Early growth
Although personal computers only became popular with the development of the microprocessor, mainframe and minicomputers have been used for computer gaming since at least the 1960s. One of the first computer games was developed in 1961, when MIT students Martin Graetz and Alan Kotok, with MIT employee Stephen Russell, developed Spacewar! on a PDP-1 computer used for statistical calculations.[3]
The first generation of PC games were often text adventures or interactive fiction, in which the player communicated with the computer by entering commands through a keyboard. The first text-adventure, Adventure, was developed for the PDP-11 in 1972.[4] By the 1980s, personal computers had become powerful enough to run games like Adventure, but by this time, graphics were beginning to become an important factor in games. Later games combined textual commands with basic graphics, as seen in the SSI Gold Box games such as Pool of Radiance, or Bard's Tale.
By the mid-1970s, games were developed and distributed through hobbyist groups and gaming magazines, such as Creative Computing and later Computer Gaming World. These publications provided game code that could be typed into a computer and played, encouraging readers to submit their own software to competitions.[5]
Industry crash
As the video game market became flooded with poor-quality games created by numerous companies attempting to enter the market, and major releases such as the Atari 2600 adaptation of E.T. failed to impress consumers, the popularity of personal computers for education rose dramatically. As a result, in 1983, consumer interest in video games dwindled to historical lows, prompting the near-collapse of the game console market while causing increase in sales of home computer games.[6]
The effects of the crash were largely limited to the console market, as established companies such as Atari posted record losses over subsequent years. Conversely, the home computer market boomed, as sales of low-cost colour computers such as the Commodore 64 rose to record highs and developers such as Electronic Arts benefited from increasing interest in the platform.[6]
The crash was largely reversed by the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System.[6]
New genres
Increasing adoption of the computer mouse, driven partially by the success of games such as the highly successful King's Quest series, and high resolution bitmap displays allowed the industry to include increasingly high-quality graphical interfaces in new releases. Meanwhile, the Commodore Amiga computer achieved great success in the market from its release in 1985, contributing to the rapid adoption of these new interface technologies.[7]
Further improvements to game artwork were made possible with the introduction of the first sound cards, such as AdLib's Music Synthesizer Card, in 1987. These cards allowed IBM PC compatible computers to produce complex sounds using FM synthesis, where they had previously been limited to simple tones and beeps. However, the rise of the Creative Labs Sound Blaster card, which featured much higher sound quality due to the inclusion of a PCM channel and digital signal processor, led AdLib to file for bankruptcy in 1992.
The year before, id Software had produced one the first first-person shooter games, Hovertank 3D, which also represented the first use of realtime 3D graphics.[8] The same team went on to develop Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, which became the first commercially successful first-person shooter, kick-starting a genre that would become one of the highest-selling in modern times.[9] The game was originally distributed through the shareware distribution model, allowing players to try a limited part of the game for free but requiring payment to play the rest, and represented one of the first uses of texture mapping graphics in a popular game, along with Ultima Underworld.[10]
While leading Sega and Nintendo console systems kept their CPU speed at 3-7 MHz, the 486 PC processor ran much faster at 66 MHz, allowing it to perform many more calculations per second. The 1993 release of Doom on the PC was a breakthrough in 3D graphics, and was soon ported to various game consoles in a general shift toward greater realism.[11]
Many early PC games included extras such as the peril-sensitive sunglasses that shipped with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. These extras gradually became less common, but many games were still sold in the traditional over-sized boxes that used to hold the extra "feelies". Today, such extras are usually found only in Special Edition versions of games, such as Battlechests from Blizzard.[12]
Contemporary gaming
By 1995, the rise of Microsoft Windows and success of 3D console titles such as Super Mario 64 sparked great interest in hardware accelerated 3D graphics on the PC, and soon resulted in attempts to produce affordable solutions with the ATI Rage, Matrox Mystique and Silicon Graphics ViRGE. Tomb Raider, which was released in 1996, was one of the first third person shooter games and was praised for its revolutionary graphics. As 3D graphics libraries such as DirectX and OpenGL matured and knocked proprietary interfaces out of the market, these platforms gained greater acceptance in the market, particularly with their demonstrated benefits in games such as Unreal.[13] However, major changes to the Microsoft Windows operating system, by then the market leader, made many older MS-DOS-based games unplayable on Windows NT, and later, Windows XP.[14]
The faster graphics accelerators and improving CPU technology resulted in increasing levels of realism in computer games. During this time, the improvements introduced with products such as ATI's Radeon R300 and NVidia's GeForce 6 Series have allowed developers to increase the complexity of modern game engines. PC gaming currently tends strongly toward improvements in 3D graphics.[15]
Unlike the generally accepted push for improved graphical performance, the use of physics engines in computer games has become a matter of debate since announcement and 2005 release of the AGEIA PhysX PPU, ostensibly competing with middleware such as the Havok physics engine. Issues such as difficulty in ensuring consistent experiences for all players,[16] and the uncertain benefit of first generation PhsyX cards in games such as Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and City of Villains, prompted arguments over the value of such technology.[17][18]
Similarly, many game publishers began to experiment with new forms of marketing. Chief among these alternative strategies is episodic gaming, an adaptation of the older concept of expansion packs, in which game content is provided in smaller quantities but for a proportionally lower price. Titles such as Half-Life 2: Episode One took advantage of the idea, with mixed results rising from concerns for the amount of content provided for the price.[19]
PC game development
Game development, as with console games, is generally undertaken by one or more game developers using either standardised or proprietary tools. While games could previously be developed by very small groups of people, as in the early example of Wolfenstein 3D, many popular computer games today require large development teams and budgets running into the millions of dollars.[20]
PC games are usually built around a central piece of software, known as a game engine,[21] that simplifies the development process and enables developers to easily port their projects between platforms. Unlike most consoles, which generally only run major engines such as Unreal Engine 3 and RenderWare due to restrictions on homebrew software, personal computers may run games developed using a larger range of software. As such, a number of alternatives to expensive engines have become available, including open source solutions such as Crystal Space, OGRE and DarkPlaces.
User-created modifications
- Main article: Mod (computer gaming)
The multi-purpose nature of personal computers often allows users to modify the content of installed games with relative ease. Since console games are generally difficult to modify without a proprietary software development kit, and are often protected by legal and physical barriers against tampering and homebrew software,[22][23] it is generally easier to modify the personal computer version of games using common, easy-to-obtain software. Users can then distribute their customised version of the game (commonly known as a mod) by any means they choose.
The inclusion of map editors such as UnrealEd with the retail versions of many games, and others that have been made available online such as GtkRadiant, allow users to create modifications for games easily, using tools that are maintained by the games' original developers. In addition, companies such as id Software have released the source code to older game engines, enabling the creation of entirely new games and major changes to existing ones.[24]
Modding had allowed much of the community to produce game elements that would not normally be provided by the developer of the game, expanding or modifying normal gameplay to varying degrees. One notable example is the Hot Coffee mod for the PC port of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which enables access to an abandoned sex minigame by simply modifying a bit of the game's data file.
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