Video Games

Video game

A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device.However, with the popular use of the term "video game", it now implies any type of display device. The electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms; examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large computers to small handheld devices. Specialized video games such as arcade games, while previously common, have gradually declined in use.

The input device used to manipulate video games is called a game controller, and varies across platforms. For example, a dedicated console controller might consist of only a button and a joystick. Another may feature a dozen buttons and one or more joysticks. Early personal computer games often needed a keyboard for gameplay, or more commonly, required the user to buy a separate joystick with at least one button.Many modern computer games allow, or even require, the player to use a keyboard and mouse simultaneously.

Video games typically also use other ways of providing interaction and information to the player. Audio is almost universal, using sound reproduction devices, such as speakers and headphones. But other feedback may come via haptic peripherals, such as vibration force feedback.

Platforms

The term "platform" refers to the specific combination of electronic or computer hardware which, in conjunction with low-level software, allows a video game to operate. The term "system" is also commonly used.

In common use a "PC game" refers to a form of media that involves a player interacting with a personal computer connected to a high-resolution video monitor. A "console game" is played on a specialized electronic device that connects to a standard television set or composite video monitor. A "handheld" gaming device is a self contained electronic device that is portable and can be held in a user's hands. "Arcade game" generally refers to a game played on an even more specialized type of electronic device that is typically designed to play only one game and is encased in a special cabinet. These distinctions are not always clear and there may be games that bridge one or more platforms. Beyond this there are platforms that have non-video game variations such as in the case of electro-mechanically based arcade machines. There are also devices with screens which have the ability to play games but are not dedicated video game machines (examples are mobile phones, PDAs and graphing calculators).

Genres

A video game, like most other forms of media, may be categorized into genres based on many factors such as method of game play, types of goals, and more. Because genres are dependent on content for definition, genres have changed and evolved as newer styles of video games are created. As the production values of video games have increased over the years both in visual appearance and depth of story telling, the video game industry has been producing more life-like and complex games that push the boundaries of the traditional game genres. Some genres represent combinations of others, such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games. It is also common to see higher level genre terms that are collective in nature across all other genres such as with action or horror-themed video games.

Types

In general, video games can be divided in to three types: core games, casual games and serious games, depending on the target audience.

Definition of core games

Core games are what most consider to be video games; the games players buy in a store and play on a PC, or a video game console. These core games can also be divided into the types core games, casual games and serious games themselves as well, but are still considered part of the group of core games.

What defines core games is that they are generally larger and more expanded, than the games in the casual games and serious games branch. For instance, games like Mario Party, Buzz!, or Viva Piñata are considered casual games in the core games branch, but are considerably different from casual games such as Peggle, Delicious and Jewel Quest.

Definition of casual games

The casual games branch is mostly defined by the accessibility of gameplay found in the casual genres such as hidden object, match three and time management, and the distribution is mostly done through casual games portals such as PopCap, Zylom and GameHouse.

Definition of serious games

Video games are primarily meant for entertainment. However, some video games are made (at least in part) for other reasons. These include advergames, educational games, propaganda games (e.g. militainment), and others. Many of these fall under the category of serious games.

The difference between serious games in the core games branch, and the serious games branch, is the target audience. A serious core game is more often referred to as an educational game, as it targets to teach or educate a younger audience, for instance Dora the Explorer which teaches children a different language. An actual serious game is more of a training simulator for professional workers, such as First Responder Training, which helps firemen in making better tactical decisions in their line of work. Serious games are also not distributed as a game for individuals, but are tailor made software programs made for one or more companies.

Development

Video game development and authorship, much like any other form of entertainment, is frequently a cross-disciplinary field. Video game developers, as employees within this industry are commonly referred, primarily include programmers and graphic designers. Over the years this has expanded to include almost every type of skill that one might see prevalent in the creation of any movie or television program, including sound designers, musicians, and other technicians; as well as skills that are specific to video games, such as the game designer. All of these are managed by producers.

