Watched this last night, and it's worth a watch, even though I don't precisely agree with all the selections in it. It brought up some good memories of my early days in video games (marathon SF2 battles during GCSE's, and the utter depression on how bad Night Trap was).
Some (in my opinion) omissions;
Final Fantasy VII - while it wasn't unique in it's genre, it was the first game to really bring Japanese RPGS to the West.
Herzog Zwei - the daddy of all RTS games...I had this on the MegaDrive, and spent many hours at a friends house, with a makeshift cardboard barrier down the screen (split screen 2-player) having monster battles. Of course, in terms of social impact Starcraft wins hands down here...
Metal Gear Solid - Again, this was the "mainstream" sneak-and-gun game...not the first, but the most prolific. First game I took a sicky to play on day of release.
Half Life - not sure on this...it's easy to argue that it was more an extremely well executed version of existing games. Ditto with CounterStrike (though you could say that all the modern shooters (COD, MW etc) owe their existence to CounterStrike.
Outrun - or any driving game really (Ridge Racer, Gran Turismo, Forza etc etc). I still equate the outrun theme with suicidal driving...
No sports games at all, which is more than a little harsh...
Comments
I watched it last night with the Mrs, twas really good. I felt there were some omissions too but then when I mentioned them, the Mrs pointed out that it was all the big turning points in gaming as a whole, not the most important to genres of game. If you've only got 90 minutes, you have to fill it with only the turning points. You don't have time to go into each genre and sub genre and say why each game is important, especially if you're including hardware (which is intrinsic to the market).
I was a bit annoyed that they felt Tomb Raider was the first game that girls liked when Civilisation 1 was out WAAAAAY before and plenty of ladies liked that. However, Mrs pointed out that Tomb Raider was the first big game where the protagonist was a girl. Which is a fair point.
I probably would have included half life too it was the first of the modern shooters and at the time a quantum leap ahead of everything else it pioneered all sorts of things like skeletal animation more advanced AI with more complex behaviors the idea of in game story telling without static unplayable cut scenes and even today the experience holds up pretty well. It is essentially the example that lead to almost all of the modern shooters like call of duty an and so on with their story driven single player.
I might have also put something like Dune 2 in there not the first RTS but the one that all modern RTS's derived from it was the first game to have all the elements we would expect today in one package fog of war resource collection tech trees and so on. It's the point from which command and conquer total annihilation (and therefore sup com and planetary annihilation) and starcraft (mentioned there but more for the Korean's fascination with it) all stem from
Their brief discussion of the early British microcomputer wars also left out one of the other systems knocking around and implied spectrum, C64, and BBC were the only machines when there was the old Amstrad CPC464 alan sugars early foray into computer sales. Of course eventually amstrad took over spectrum and the later spectrum machines were amstrads in different shells.
But in limited time there's only so much to put in and what was there was a pretty good coverage and interesting presentation essentially for people who don't follow gaming or know where it came from.
RPS had this show linked but with this clip off of C4 news where Charlie Brooker tries to explain the fascination of gaming in light of the PS4 launch to Jon Snow who is incredibly dismissive and basically spouts the same old guff about how games are for adolescent men who want to kill everything. Snow even seems to suggest that happy fun kidsy Lego Marvel is all about killing people.
it's interesting if somewhat depressing to watch http://youtu.be/-FLVjfFKy58 it represents what even now a the mainstream media see gaming.
It's interesting to see this attempt to get more understanding of gaming out there as it's still seen in some circles as a waste of time. It's relatively accepted where I am but I've heard stories about people who have to hide the fact that they play games or end up facing problems at work because it's assumed to be a kids thing no real adult should do so there is clearly something wrong with you. I've also heard people talk about how they ended up always being given extra work at weekends and evenings etc over other people as their hobby was games while other people had 'real things' to be doing which was a pervasive enough point where they worked that the person in question was told to just do as they were told when they complained to HR.
It's amazing that even in this day and age where Gaming is a massive billion dollar industry that at it's heights out sells even the biggest blockbuster movies and yet it's still basically looked down on and regarded as a slightly sinister kids activity.
You're right about that Jon Snow interview but I would see that as RPG suggested: it's the old, dying world failing to comprehend the new medium. The TV execs are looking to change and they will take along those people who can handle it. I know this because my sister is one of those TV execs, who produces live TV for Children's BBC and the BBC are only interested in innovation when it comes to mixing media. It's no good just to have a cracking TV program that pushes the boundaries, it has to stretch much further than that.
Snow's job is to question and criticise to force the other person to defend, it's what he does all day. I think his lack of incision about the games industry, showed a surprising level of ignorance. He'd not done his homework. That's why he trolled out the usual platitudes. It was lazy. He could have asked much better questions such as "Is big business really worried about the indies?".
A missed opportunity from Mr Snow.
indeed the fact that snow had never played a game and had no interest is not that surprising but his belligerent dismissal of the whole thing when his job is to inquire and inform was disappointing. On any other subject he couldn't have gotten away with just rejecting it like that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yKIiUsbOO24
Dara does a great bit on being a "gamer".
Twitter being at number 1 annoyed the crap out of me if I'm honest... Other than that it wasn't too bad. The title was pretty much clickbait, but he acknowledges that so it's fine. I didn't think there was that much in it in terms of stuff which I, as a gamer, didn't already know. The bit on violence was quite interesting (the mortal kombat footage, how grim was that?!) and it was nice to see Matt Lees and Quentin Smith get some air time.
Overall I got the impression that it wasn't really for me, but more for Jon Snow.