard. I use u and j for forward and back, and i and k for left and right (respectively). It isn't "intuitive", and I probably can't "zigzag" as well as if left and right were 2 separate fingers, but I've gotten used to it and it "frees up" my third finger for, say, grenades in TFC or "sprint" in HL2. I think it started with trying to find a good control scheme for Descent. I settled on one where each finger controlled a different axis of movement.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
This genre came and went, and good riddance to it. Its a world-changing design innovation because it proved so clearly to be a creative dead end that everybody knows not to make interactive movies any morealthough the term is still used at times to describe the cinematic quality of games in other genres. Interactive movies taught us, by negative example, that gameplay comes first, period. The CD-ROM drive first made them possible, and in their heyday, they sold tonsuntil the novelty of watching tiny, grainy videos wore off. Best-known early example: The 7th Guest, 1993. Probable first use: Dragons Lair coin-op, 1983.
Interactive movies may no longer be the realm of serious gamers, but they still exist, largely because of the advances that came with DVDs. (since he didn't discredit any other items because they no longer are the providence of serious games, I don't know why this one should be)
Here's what a quick search found http://www.interactive-film.com/
Many Higinbothams have died to bring us this information.
Tribes 2 defaulted to ESDF on install. Great game. Annoyed me when I switched away from it though.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
On those keyboards the arrow keys were all in a row below the right shift key instead of in their own cluster, and Control, not Caps Lock, was next to the A. The only meta-keys you had on the right side were Shift and Closed-Apple (second joystick/paddle button, called Option on the IIgs).
And back then, quarters had pictures of eagles on them! "Gimme four eagles for a dollar!" we'd say. But the important thing was I had an ear of corn tied to my belt, which was the style at the time! We didn't have yellow corn, 'cause of the drought. Instead we had this colorful Indian maize....
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
[man reflexively makes the gesture at his neck, shoulder and waist]
"Yes, that's the one. I assume it's meant to ward-off evil. Thing is, it's also the sequence for checking the seals on a Starfall 7 spacesuit; and what makes that particularly interesting is that you don't know what a Starfall 7 spacesuit is, do you?"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Here's a classic game absurdity: a huge explosion destroys a tank, but does nothing to the walls and windows nearby. Deformable environments correct this and let you literally change the world. This feature poses a risk to a game's level design because you may be able to get into places the designer didn't expect you to; but it makes the world much more realistic and lets you solve problems in your own way. Possible first use: Magic Carpet, 1994.
X-COM came out in 1993. A key factor in its gameplay was deformable environments. For example, blowing holes in walls with rockets to get a line of fire to shoot aliens. I would have thought it was a popular enough game to have been known by the author.
Ah, then you should try WERD. It has the benefits of the extra pinky-side keys that ESDF gives you, and beats both WASD and ESDF for comfort by having the common movement (strafing and forward) all on the same row. Games that support lean can then use Q and T as well. Additionally, it brings your fingers closer to the number keys, for faster/easier weapon selection and even brings some function keys in range.
ESDF is nice in that your hand remains on home row for chat typing, but since your right hand is likely leaving the mouse anyhow, dropping the row from WER to SDF is pretty natural.
Don't know whether this is relevant, but being a long time vi/vim user myself, I can't get used to the arrow keys. Nethack movement uses vi keys: H for left, J for down, K for up, L for right. In addition to that, we have the diagonals: Y for left-up, U for right-up, B for left-down, N for right-down. By no means intuitive, but once you get used to it, it becomes a hard to break habit.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
I use a really weird keyboard and mouse mapping but the main point (that i wanted to post here) is that i don't use the mouse for shooting.. i use a key on the keyboard instead.. it never made sense to me to put the trigger button on something you have to move around all the time.. I mean, just the action of clicking the mouse will move it that little bit, making precise aiming harder?
I usually do better than anyone i know, but i don't know if that has anything to do with it...