In the early days of the industry, it was more common for a single person to manage all of the roles needed to create a video game. As platforms have become more complex and powerful in the type of material they can present, larger teams have been needed to generate all of the art, programming, cinematography, and more. This is not to say that the age of the "one-man shop" is gone, as this is still sometimes found in the casual gaming and handheld markets, where smaller games are prevalent due to technical limitations of the target platform (such as cellphones and PDAs).

With the growth of the size of development teams in the industry, the problem of cost has increased. Development studios need to be able to pay their staff a competitive wage in order to attract and retain the best talent, while publishers are constantly looking to keep costs down in order to maintain profitability on their investment. Typically, a video game console development team can range in sizes of anywhere from 5 to 50 people, with some teams exceeding 100. In May 2009, one game project was reported to have a development staff of 450.The growth of team size combined with greater pressure to get completed projects into the market to begin recouping production costs has led to a greater occurrence of missed deadlines and unfinished products;Duke Nukem Forever is the quintessential example of these problems.

Modifications

Many games produced for the PC are designed such that technically-oriented consumers can modify the game. These mods can add an extra dimension of replayability and interest. The Internet provides an inexpensive medium to promote and distribute mods, and they have become an increasingly important factor in the commercial success of some games.[citation needed] Developers such as id Software, Valve Software, Crytek, Epic Games and Blizzard Entertainment ship their games with some of the very development tools used to make the game in the first place, along with documentation to assist mod developers, which allows for the kind of success seen by popular mods such as the (previously) Half-Life mod Counter-Strike.

Cheating

Cheating in computer games may involve cheat codes implemented by the game developers,modification of game code by third parties,or players exploiting a software glitch. Modifications are facilitated by either cheat cartridge hardware or a software trainer.Cheats usually make the game easier by providing an unlimited amount of some resource; for example lives, weapons, health, or ammunition.Other cheats might provide an unusual or amusing feature, like altered game colors or graphical appearances.

Glitches

Software errors not detected by software testers during development can find their way into released versions of computer and video games. This may happen because the glitch only occurs under unusual circumstances in the game, was deemed too minor to correct, or because the game development was hurried to meet a publication deadline. Glitches can range from minor graphical errors to serious bugs that can delete saved data or cause the game to malfunction. In some cases publishers will release updates (referred to as patches) to repair glitches.

Theory

Although departments of computer science have been studying the technical aspects of video games for years, theories that examine games as an artistic medium are a relatively recent development in the humanities. The two most visible schools in this emerging field are ludology and narratology. Narrativists approach video games in the context of what Janet Murray calls "Cyberdrama". That is to say, their major concern is with video games as a storytelling medium, one that arises out of interactive fiction. Murray puts video games in the context of the Holodeck, a fictional piece of technology from Star Trek, arguing for the video game as a medium in which we get to become another person, and to act out in another world.This image of video games received early widespread popular support, and forms the basis of films such as Tron, eXistenZ, and The Last Starfighter.

Ludologists break sharply and radically from this. They argue that a video game is first and foremost a game, which must be understood in terms of its rules, interface, and the concept of play that it deploys. Espen J. Aarseth argues that, although games certainly have plots, characters, and aspects of traditional narratives, these aspects are incidental to gameplay. For example, Aarseth is critical of the widespread attention that narrativists have given to the curvaceous heroine of the game Tomb Raider, saying that "the dimensions of Lara Croft's body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different-looking body would not make me play differently... When I play, I don't even see her body, but see through it and past it."Simply put, ludologists reject traditional theories of art because they claim that the artistic and socially relevant qualities of a video game are primarily determined by the underlying set of rules, demands, and expectations imposed on the player.

