DMUGA Assignment #4 - What factors drive the technology?

Hey all, today I'd like to talk about what powers the people to keep developing the technology that keeps us all so entertained & how it's come along over the past years to provide a better, more immersive experience for gamers. I have written a brief summary of this in a previous blog, but would like to expand on this. In addition, include a little about why some things succeeded and other things failed to live in the marketplace.

Necessity is the mother of invention

Necessity or Luxury? 

I'll begin with a quite I'd like to re-mention: "A true creator is necessity, which is the mother of our invention." - Ref 1 The republic, book II, 369c, Plato. This famous quote is usually associated with revolutionary inventions that affect the way we go about things... So, this is a perfect example to which these wise words apply. Before computer systems & electronics were developed, people lived their lives and they weren't essential for survival, so do we really need them? Are they a necessity?

Over the years that video games & computers in general were being made, more and more people were being exposed to this new technology. Despite being so simplistic in terms of what they could do, people & businesses had a genuine need for computers, to store data, complete calculations faster, and provide support with a lot of things. Once that one person decided to create something for a little bit of fun on one of these machines, the game was on. What has driven us from this early stage to now is the human nature to want more. It was by no means the first game, but as an example: Pong. Pong was 2 rectangles and a block going from side to side, but once we knew we could create such a game and make it so popular, we thought 'Lets make something even more exciting and creative'. To briefly bring it back to my point of games being a necessity now, as exposure to games increased, the feel for the need of this type of entertainment was created. Now, children in first world countries are being born into a world filled with computers & games, not knowing life without them, making it a 'need'. This mixed with the human nature of always wanting more, creates this loop of continuous development of previous inventions, I.e. games.

The grass in greener... Always wanting more

Mark I Computer

As previously explored (please read DMUGA Assignment #1 - History of video games 1950's-70's), the difference engine was the first ever mechanical computer. - More info here: Ref 2. Now, as fascinating as it is, if we look at the shear size of this thing, how hard it was to produce, and what it could actually do; it's nothing compared to what calculations modern age computer can do. However, it is a starting point. The improvement on this was Herman Hollerith's 'Tabulating Machine' computer which was built for a contest to create something which could count & record information faster. After starting a company from this, it got sold on and went to become what we know as IBM computers in 1912 (International business machines).
This was an improvement, but Howard Aiken in 1944 thought he could better by using some mechanical, some electronic components, in order to make a computer that can do various things, not just one. This 'Mark I' computer was 50ft long and 8ft high, with 500 miles of wires and 750,000 parts. - Ref 3. The Mark I was gigantic! This still wasn't fast enough however, so in 1946, the first all electronic computer 'ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer', was created by John Presper Eckert. This used vacuum tubes, not mechanical switches, and despite being twice as long and 2ft taller, it was 1000 times faster than the Mark I, and was a colossal improvement upon it. - Ref 3&4.
Using these 3 examples, starting with mechanical components which could do one job, to a fully electronic computer which can do many jobs, and far faster than previous creations, it is a point that be applied to gaming. From the very first games such as Space wars, Maze wars, Pong etc, (please see DMUGA Assignment #1), to now, we have felt the need to do better, driving us to improve upon the technology & games, faster processors, smaller components, more efficient calculations, more polygons, bigger memory and much more.

The technology drives the games; games develop as the technology develops

Sinclair's ZX-81

Things bring me to my next point, the physical technology and development of games goes hand in hand. As we get these things that I've just listed, the physical devices have had to change to accompany our need for more. So, what drives the technological advancement in games & the experience of them? The devices themselves, and not just literally. For example, going back to games that had to be stored on cassette tapes, the Sinclair ZX-81 and it only 1 kilobyte worth of memory/RAM. 1kb is absolutely tiny! - Ref 5. One little model in 3DS max would be far too large to even store on the tapes, but the people who made games on this still created a fun game to an extent. However, unless the physical technology didn't improve so that there was more memory, no-one could ever create a more graphical game. As technology in this sense advanced, so better processing power, better RAM, bigger storage for games, this gave game developers more freedom and more options to explore graphically, therefore, improving the immersive gaming experience.

Furthermore, as well as these things, the actual display has improved, TV screen & monitors have developed and gotten bigger and more pixels than ever before, allowing for the details in the games to really shine through and create a better experience for everyone.

