Discovery Channel's Games Documentary Impresses

Rock, Paper, Shotgun notes the kickoff of a new Discovery channel series called Rise of the Videogame. Blogger John Walker discusses the show, which just began last week, with an eye towards its research rigor and friendliness to the subject matter. He comes away fairly impressed, both by the topics covered and the casting. Along with games industry luminaries like Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn, they chat with folks like Steve Russell (of Spacewar! fame) and Smartbomb author Heather Chaplin. "A little visually overwrought with its montage footage of real-world conflict, it's otherwise a solid, informative and supremely well 'cast' documentary. If you've read around the subject, it won't tell you anything new. But it's fantastic to hear the stories from the people themselves. Episode 2 is very sensibly about the rise of Mario, next Wednesday."

Comments

Torrent of episode 1 available

[bconway]

Since it looks like Discovery isn't replaying the previous episodes imminently (judging by their site's listings), a torrent of the first episode in good quality is available here.

My humble 2 cents...

[Spy der Mann]

I've been watching these documentaries since weeks ago... (note that I live in Mexico).

They're fabulous. I watch them and fondly remember the old times. I specially liked the chapter about hobbyists who made games for the Commodore 64, and I remember the Compute! and RUN magazines.

Those discovery documentaries are an eye-opener which shows you the social causes and effects of videogames (generational breachs, the influence of the WWII and the Cold war in the first videogames).

What can I say? I liked them all. From the first hobbyists and pong, to the walks of Miyamoto in the japanese forests reflected in Zelda and Mario, to the rise of FPS and games with protagonists.

I really recommend that show to everyone.

Re:My humble 2 cents...

[Tyler Durden]

In the end, good music is just good music. With enough exposure to different styles, an individual can even recognize something they might not like as something good. (People who say stuff like, "That's not the type of music I'm into, but it's cool.")

Except for being luke-warm on Depechme Mode and Duran Duran I agree with all of your choices as examples of good music. (Loved the Cyndi Lauper reference BTW. She's pretty underrated.) I agree there was some great stuff in the 80s. But the 60s were amazing. At the time you had the double-threat of a counter-culture movement that wanted to explore other cultures and influences while also wanting to say something meaningful. This combination lead to an amount of experimentation and depth that produced some of the best modern music so far. Just because nostalgia skews things doesn't mean we should overcompensate when evaluating what stuff is worthwhile. It's just common sense that by some chance of cultural influences that some eras create better quality things in certain areas than others.

(Just as an aside, the 80s get more complicated when we look at more out of the mainstream music. Stuff like Sonic Youth, The Pixies and Bauhuas that became the influence for what I consider to be an upswing in musical quality in the early 90s.)

Re:My humble 2 cents...

[king-manic]

Except for being luke-warm on Depechme Mode and Duran Duran I agree with all of your choices as examples of good music. (Loved the Cyndi Lauper reference BTW. She's pretty underrated.) I agree there was some great stuff in the 80s. But the 60s were amazing. At the time you had the double-threat of a counter-culture movement that wanted to explore other cultures and influences while also wanting to say something meaningful. This combination lead to an amount of experimentation and depth that produced some of the best modern music so far. Just because nostalgia skews things doesn't mean we should overcompensate when evaluating what stuff is worthwhile. It's just common sense that by some chance of cultural influences that some eras create better quality things in certain areas than others. There was also a statistically significant bulge in 15-30 years olds in the 60's which tend to be the most creative. so it may actually be a correlation to the number of 15-30 years olds. the 80's was likely the thinnest time for that while the 90's and 00's hit the echo boom bulge.

Numerically it's difficult to tell. You need to pick a criteria, then you need to evaluate the all songs. The ones a person remembers is tainted by personal musical tastes and sales as a benchmark is extremely relative But there was good music in even the generally underrated 80's. i personally assert that it's about a 80% rule. 80% dreck to 20% good stuff, in almost every age, for almost any medium.

In my play list is about 100 songs from 1960's, about 80 from the 70's, about 100 form the 80's, about 200 form the 90's, and about 100 from the 00's. I don't claim the 90's had a drastic increase in song quality but I was a teen in the 90's and that music shaped my musical tastes. I no longer have time to consume music like i did before so it's fewer songs in the 00's.

"Video game" is two words, editors

[Logic and Reason]

The documentary is called "Rise of the Video Game", not "Rise of the Videogame."

Re:How long...

[i7dude]

Before the 'main stream' accepts video gaming as here, now and legitimate. I don't see many "Rise of Books" or "Rise of Pro Football" segments.

I think "Rise of Books" was pretty well covered in "Human History."

dude.