A Brief History Of The Computer Games Industry

Evolution of computer games characters T-Shirt

In June 2012, the global video game market was said to be valued at approx US$70 billion, but the modern video game industry had a very humble beginning. This short but concise article will guide you through the main events in the evolution of gaming. 

By the 1970s, improvements in computing made widespread development of video games possible. The video game industry began in 1971 with the release of the arcade game, Computer Space.  The following year, Atari, Inc. released the first commercially successful video game, Pong, but no one at Atari was prepared for the game that would put the new company on the map. It all started when computer scientist turned entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell hired a young engineer named Al Alcorn and gave him an exercise to build a video game that was the simplest possible thing he could think. So he went to Walgreen's Drug Store and bought a $75 black-and-white TV. Bushnell and Alcorn called the game Pong and installed the first Pong machine for a trial run at a bar in Sunnyvale, California, then known as Andy Capp's Tavern. What happened next made Andy Capp's the ground zero of the video game industry.

Soon companies like Midway, an old-line maker of equipment for amusement parks, started getting into the gaming industry. The coin-op company that brought Space Invaders to America had invaded the space of Atari, then the industry leader, in a big way. Rather than fight it, Atari CEO Ray Kassar took a gamble with the game by licensing the home rights. The gamble paid off and sales of the Atari VCS console doubled.

The arcade game industry entered its Golden Age in 1978 with the release of Space Invaders by Taito, a success that inspired dozens of manufacturers to enter the market. In 1979, Atari released Asteroids. Color arcade games became more popular in 1979 and 1980 with the arrival of titles such as Pac-Man. The Golden Age had a prevalence of arcade machines in shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants and convenience stores. The 1980's saw a shift in the context of gaming with a move towards home consoles.

The evolution of gaming consoles

Home Consoles

The early part of the decade saw the rise of home computing, and home-made games, especially in Europe and Asia. This time also saw the rise of video game journalism. In 1983, the North American industry crashed due to the production of too many badly developed games (quantity over quality), resulting in the fall of the North American industry until the industry was eventually revitalized by the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which resulted in the home console market being dominated by Japanese companies such as Nintendo.

Before long, Nintendo had a whopping 90 percent share of the video game market. In 1989, the company's domination of the industry got even bigger when it introduced its video game equivalent of Sony's Walkman, the Game Boy. The game boy featured a puzzle game called Tetris, created by a Soviet computer engineer named Alexy Pajitnov. Thanks to Tetris, the Game Boy became an instant hit, selling 32 million units in its first three years. Nintendo seemed unbeatable.

Computer Games Evolution Infographic

Sony Joins The Game...

But not for long. Sony launched its own game platform, PlayStation, in the mid-1990s. This new console was not without controversy however. The history of the Playstation begins in 1988 when Sony and Nintendo were working together to develop the Super Disc which was going to be a CD-ROM attachment for Nintendo's soon to be released Super Nintendo game. However, Sony and Nintendo parted ways business-wise and the Super Disc was never introduced or used by Nintendo. However SOny didn't want all their work to go to waste and in 1991, Sony used a modified version of the Super Disk as part of a new game console, the Sony Playstation. After the success of the Playstation and the emergence of the Japanese electronics giant’s plans for a next generation PlayStation, Playstation II, the gaming instincts of another technology giant, Microsoft were awakened.

Sony were saying, "this is gonna replace the PC, It's gonna replace the DVD player, it's going to be the anchor of your home entertainment experience and can go beyond that as well." Microsoft took notice as replacing the PC was not what the leading computer software maker in the world wanted to hear -- especially since PlayStation was outselling the top five PC makers combined. “The sort of messaging Sony did around PlayStation II certainly catalyzed a lot of kind of competitive spirit among people at Microsoft,” said Blackley, who really didn't particularly enjoy Sony saying that a game console was going to replace Excel, for instance, or you know, Word for Windows.

Microsoft Gets In On The Act...

The XBox was released on November 15, 2001, in North America, followed by Australia and Europe in 2002. In November 2002, Microsoft launched Xbox Live, a fee-based online gaming service that enabled subscribers to download new content and connect with other players through a broadband connection. Unlike other online services from Sega and Sony, Xbox Live had support in the original console design through an integrated Ethernet port. The service gave Microsoft an early foothold in online gaming and would help the Xbox become a relevant competitor to other sixth-generation consoles.