While many games rely on emergent principles, video games commonly present simulated story worlds where emergent behavior occurs within the context of the game. The term "emergent narrative" has been used to describe how, in a simulated environment, storyline can be created simply by "what happens to the player."However, emergent behavior is not limited to sophisticated games. In generally any place where event-driven instructions occur for AI in a game, emergent behavior will exist. For instance, take a racing game in which cars are programmed to avoid crashing, and they encounter an obstacle in the track: the cars might then maneuver to avoid the obstacle causing the cars behind them to slow and/or maneuver to accommodate the cars in front of them and the obstacle. The programmer never wrote code to specifically create a traffic jam, yet one now exists in the game.

Social aspects

Demographics

The November 2005 Nielsen Active Gamer Study, taking a survey of 2,000 regular gamers, found that the U.S. games market is diversifying. The age group among male players has expanded significantly up into the 25-40 age group. For casual online puzzle-style and simple mobile cell phone games, the gender divide is more or less equal between males and females. Females have been shown to be significantly attracted to playing certain online multi-user video games that offer a more communal experience, and a small number of young females have been shown to play aggressive games that are sometimes thought of as being "traditionally male" games. According to the ESRB almost 41% of PC gamers are women.With such video game social networks as Miss Video Game and Guild Cafe having a large percentages of female gamers, the "traditionally male" games are now considered cross-gendered.

When comparing today’s industry climate with that of 20 years ago, women and many adults are more inclined to be using products in the industry. While the market for teen and young adult men is still a strong market, it’s the other demographics which are posting significant growth. In 2008, the average American gamer has been playing for 12 years, and is now, on average, 35 years of age.

Multiplayer

Video gaming has traditionally been a social experience. From its early beginnings, video games have commonly been playable by more than a single player. Multiplayer video games are those that can be played either competitively or cooperatively by using either multiple input devices, or by hotseating. Tennis for Two, arguably the first video game, was a two-player game, as was its successor Pong. The first commercially available game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, had two controller inputs.

Since then, most consoles have been shipped with two or four controller inputs. Some have had the ability to expand to four, eight or as many as twelve inputs with additional adapters, such as the Multitap. Multiplayer arcade games typically feature play for two to four players, sometimes tilting the monitor on its back for a top-down viewing experience allowing players to sit opposite one another.

Many early computer games for non-PC descendant based platforms featured multiplayer support. Personal computer systems from Atari and Commodore both regularly featured at least two game ports. PC-based computer games started with a lower availability of multiplayer options because of technical limitations. PCs typically had either one or no game ports at all. Network games for these early personal computers were generally limited to only text based adventures or MUDs that were played remotely on a dedicated server. This was due both to the slow speed of modems (300-1200-bit/s), and the prohibitive cost involved with putting a computer online in such a way where multiple visitors could make use of it. However, with the advent of widespread local area networking technologies and Internet based online capabilities, the number of players in modern games can be 32 or higher, sometimes featuring integrated text and/or voice chat. MMOs can offer extremely high numbers of simultaneous players; Eve Online set a record with just under 36,000 players on a single server in 2006.

Benefits

It has been shown that action video game players have better visuomotor skills, such as their resistance to distraction, their sensitivity to information in peripheral vision, and their ability to count briefly presented objects than nonplayers.They found that such enhanced abilities could be acquired by training with an action game, involving challenges to switch attention to different locations, but not with a game requiring concentration on single objects. It has been suggested by a few studies that online/offline video gaming can be used as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of different mental health concerns.

In Steven Johnson's book, Everything Bad Is Good For You, he argues that video games in fact demand far more from a player than traditional games like Monopoly. To experience the game, the player must first determine the objectives, as well as how to complete them. They must then learn the game controls and how the human-machine interface works, including menus and HUDs. Beyond such skills, which after some time become quite fundamental and are taken for granted by many gamers, video games are based upon the player navigating (and eventually mastering) a highly complex system with many variables. This requires a strong analytical ability, as well as flexibility and adaptability. He argues that the process of learning the boundaries, goals, and controls of a given game is often a highly demanding one that calls on many different areas of cognitive function. Indeed, most games require a great deal of patience and focus from the player, and, contrary to the popular perception that games provide instant gratification, games actually delay gratification far longer than other forms of entertainment such as film or even many books.Some research suggests video games may even increase players' attention capacities.

