From now until then?

In my opinion, the gaming industry is faced with a number of challenges that it must overcome if it is to survive.

the first is the balance of performance and costing. The price may be low but if it doesn't keep up with the current standards of performance, there is no way a platform will survive while at the same time, if the performance is higher then other companies, they risk over pricing the console which will bring in more money per product but the over all sales figures will inevitably drop. a problem that Sony encountered with the PS3.

The Next Challenge I predict will greatly influence the game market is the rising demand for games that have never been seen before and the increase the interactivity that the player has with the game. This challenge has best been fulfilled by the Nintendo Wii. Allowing the players movements to effect the game directly is certainly a step in the right direction but by doing this, Nintendo has risked failing the challenge of balancing performance with cost.

The Next challenge is Multiplayer networks. games are becoming less of a hobby and more of a social activity and the demand for easier and better multiplayer gaming is rising extremely quickly. Microsoft has achieved this trait to the best standard out of the three most recently released consoles with the Xbox 306 and its online network Xbox Live. not only this but the Xbox 360 (and its predecessor the Xbox) also allows up to 4 Consoles to be linked directly without internet connection (and the cost it incurs) provided 4 TVs, network cables and a powered switch are available.

The last challenge lies with the developers rather then the console companies and that is this; as power increases, people are expecting games to last longer, look better and have more to do in them then ever. there are a lot of examples that would be useful here but it has to be said that the recently released fallout 3 is going in the right direction.

The real challenge however is Balancing all three of the above challenges. at the moment I believe that all three consoles are pretty even in regards to the third challenge and none have actually got an equal balance yet. The PS3 is powerful and has moderate networking capabilities but is nothing special when it comes to interactivity. the 36o again is not very interactive but has good networking and is a good balance of price and performance. at the other end of the spectrum, the Wii is cheap but is almost a generation behind in regards to power. with moderate networking, its potential is the fact that it breaks the current boundaries for interactivity.

In truth its impossible to really tell what is in store for the years to come. I would like to think that games went towards the direction of interactivity. how good would it be to be able to feel like you're shooting your mate without them actually dying but i think I'm getting a few decades ahead of myself.

The Middle ages

The computer game industry moved from the Arcades to the Home during the period from the late 70s until the mid 80s. I am not 100% sure why this change occurred but it was most likely related to the economy at the time. perhaps the arcades weren't bringing enough revenue to the business. the home PC was the original format for home gaming. games were often extremely simple. one such example was Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure. this genre of game was known as a text adventure game and consisted of a story being written on the screen and the player had to input commands in order to get a response. 

companies in the industry began to separate themselves from PCs in an attempt to produce  their own brand of gaming system. Capcom was one such company and the name is actually a abbreviation of the words Capsule computer. Many Variations were created and the Game market became flooded and companies over produced many of the more famous or anticipated titles such as pac man which as a result, underperformed. larger companies such as Atari lost millions while the market for cheaper home consoles boomed and continued to do so for many years especially with the release of the Comadore 64 in America shortly followed by the Nes and Sega Master system.

 Sega and Nintendo were the Two main competitors until the mid 90s when Sony established itself in the Gaming world with the Playstation. Sega surprisingly went bust after releasing the Dreamcast which was very advanced for its time.

I remember the Year that sega released the Dreamcast, I again asked for one for Christmas and although some of the games released were utter rubbish (chef's love shack springs to mind) most of them were brilliant. I'm still oblivious to how the company failed with the console, perhaps its limited game list or maybe people were just transfixed on the Playstation and the soon to be released Playstation 2, who knows...

The History of Gaming... to me.

As far as I am aware, the history of games spans all the way back to around 1950. As this wasn't long after VE day, the games had quite a significant military undertone with the player trying to stop a missile attack on a radar style screen or similar  themes.

 Later on, games became less war based and started to feature simplified versions of sports such as tennis (or table tennis) and athletics. I think this was due to a lack of inspiration as well as technological limitations. In other words; rather then think of an original idea for a game, the developers used existing games (sports) as a base plate to begin building the industry we know today. That is only one theory however and I think it is also possible that the developers who perhaps favored intelligence rather then physical skill may have developed these specific games as a way for them, and others in the same situation to compensate for this.

 I think games, like all art forms, take inspiration and draw from the changes in times around them. A good example of this is the increase of Sci-Fi games produced around the early 70s which was about the same time that Art Deco took off. Both of which took inspiration from the Space race between America and the Soviet Union as well as the birth of other advanced technology. This trait can still be seen today but is perhaps less visible then it was a few decades ago.

My history of gaming began on the Christmas of 1992 or 1993. my dad bought me a Snes with Super mario Wold and I can remember thinking it was the most amazing thing in the world. My collection of games grew over the following years and included titles such as Mario Kart, Battle Toads and Super Metroid. I also remember going round to my Nan's house and playing on the Sega mega Drive that she had bought for me and my cousins to play on. I think it was the simple notion that i could do things on these games that I could never do in real life (at least not without breaking the law... or a few bones) that kept me hooked. 

I became a bit of a Nintendo fan boy favoring the N64 over the Playstation despite its obvious superiority. Being able to do those things in 3D just made it even better. 

Between then and now, my interest in gaming rose and fell with the quality of the games produced. The most recent game i can recall playing has got to be halo 3, having nothing to do at the start of uni saw me picking up the controller again and trying to complete the game on legendary. I did it in a week.

who am i?

It’s my first time writing one of these so you will have to bear with me if I start talking a load of Jackson Pollocks. Hopefully I will start to get the hang of it soon enough though.
My name is Adam Williamson AKA wilbo. I have just started my first year at De Montfort University and I am studying game art design. yaay (Y)

I’m the person that usually has a blank look on their face and often finds them self staring at the ceiling counting how many tiles there are. When I snap out of my own little world I can be quite talkative but if I don’t have a clue what is going on, I usually just nod and agree.

I’m totally lost when it comes to writing about myself so here are a few points that I think best describe me in a nutshell: I'm shy at first but will become more confident as I get to know you, I am very opinionated at times and a bit of a piss taker (sorry in advance), I'm lazy, open minded and imaginative, I hate being the odd one out, I like to think I’m funny but usually the only person that laughs at my jokes is me and I love almost all aspects of art even if I may not be very good at them.

I’m not really sure how often I intend to use this thing. Probably once a week or something like that. At the moment, I think I will only use my blog to achieve my objectives at uni but as the year goes on, it will probably become more personal and a little less rigid.