Voltage Spike's Insanity Void

In 1993, the video game industry faced a new enemy in its quest to be viewed as a true form of entertainment. This new foe wasn’t another case of in-fighting, nor was it resistance against breaking into new countries or new households. The thing standing in the way of the industry was something so powerful that it had the ability to shut down the entire industry with a whim if it so chose. This enemy was the United States Government.

The issue becoming the possible downfall of the video game industry was one centered around content. More importantly, the issue was the nature of that content and the lack of any controls in place to regulate and monitor exactly who was seeing it. Games like Night Trap and Mortal Kombat were taking the full brunt of the focus from a body that had become increasingly aware and concerned about what the children of America were choosing to play. A concerned portion of the public had started an outcry against the kind of material that had started to show up in the games that had become a major trend in the country.

These games were not like the games of the past. The games in question were home to a level of violence and risque content that hadn’t been seen in popular titles of the past. Without a way of rating the content inside the games, there was no way for a parent to be able to tell what their children may end up seeing. Instead of Mario, Link, Sonic, Donkey Kong, or other friendlier titles, these new games were promoting a new level of realistic violence that hadn’t been seen until this time.

From the hearings with the United States Government, the major publishers of the video game industry found that they needed to start regulating themselves before someone else stepped in to do that task for them. The industry knew what it needed to do to continue to be in control of itself. More importantly, the industry knew that it absolutely didn’t want to be regulated and controlled by those outside of the industry. From their revelation about the severity of the situation at hand, the Entertainment Software Rating Board was born.

The age of home gaming had come, gone, and was coming back before PC gaming started to breathe a life of its own. The main restrictions of gaming on a personal computer were primarily a hardware issue. Beyond the capability to output a decent set of graphics, the ability of gaming on a PC was incredibly hindered. The lack of any form of input, besides text, made gaming a chore. The other hang-up that existed was a lack of sound. The occasional beep and boop was fine for gaming on an Atari because the controls were there. The gamer was doing something. On a PC, they were typing commands and there was the occasional sound. This was all about to change.

Two pieces of hardware were the cause of PC gaming exploding as fast as it ended up happening, the mouse and the sound card. The computer mouse completely changed how users interacted with their PCs. No longer were there the limitations of learning strings of text to do things. Point and click was the future and that revolution was happening. The PC was becoming more intuitive and more interactive. Users weren’t typing, they were doing. The mouse allowed people to be more in control of what was happening and how they wanted it to happen.

Beyond the mouse, another piece of hardware would arrive that would reinvent how the PC interacted with its user, the sound card. No longer did the gamer have to use their imagination to provide the sounds of their games. The PC had the hardware inside of it to do it. Instead of hearing the beeps and boops that they were used to, the PC user was hearing sounds that were directly related to things happening on the screen.

These two innovations allowed game designers and game programmers to aim much higher with their games. The limitations that had served to stifle their creativity were gone. PCs had a full set of controls and the ability to produce true sounds. With the boundaries gone, the time was right for PC gaming to expand in ways that were previously only wishful thinking.

Between the early to mid 1980s, the video game business was believed to be a dead industry. The arcades were dead or dying and the home console business had become practically extinct. Stores were avoiding anything involving the words “video game” like the plague and major investors were even less interested in pumping their money into something that was considered, at the time, to be an extinct business model. There were three causes to the video game crash of the 1980s, they were: A flooded market, lack of originality, and consumer burnout.

The market became flooded with a host of companies that had been created by former employees from other companies that had made millions from the video game boom of the late 70s and early 80s. With this influx of new companies came new machines. The majority of these consoles offered little in the way of quality innovation. Instead of striving to make the next risky leap, they reverse-engineered the competition’s machines and made their own versions without bothering to try and make them feel unique or special.

This lack of originality led to a market filled with clones. More detrimentally, this lead to a market filled with clones of clones. People were getting into the video game business to turn a quick profit, not help revolutionize an industry. The public saw a burgeoning market filled with the same old thing. The people had played these games before and weren’t interested in being told to pay more money for another system that they basically already had. They lost interest. The new had worn off.

Video games weren’t the shiny toy they once had been. The games were interesting because they were something that hadn’t been done before. These were things that hadn’t existed five years ago. Going five years forward, the public was staring at rehashes of games they’d been playing since the first couple of years after the birth of the video game industry. The industry had stopped giving them a reason to view video games as a shiny new toy and, as such, they stopped treating it as one.

The video game crash of the 1980s was not the fault of one person or one action. Many differing factors lead up to the moment; people getting involved with video games for profit instead of enjoyment, releasing reworks of the old standards without also pioneering new frontiers, and a fickle nation craving the next big thing.

The early years of gaming were filled with many pitfalls that had threatened to end the entire technological revolution before it had a chance to grow. This isn’t to say that there weren’t also a great number of successes at the time. The successes are why gaming survived to become as big as it has now. The failures, however, almost nullified every success that had been achieved. The majority of these problems could be summed up with one word: unoriginality.

Pong was the first game to become a massive hit for the videogame industry. The game was one that was easily understood by absolutely anyone. To be able to play, one only had to understand the easiest rule: don’t miss. Video ping-pong opened the door for videogames to become a staple of entertainment for almost everyone. The popularity of the game also almost ended it all before it began.

Since the beginning of true invention, there have always been copycats. Someone trying to make a fast buck has always mimicked another person’s good invention. Videogames proved to be no exception to this rule. Pong was making money hand-over-fist. The popularity and financial opportunity of the game brought out many different “inventors” with their own version of Pong. It wasn’t long before everyone had his or her own version of the same game. This oversaturation of the market led to the public quickly becoming tired of playing the same game over and over.

Programmers and designers eventually came up with new games. Many times these games were rehashes of previously released games or copies of a game someone else had released. Atari was the one company that refused to re-use ideas from their previous titles. They worked hard to stay ahead of the curve and produce new, original games.

Today’s games have both learned from, and occasionally repeat, the mistakes of the past. Sequels are always going to bring the familiar characters and stories to the gaming public. The designers of today work to make each game feel unique, while still maintaining the feel of the previous title. Even as this is the case, the copycats and mimics are still around. Any revolutionary idea will eventually be cannibalized by the competition; those eager to make a dollar off of an idea they didn’t come up with.

In the end, I feel that this struggle will be around as long as the gaming industry exists. The designers will always be striving to come up with the next groundbreaking idea. The companies that compete with them will always try to come up with their own version of the technology while the public is still enamored with it. In this way, the copycats are a necessary evil. Without them, no one would push themselves to create the next big thing.