History of Video Games Exhibit

Mandi Walls writes "Wired is running an article about an exhibit on the history of video games at Barbican in London. It's supposed to hit the US next year. They start at Space War! from 1962 and move forward from there."

Re:Good luck seeing even one of these things.

[realgone]

Fifty game stations. Zero quarters required. I'm there.

But that takes all the fun out of it. I mean, I can't even imagine playing Street Fighter II without a long row of quarters balanced along the bottom edge of the screen. ("I got next.") That'd be like having a clean floor at a bar: wholly unnatural.

creative genius?

[SevenTowers]

"Game On offers case studies of specific titles (Pokémon and The Sims among them) that demystify just how games are made. It's not about a single creative genius working alone in some back room anymore."

Anybody hear of John Carmack?
Some people don't like Pokemon (come on, it's a yellow sqwishy thing!) ID software is a small group of dedicated individuals that have produced consistently and I think the best games still come from a small core of elite hackers and people with great imaginations. So much for large development teams... It is the game design that matters, not the number of people (look at Romero's ideas of grandeur...)

Re:The Article for those who are behind slow links

[GuyMannDude]

The show also delves into the complex relationship between the gaming community and Hollywood. Comparing film posters, screenings, and playable versions of franchises like James Bond and Final Fantasy, it becomes clear that what makes a good game doesn't always make a good film and vice versa (think Tomb Raider).

Well I guess that's true but I think a lot of that is just Hollywood being lazy and not putting any real effort into making a good videogame-based movie. Take Street Fighter for example. The Hollywood movie with Van Damme is beyond awful. But Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is actually reasonably well done, for what it is. The problem is that Hollywood just doesn't have respect for the gaming industry yet. They realize there's tons of money floating around but they don't recognize games as anything more than flashing lights and crazy sounds. I would argue that there SHOULD be a "complex relationship between the gaming community and Hollywood" but that's still hasn't happened yet. Ideally, a videogame-based movie would develop the characters to a degree that can't be done in a videogame. This, in turn, would make the game more interesting and complex than the original designers ever intended.

Just my two cents...

GMD