Overarcing Trends and Histories

This post is about common sense and writing down common sense. It's such an interesting thing, at times, writing down the obvious. Here is one such attempt. One day I was having a conversation with a friend at a party. We were talking about video games, he being a software researcher he kept talking about one particular thing that bothered him.

“There’s something to be said about video games in the 70s, they were video- games. Everything past that is something else, I wonder what it is.”

It’s a strange conversation and it’s stuck with me for a year or so now. Video games are a strange and wonderful thing. The original video games were a reaction to the constant pressure of technological progress during the cold war. It was a return to the spirit of play during a time when such a spirit was very much needed. The first “video game” was created in 1961 and called Spacewar! While there had been other games made before this time, Spacewar! was the first game that wasn’t a recreation of other board games and had its own moving graphics. The first video game was based on the idea of war and for good reason; war was on everyone’s’ mind. Life in 1961 was very difficult for America. Schlock rock reigned supreme, the Beatles wouldn’t make it to America for another 2 years, and Kennedy was in the midst of Russian mobilization in Cuba. It was a time that desperately needed something to keep the play-spirit alive. While they didn’t catch on for a while, the time and the place were set for what would eventually create a sub-culture.

I am oversimplifying this by quite a bit but I wanted to make a simple point, video games began in a climate that was extremely depressing and very political. The culture of the time inspired others to be innovative and through that innovation, they kindled a spirit of play. Culture has a way of finding its way into just about anything. When the first people made their video games, they had no previous culture of the video gamer to pull from. They simply created something that was interesting at the time with what they had available. Culture, pure play-spirit, made its way into something that eventually became the video game industry.

The crux of my argument can best be summarized in 4 sentences:

1. Video games were created through play-spirit as a way to capture the play-spirit, unconsciously, through purposeful and illogical abuse of very serious technologies.
   
   
2. The first Video Game was the first game that did not simply try to take a real world game and make it electronic.
   
   
3. The industry that sprang up after that time mimicked the board game market and eventually created a distaste for video games by making too many games for the market to handle.
   
   
4. Since those initial games, made without a previous body of culture to pull from, the sub-culture of the gamer has been made into an inclusive, ever shrinking mass of reference to those initial times.

The conclusion of this premise can best be surmised as:

Video games have, by and large, done their best to maintain their unique market, not through trying to sell more to people who “might” play video games but to the people that “do” play video games. When games were simple, when input was simplistic, this market was vast enough to sustain an industry. However, as time has gone on, games have become more complex, and as the first group of gamers leave the market the cost of the industry has surpassed the possible buying potential of the audience game makers want to attract. The time is ripe for a new market plan to be installed and Nintendo is trying it. However, Nintendo does this without catering to the previously installed consumer base. By not catering to this group, they have alienated them, causing a larger rift and furthering the now unlikely scenario of game manufacturers looking for a bigger market.