Cartridges - Expensive, bulky, but nostalgic

From what I know generally, these games were originally stored on cassette tapes, then floppy disks, cartridges, and now CDs. Floppy disks had more space, and so allowed for more complicated games to be stored on them, after this, the beginning of the cartridge - a great example is Nintendo. They still even use cartridges today for the Nintendo DS. CDs are the main one, and a prime example was the jump between Nintendo's cartridge games up to the 90's, to Sony's Playstation CDs in 1994 (Not to mention the CDs were far cheaper to produce than the cartridges). - Ref 11.
Therefore, again linking it back to my point, as technology improves (faster, smaller, bigger capacity etc), the game will improve with it, as it means you can create more and faster.

Fight or Flight
Using the transition from cartridges to CDs to generate the next factor that contributes to the improvement in the technology; competition. Competition between company's is a big contributor to advancements. Imagine this: you've just released your new console to the world, it's a hit, but 1 month later someone else releases pretty much the same thing, but with a peripheral that makes it a tiny bit better. What'll you do? Create a new one with similar concepts, just better than the others so that you have the upper hand in the marketplace. Simple. The fight to be better than everyone else helps us to conceive of new ways we can go out things, e.g. gaming.

Sony's 'EyeToy' - What started the motion sensor gaming?

A relatively new example of this in my opinion was the Nintendo Wii, Playstation, & the X-box 360. I don't know, but from my view growing up, when the Wii came out and it had the motion sensor with the Nunchuks, there wasn't anything else that did the same thing with games at the time (Although the Playstation did create the 'Eye Toy', but it died out). After a while, it was revealed that Microsoft had been working on the 'Kinect', and Sony with the 'Playstation Move', and it was almost as if they both tried to eliminate the competition by bringing out new devices which were more technologically advanced than the Wii's motion sensor. In addition to being more advanced, hold the market for graphically advanced games, as well as the more family orientated & friendlier games. A few motion games were available before all this for the webcam on the computer, but once again died out.

At the moment, I don't know of any advancements in the Playstation Move, but despite the motion games still not being too popular, Microsoft are persisting with making the Kinect better with the Kinect 2.0. Once again, even this doesn't seem to be too great at times; don't get me wrong, the voice commands & sensors are a lot better than before, but it still has its issues.

Microsoft's 'Kinect 2.0'

I could even go on to explain in-depth about all the competition that went on for far older consoles, e.g. between Atari, Sega, Nintendo, Sony, Maganox & Coleco in the 1970's onwards. Although, if you read my games history blog, it's evident that these company's have been fighting for top place for quite a while, and many have been lost on the way, including the smaller ones that just didn't really make it that far. There were many reasons for these failings, but most of the time, they just couldn't deal with competitors and fled. Whereas other situations lead to a divide between people & their loyalty, and they prefer one console to another because it has an exclusive game on it. For example, Sonic the Hedgehog to the Sega Master System, and Super Mario to the Nintendo Entertainment system. "People were buying them not necessarily for the consoles, but for the game available on them. That's something that's very true to this day". - Ref 11 Pg 3.

"Hey, big spender!"
So, what does competition mean for businesses? Loss. The more products out there that do something similar to yours, the more potential customers are taken away and loss in what could have been profit. Computers & computer games started out for, excuse me here, the 'nerdy' type of guys, who enjoy programming and circuits etc. For whatever reason, a lot of women didn't really enjoy this type of thing, and never really took the computer industry into consideration for a job. Perhaps games generally didn't appeal to the female market? Therefore, only a certain type of person would want to buy & use a computer and play games. However, when the first console was made, it was made for the living room, a more family orientated place. Also, as home computers became more necessary to have, and women were becoming more independent & getting jobs that became heavily reliant on computers, they were exposed to games whether they liked it or not. By bringing the console and computer to family homes, games were starting to be developed for a wider market, with gender specific ones, as well as the all inclusive games.
The reason I mention this is because if you have a wider target market, you product & or business will most definitely be more commercially viable, and more likely to generate profit. Even though there is still a larger ratio of male to female gamers (55:45 - Ref 6), there's still a lot more females playing games nowadays than there was back in the 1960's/70's.

Gaming franchises - main characters

Going back to the big dogs of the gaming industry, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo & PC's Steam, profit in the games released on their systems by developers, drive the technology to become better and better. For example, the Grand Theft Auto series, Call of Duty, Halo, Forza Motorsport, Fifa, Madden, Tekken etc. The reason why these games get better (generally), whether it be graphically, through story line, game mechanics, game concepts etc, is because the developers get profit from the previous game, and re-invest into the next one in order to generate even more profit; growing as a business.