Learning principles found in video games have been identified as possible techniques with which to reform the U.S. education system.It has been noticed that gamers adopt an attitude while playing that is of such high concentration, they don't realize they're learning, and that if the same attitude could be adopted at school, education would enjoy significant benefits.Students are found to be "learning by doing" while playing video games while fostering creative thinking.

The U.S. Army has deployed machines such as the PackBot which make use of a game-style hand controller to make it more familiar for young people.

According to research discussed at the 2008 Convention of the American Psychological Association, certain types of video games can improve the gamers’ dexterity as well as their ability to problem-solve. A study of 33 laparoscopic surgeons found that those who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures and made 37 percent fewer errors compared to those who did not play video games. A second study of 303 laparoscopic surgeons (82 percent men; 18 percent women) also showed that surgeons who played video games requiring spatial skills and hand dexterity and then performed a drill testing these skills were significantly faster at their first attempt and across all 10 trials than the surgeons who did not play the video games first.

Whilst many studies have detected superior mental aptitudes amongst habitual gamers, research by Walter Boot at the University of Illinois found that non-gamers showed no improvement in memory or multitasking abilities after 20 hours of playing three different games. The researchers suggested that "individuals with superior abilities are more likely to choose video gaming as an activity in the first place".

Controversy

Like related forms of media, computer and video games have been the subject of frequent controversy and censorship, due to the depiction of graphic violence, sexual themes, advergaming (a form of advertising in games), consumption of drugs, consumption of alcohol or tobacco, propaganda, or profanity in some games. Among others, critics of video games sometimes include parents' groups, politicians, organized religious groups, and other special interest groups, even though all of these can be found in all forms of entertainment and media. Various games have been accused of causing addiction and even violent behavior. "Video game censorship" is defined as the use of state or group power to control the playing, distribution, purchase, or sale of video games or computer games. Video game controversy comes in many forms, and censorship is a controversial subject. Proponents and opponents of censorship are often very passionate about their individual views.

Various national content rating organizations, such as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board or ESRB in North America, rate software for certain age groups and with certain content warnings. Some of these organizations are optional industry self-regulation (such as the ESRB), while others are part of national government censorship organizations. Also, parents are not always aware of the existence of these ratings.

Commercial aspects

Game sales

A typical retail display (in Geneva, Switzerland) with a large selection of games for several major consoles

The three largest producers of and markets for computer and video games (in order) are North America (US and Canada), Japan and the United Kingdom. Other significant markets include Australia, Spain, Germany, South Korea, Mexico, France and Italy.Both India and China are considered emerging markets in the video game industry and sales are expected to rise significantly in the coming years.

Sales of different types of games vary widely between these markets due to local preferences. Japanese consumers tend to purchase console games over computer games, with a strong preference for games catering to local tastes. In South Korea, computer games are preferred, especially MMORPG games and real-time strategy games. There are over 20,000 Internet cafés in South Korea where computer games can be played for an hourly charge.

The NPD Group tracks computer and video game sales in the United States. It reported that:

Console and portable software sales: $6.2 billion, up 8% from 2003

Console and portable hardware and accessory sales: $3.7 billion, down 35% from 2003

PC game sales: $1.1 billion, down 15% from 2006

PC games that are digitally distributed either directly or by networks such as Steam are not tracked by the NPD, and Steam does not list sales numbers for games downloaded through their service. Unauthorized distribution is also rampant on the PC.

These figures are sales in dollars, not units, Unit shipments for each category were higher than the dollar sales numbers indicate, because more software and hardware was discounted than in 2003. But with the release of the next-generation consoles in 2006, these numbers increased dramatically. The game and film industries are also becoming increasingly intertwined, with companies like Sony having significant stakes in both. A large number of summer blockbuster films spawn a companion game, often launching at the same time to share the marketing costs.