Today, the video game industry is a juggernaut of development; profit still drives technological advancement which is then used by other industry sectors. Though maturing, the video game industry is still very volatile, with third-party video game developers quickly cropping up, and just as quickly, going out of business. Nevertheless, many casual games and indie games have been developed and many have become popular and successful, such as Braid, Limbo, and Minecraft. Games are also made for mobile phones and social networking sites. For example, a Facebook game developer, Zynga, is said to have raised in excess of 300 million. Mobile gaming is also booming on the iOS and Android devices.

Today, the video game platform arms race is in full swing with Sony's new Playstation 4 and Microsoft's XBOX One the current market leaders.

XBox One versus PS4

10 Steps to a Successful Brochure Design

If you are designing a brochure or booklet for your company, product or service here are 10 easy to follow steps to help you along the way.

Research: 

Collect and study brochures from around your community. What is the acceptable industry standard of brochures there? What makes one brochure design more appealing than another? You can develop your sense of good design by carefully studying existing designs in the marketplace and deciding for yourself what works best. You can also learn from the mistakes of others and see what design styles or errors to avoid.

Keep it simple:

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Prioritize Content:

Once you have determined the relative importance and sequence of the particular components in your message, you will be ready to consider how to treat each of them. The most important items should obviously receive more of your reader’s attention. They should be larger, bolder, brighter, or in some other way made to stand out.

Make sketches and move the various elements around. Try re-positioning one or more elements to see how your design is affected.

Wording:

Try to include some of the twelve most powerful words in the English language, while also avoiding cliches, slang or any currently trendy jargon.

The twelve most powerful words, according to advertisers and marketers are...

1. You	7. Discovery
2. Money	8. Results
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Font:

Choose a font that will express the style you desire (professional, humorous, casual…) while still keeping your message clear. Use a minimum of two font styles (to avoid being plain or boring) but also use a maximum of three font styles (to avoid clutter and inconsistency). These fonts can still be varied in size, weighting or colour in the individual parts of the design according to their importance. Read more on fonts styles here. In general a clean and simple font is best. Such as the one below.

You can download this font and thousands of others at www.dafont.com. 

Bars and boxes:

Boxes, borders and bars work well for directing one^’s attention and separating busy areas, as they create a contrast with the background. However, too many can make your brochure design look cluttered and will desired contrast will be lost if everything/too much is 'boxed off'. Instead explore other options for grouping and separating, such as the use of negative space as explained below.

Negative space: 

Use empty space to create a relationship between the contents and the page. Bring the specific information into focus on the page by adjusting the space around it. The amount of negative space in a design affects its overall tone of lightness or heaviness. Empty space can also be used to frame or align the content without the need for boxes or borders.

Color Scheme:

Color can be applied as ink on paper or as the paper itself. There are hundreds of paper colors available, yet some of the most effective brochures are done in only one or two colors. Black and white brochures can often be more dramatic than color.

Whatever colour scheme you choose be sure to look into colour theory to ensure the right message about your product, service or company is being sent out. Differrent colours evoke different emotions in viewers and each colours has attached connotations that we subconsiously associate with it.

Paper selection:

Paper comes in all sizes, colors, and textures. Ask your teacher about paper options. Using recycled paper can add an interesting flair to your brochure design, and it helps reduce the impact we make on our natural resources. 

The ISO (international Standards Organisation) 'A' Series of paper sizes, seen above, has become the global standard for document sizes and your brochure should be based of one of those. See the common document sizes table for more details.

Proofread and Test: 

You should proofread your final design several times before having it printed. Once printed, it’s too late to fix an error that you didn't spot, without incurring extra costs.

Read lines backwards to check for errors. Step back and look critically at the overall layout, can it be read from a distance? Is it interesting enough to grab peoples attention? If the answer to either of these questions is no you may need to tweak your design or possibly consider some attention grabbing techniques.

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Learn JavaScript in 10 Easy Steps

These NEW and Updated notes on JavaScript are intended to provide the reader with a basic understanding of the main areas of JavaScript with the aim of creating their own scripts. They are broken down into 10 easy to follow sections. These notes should ideally be read in the order in which they are presented as some sections may not make sense without having first read the previous JavaScript notes. It is also expected that you have a basic understanding of HTML before beginning with this series of notes.

Javascript Introduction	onMouseover	Javascript Variables	Javascript If or Else	JavaScript Alerts
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Learn CSS in 10 Easy Steps

This section of notes on CSS is broken down into 10 easy to follow sections. These notes should ideally be read in the order in which they are presented as some sections may not make sense without having first read the previous CSS notes. It is also expected that you first have a basic knowledge of HTML before beginning this series of CSS notes.

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