WHAT IS ELECTRONIC GAME |full detail its extra knowledge-II

Personal computer games

By the late 1970s, electronic games could be designed not only for large university-based shared computers, video consoles, and arcade machines but also for the new breed of home computers equipped with their own general-purpose microprocessors and operating systems that could run software written in languages such as BASIC. Apple II (1977) from Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), and the IBM Personal Computer (1981) featured color graphics, flexible storage capacity, and a variety of input devices.

The Atari 800 (1979) and Commodore Business Machines’ Commodore 64 (1982) offered similar features, but they also retained cartridge slots for console-style games. Game designers took advantage of the greater flexibility of computers to explore new game genres, often inspired by complex paper-and-pencil role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, various board games, and Crowther’s Adventure. Interactive fiction was a particularly successful format on personal computers.

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Other games—such as the King’s Quest series by Sierra On-Line (1983), military simulations and role-playing games published by Strategic Simulations Incorporated (founded in 1979), Richard Garriott’s Akalabeth/Ultima series (1979), and the sports and multimedia titles of Electronic Arts (founded in 1982)—extended the simulation and storytelling capacity of computer games. Networked games added a social dimension.

Empire had been developed as part of the PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) Project at the University of Illinois during the early 1970s, and the possibilities of social interaction and networked-based graphics were thoroughly explored in this project and the games that resulted from it.

MUD (Multi User Dungeon), developed in 1979 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at the University of Essex, England, combined interactive fiction, role playing, programming, and dial-up modem access to a shared computer. It inspired dozens of popular multiplayer games, known collectively as MUDs, that placed players in a virtual world that functioned on the basis of social interaction as much as structured game play. Hundreds of themed multiplayer MUDs were written during the 1980s and early ’90s.

The return of video consoles

On the heels of the collapse of the home console industry in the early 1980s, two Japanese manufacturers of coin-operated video games, the Nintendo Co., Ltd., and Sega Enterprises Ltd., introduced a new generation of video consoles, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES; 1985) and the Sega Genesis (1989), with graphics that equaled or exceeded the capabilities of personal computers.

More important, Nintendo introduced battery-powered storage cartridges that enabled players to save games in progress so that they could later continue playing right where they had left off. Games such as Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros (1985) and The Legend of Zelda (1987; see Sidebar: The Legend of Zelda), as well as Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy series (1987; originally for Nintendo only), fully exploited the ability to save games in progress.

They used it to provide deeper game experiences, flexible character development, and complex interactive environments. These qualities encouraged comparisons between video games and other narrative media such as cinema and led to the creation of powerful franchises and intellectual properties based on successful games set in expandable story worlds. While there were continuous improvements in home console technology, especially in graphics, storage, and controller technology through the

1990s, the next set of significant advances across a generation of video game consoles included the Sony Corporation’s Playstation 2 (2000), Nintendo’s GameCube (2001), and the Microsoft Corporation’s Xbox (2001). These consoles were defined in marketing and advertising primarily by their superior technology, especially 3D graphics and the exploitation of networking capabilities, which during the 1990s had been developed primarily for personal computer games.

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Alongside the goal of intense, immersive experiences made possible by technical advances such as graphics coprocessors available in personal computers and modern game consoles, another area of technical advance during the 1990s was mobile and handheld gaming. In 1989 Nintendo extended its business success with the introduction of Game Boy, a handheld game system with a small monochrome display.

It was not the first portable game player—Nintendo had marketed the small Game and Watch player since 1980—but it offered a new puzzle game, Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris (1989), an international best-seller that was ideally suited to the new device. The Game Boy line, continued by the Game Boy Advance in 2001, sold more than 100 million units from 1989 to 2007. That impressive sales figure was topped by the Game Boy’s successor, Nintendo’s DS family of handhelds, which debuted in 2004.

CELLULAR TELEPHONES

By the early 21st century, the improving capabilities of cellular telephones offered another platform for mobile games. After the demonstrated success of purpose-built hardware such as the Game Boy, cell phones also gradually became viable platforms for electronic games, beginning with conversions of simple arcade games of an earlier era, such as Snake, released for Nokia phones in 1997. As the technical specifications of cell phones improved, games with color or 3D graphics were developed.

The potential for cell phone games was enhanced by the possibility of integration with real-time location-based tracking (such as GPS), messaging, and interaction with real-world events and places.

The introduction of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and Apple’s App Store in 2008 stabilized marketing and distribution of mobile games as cell phone applications, and the business model was followed by developers who created games for other platforms, with varying degrees of success.

Many small game developers moved to production of mobile games. Before long, a few of them had become major forces in the game industry, paced by Rovio Mobile, developer of the multiplatform blockbuster hit Angry Birds (2009).

Networked games and virtual worlds

During the 1990s and 2000s, computer game designers exploited three-dimensional graphics, faster microprocessors, networking, handheld and wireless game devices, and the Internet to develop new genres for video consoles, personal computers, and networked environments.

These included first-person “shooters”—action games in which the environment is seen from the player’s view—such as id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D (1991), Doom (1993), and Quake (1996) and Microsoft’s Halo (2001); sports games such as Electronic Arts’ Madden NFL series (1989), based on motion-capture systems and artificial intelligence; and massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) such as Ultima Online (1997), EverQuest (1998), and World of Warcraft (2004), combining traits of MUDs with graphical role-playing games to allow thousands of subscribers to create “avatars” (that is, representative icons or animated computer characters) and to explore “persistent” virtual worlds.

Communities of game players organized themselves around multiplayer teams (or “clans”), congregated on fan Web sites devoted to specific games, shared independent modifications (or “mods”) of published games, or circulated their own player-made movies and replays (“machinima”). These groups shared common interests in computer game titles, using the Internet, broadband connections, LAN (local area network) parties, and other applications of networking technology in ways that increasingly merged in-game and out-of-game social experiences. New forms of participation challenged game developers to produce games that accounted for gamer communities and encouraged player-created content. Examples of games that benefited from extending game play through the engagement of players included titles such as The Sims (2000) and LittleBigPlanet (2008).

ELECTRONIS GAMES MOVED

As electronic games moved into the mainstream of commerce and culture around the world, developers of electronic games explored social networks as a new platform, incorporated technologies that reworked the interactive and immersive aspects of game play, and applied game mechanics to many other fields of activity.

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The importance of virtual communities for online games emerged from the relatively closed worlds of MUDs and MMOGs with the massive global success of online games such as Runescape (2001) and World of Warcraft.

Within a few years these numbers were matched and exceeded by games produced for social networking services such as Facebook, notably Zynga’s Mafia Wars (2008) and Farmville (2009) and Playfish’s Restaurant City (2009). The latest generation of home consoles introduced new technologies of motion control, most notably the Wii Remote for the Nintendo Wii system and the Kinect for Xbox 360.

The cultural impact of electronic games throughout the world in the early 21st century was undeniable, paced by trends such as the growth and acceptance of game art; the “Serious Games” movement, which sought to integrate elements of electronic gaming into education and training; and the controversial advocacy of “gamification,” a term for the application of game mechanics to virtually any field of endeavour.

Global sales of computer and video games, including hardware and accessories, exceeded $30 billion in 2002; less than a decade later, this figure had roughly doubled. In comparison, box office receipts for the American movie industry were about $9.5 billion in 2008.

On the day of its release in November 2010, Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Black Ops grossed $360 million in global sales, making it the biggest opening in entertainment history. Statistics such as these are often cited to demonstrate the continued growth and importance of computer games as an entertainment medium.

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