A Brief History of Car Racing Games

For my intro to video games class, we had to write a paper documenting the history of a game genre. I chose the long-time favorite of the non-gamer I’ve become in my old age: car games. Specifically the racing variety. I went from Pole Position (as well as its forefathers, Night Driver, Turbo, and Speed Freak) to Driver and Midtown Madness. Nothing after 2000 because nothing new and exciting has popped up yet (according to my research at least).

Prepare To Qualify: A Brief History of Car Racing Games

Facade

I did a presentation for my Video Games class on Facade, an interactive fiction game that came out in 2005. The game itself is interesting: you play a friend of a couple, Grace and Trip, invited over to catch up with them at their apartment. You’re immediately thrown into a high tension situation and must try to be a good guest as they go all drama. My gripes with it were that the input wasn’t as receptive as I wanted to it to be (more than once I would say things that they would totally ignore) and sudden movements would screw the system all up. It was sorta fun though in a bizarre social experiment way though.

Facade: Class Presentation

What Is A Video Game?

The readings for this week were the definitions of games and video games put forth by Caillois, Juul, and Tavinor.

Callois: Games are on the spectrum of paidia (simple, unadulterated recreational fun – dog chasing its tail) to ludus (an individual’s domination over an object of play – solitaire) with various interacting elements: agon (requiring skill to win, tennis/chess); alea (luck or chance, blackjack/lottery); mimicry (spectacle of pretending, kids pretending to be a train); and/or ilinix (physical motion used to make people dizzy or offbalance, riding roller coasters).

Juul: Games feature: rules, a variable, quantifiable outcome; a value assigned to positive outcomes; a player making an effort; a player caring about outcome; and negotiable consequences. They also can be defined by their translation of real world play to electronic form: implementations (can compute all possible outcomes) vs. adaptations (details/movement/nuance lost between real life and computer simulation).

Travinor: Video games are defined as a program in a digital visual environment that made primarily for entertainment that provides that through rule-based play or an interactive fictional world.

Travinor’s definition was the one that stood closest to what I had in my mind of what a video game is. Also in the reading it mentioned that a video game differs from a traditional game in that you discover what the rules and goals are based on trial and error instead of getting told what they are before you start. I partially disagreed because I think it’s rare to enter a game without knowing what the objective is since there are now game trailers, reviews, and even synopses on packaging to guide you. What you do learn through trial and error is the best mode of play, having to acclimate yourself to the game before you are good, but that also applies to non-video games. I consider video games a subset of games because of the application of digital tools to mediate game play.

I thought the Callois opinion of games was definitely all encompassing enough, but the lack of specificity really cast the net too wide of what can be inside the video game club. Juul’s, on the other hand, it didn’t feel applied to games where you could meander around out outside of the overall game narrative as long as you want, i.e. Grand Theft Auto.

Another part of this week’s assignment was playing three computer games and deciding if they were (video) games or not. The first was solitaire, which I decided was both a game and a video. It succeeds since it is a translation of a simple game to a digital environment, still operating on the same principles of using your skill to get all the cards arranged by suit and win. The second was fl0w, which I also considered the two types of games. To me, this game was impossible to play without using the how to play page because it was really non-intuitive what the objective was. The third game, Free Rice, I considered a game but not a video game. If going by Travinor’s definition, there is an expectation of entertainment involved. You get the satisfaction/disappointment of answering things right to make/stop your rice accumulation, but there’s no real tangible incentive to engage with an environment so flat. Not to imply that a game without graphics can’t be fun. I used to play text role-playing games back in the days of Compuserve, but there was a narrative in place to propel you through the game by piquing your interest. Free Rice has nothing going for it but altruism, which is fine in itself, but not especially intriguing.

Intro To Video Games

In the spirit of learning new stuff and exploring new ways to look at familiar things, I signed up for Introduction to Video Games through the Tisch Open Arts classes. I’ll confess that I got left behind in the video games world sometime in the 90s. My last video game system was an Atari 7800 and the last games that caught my attention were the Doom series and Civilization 2 back in late high school/college. I’m not totally unaware of games, being pretty plugged into the media and having tons of friends with PS3s, XBoxs, and Wiis. I kinda wanted a console when I saw the commercials for the Assassin’s Creeds and Grand Theft Autos, but considering I don’t spend much time at home, the only practical appeal a PS3 has for me at the moment is watching movies from Netflix.

As you can imagine, admitting all of that to my new classmates went over like a lead balloon. I’m currently the most uncool loser in a den full of gamers. Despite that, I’m looking forward to the experience as a nice trip out of my comfort zone and a chance to play devil’s advocate more than once I’m sure. I’m not thrilled that grad students get extra readings and 500-1000 more words to write in the papers, but interacting with undergrads has the potential to be pure comedy.