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...

[nschubach]

Yeah, damn them video games and their video capability... Why don't people just go back to good old fashioned board games. Who needs fancy graphics!?

Re:My humble 2 cents...

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

The problem the parent eludes to is that many developers think graphics are more important than the game. Graphics are nice, but if the game sucks, a polished turd is still a turd. I'd rather play a great game with decent graphics than a mediocre game that awes me with shiny for the 30 minutes I play until I decide that it sucks.

Re:My humble 2 cents...

[king-manic]

Good times when the hardware was limited and the focus was in the game itself, not only in the graphics as we see in lots of games nowadays. I find the trend towards minimalist nostalgia a bit too rampant on games.slashdot. The old games were sometimes fun but were more frequently exercises in repetitive game play. Pac man was interesting for it's time but boring as all hell now. Super Mario brothers was fun for it's time but highly repetitive. Back then the focus was on making a buck and you've neatly forgotten the 80% of the games in the bad old days that were just pure unadultered dreck. These days it's still 80% dreck but the EA factory produced dreck still has better basic playability then some of the gems of yore. It's sort of like music, so many older people remember fondly how great music was back in 1960 and gee how bad and crappy music is now. But really there was dreck and one hit pop wonders back int he 60's too and it was also 80% dreck. You've just forgotten all the dreck, summed up a decades worth of music in 40 good songs and compared it to whats on the top 40 now which represents only the preceding month. Similarly the "gameplay" folk take all the games they liked in their youth (10-20 years) and compared it to the last month of releases. No wonder it compares poorly, because you are comparing all the gems from 10-20 years to whats just got released and your nostalgic memory taints the whole endevour.

Go back and play galaga then play another shooter like Raiden 3, play X-men:the arcade game and compare it to X-men legends II, play Hogans Alley and compare it to Time crisis 4, play pitfall and compare it to Ratchet and Clank future:TOD, or play donkey kong and compare it to Mario Galaxy.

You'll find the "Good times" weren't so great and we are likely in the midst of a gaming renaissances but you're too caught up in nostalgia to notice.

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.

BREAKING!!!

[TheoMurpse]

Jack Thompson sues Discovery for portraying video games in a sensible light!