Grand Theft Auto 5 Logo

When it comes to a franchise, you can't release something that's worse than the previous product, otherwise you'll lose customers, customer loyalty, and again to put it straight, money. A perfect modern day example is the elephant in the room, GTA 5. The Grand Theft Auto series has improved in each game they've made. San Andreas was the most popular one for the majority of the time, then when #4 came out with better graphics, new missions, new mechanics & Ideas, and it generated huge profits, so the next thing to do was re-invest in GTA 5. Right now, GTA 5 had the most development cost of any game of £170 million. However, it has also had the most profit ever generated of over 1 billion pounds - Ref 8. Having sold so many copies and gotten such good reviews, Rockstar Games if they decide to re-invest in another GTA game, will HAVE to make it better than this game, thus, re-instating my point of profit driving the technology forward.

Change is good

Omni-directional Treadmill - Kickstarter Project 'Omni:
Move naturally in your favourite game

With these new games come change, changes to how they work, which brings me to my final point. The new concepts and the strive for something more interesting, more compelling than previous technology, results in improvements. This links to my original point of always wanting more, something better.

A wonderful example of this is presented on a TV program "The Gadget Show". We all have our controllers, what ones we prefer due to the ergonomics of them, the design etc, although at some point surely we'll get bored of these? They're certainly a good, efficient concept that requires minimal effort to play, but what about walking around yourself and 'feeling' the game, bringing all kinds of engagement. They demonstrate an omni-directional treadmill as well as a 180 degree display which moves as you move, tracked by using Microsoft's Kinect. You can see the references for videos (highly recommended) - Refs 10. Now, this type of experience is still clearly in development and far from being commercially viable, let alone logistically viable for the living room. However, a kick-starter project was successfully funded in July 2013 for an omni-treadmill for the living room. - Ref 9. I haven't heard any breaking news of it yet, but it could be the next controller, or at least, a new area for gamers to explore and have fun with. Therefore, the feeling of wanting something new and exciting ties into driving us to create new and innovative ideas, advancing in the technology department.

To Summarise
In a few short points, what keeps the technology going?:

• The need for better, faster, stronger tech to keep us interested & engaged.
• In terms of gaming/games improving, the technology helps it develop by allowing for more complex'simulations' & environments.
• Competition between companies to keep on top of the market drives themselves to become better with each release they do.
• In one word: Profit. If a business is profitable, it only makes sense to milk it as much as you can, but in order to do so, you must improve and not subtract.
• Getting bored with one thing, or just coming up with something new helps explore undiscovered roads which could lead to a better place - Exploring the unknown drives us to move forward.

This blog is a little lengthy, although I did keep it to 5 points. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed reading what I think about how we keep progressing.

References:
1-The republic, book II, 369c, Plato.
2-http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/d/diffengi.htm
3-http://www.crews.org/curriculum/ex/compsci/articles/history.htm
4-http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Brief-History-of-the-ENIAC-Computer-228879421.html
5-http://oldcomputers.net/zx81.html
6-http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.410369-ESA-Study-Finds-Women-Make-Up-Nearly-Half-of-Gamer-Population
7-http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/09/gta-5-budget-most-expensive_n_3892602.html
8-http://www.vg247.com/2013/10/29/gta-5-has-sold-29-million-copies/
9-http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1944625487/omni-move-naturally-in-your-favorite-game
10-http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/31/the-gadget-show-plays-bf3-better-than-you/ & http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-show/gadget-news/up-close-with-the-battlefield-3-simulator
11-New electronics. (26th June 2012). From Pong to Wii: four decades of computing gaming. 2-4.
Image References:
-http://suturi.com/?p=9495
-http://oldcomputers.net/pics/ZX81.jpg
-http://assets.motherboard.tv/post_images/assets/000/009/010/Rom_cartridges_original.jpg?1302589924
-http://images.lazygamer.net/2010/11/eyeytoy.jpg
-http://media.heavy.com/media/2013/11/Kinect2.jpg
-http://media.comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/21032/Top_Games_PC_by_josepa.jpg
-http://www.cgmotionbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/logo-vintage.png
-https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/000/533/193/24385ea8eadf82ed168601ccdfe444d2_large.jpg?1366613213