CHEGheads Blog

Fly You to the Moon?

During the 1950s, space adventures loomed large in American pop culture as authors, comic book illustrators, and movie directors entertained the public with a steady diet of space epics. Bizarre aliens, laser beams, and spacecraft of all shapes and sizes mesmerized children and adults alike.

In the early 1960s, President Kennedy fueled public interest in such adventures, when he announced his vision of sending astronauts to the moon and John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth.

Two Men Playing Spacewar!

What does this have to do with our study of electronic gaming? Games often reflect the culture in which they are produced, and when you look at the earliest electronic games, one theme stands out: space adventure. Given the culture    of 1960s America, it’s no surprise that the world’s first software-based computer game was MIT student Steve Russell’s 1961 program Spacewar!, which featured dueling spaceships capable of intergalactic hyperspace.

Going forward, electronic extraterrestrial exploits dominated the early stages of the game industry. The first coin-operated video arcade game, Computer Space (1971), was clearly inspired by Spacewar!, as were numerous other arcade designs.

 If you tour our Videotopia exhibit, you can readily see the impact that America’s fascination with space had on the industry. Arcade titles in the exhibit include Space War (1977), Space Encounters (1980), Space Duel (1982), Space Attack (1979), and, of course, Space Invaders (1978).

One space game that gets my attention is the Atari arcade version of Lunar Lander, released in 1979. Earlier text-based computer versions by the same title were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but this cabinet game is unique. You utilize a throttle control handle to fire thrusters to guide the descent and landing of a lunar module displayed on a black and white vector monitor.

NASA Lunar Landing

You need to account for gravitational pull, atmospheric friction, and the spacecraft’s rotational momentum, all while burning through fuel (quarters or tokens) at an alarming rate. This was one of the first games to allow you to continue the game by purchasing more fuel (game time), a brilliant revenue-generating idea.

As you play, you may often think to yourself, “Houston, we have a problem.” The moon’s jagged lunar surface offers few suitable landing sites, and a minor piloting miscue brings disaster and a mocking message from mission control, such as, “You just destroyed a 100 megabuck lander,” or “You created a two mile crater.” In an emergency, the “Abort” button gives an extra strong vertical burn that gets you out of most, but not all, dicey situations. A perfect landing brings a congratulatory, “The Eagle has landed.”  For a solitary moment, you experience life as Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin. 

Yes, the limitless nature of space has given game designers ultimate license to create unique worlds and gaming situations. From Golden Era arcade classics, such as Asteroids (1979) and Galaxian (1979), to contemporary games like Mass Effect (2007) or StarCraft (1998), space has been and will continue to be a significant part of the gaming universe. What game sends you to the moon?

Atari Lunar Lander Screen Shot

My Guitar Hero Problem

It’s not that I play too much, quite the contrary. The Guitar Hero game I’ve had at home since last Christmas is still wrapped in cellophane. I just can’t bring myself to buy the guitar controller required to play the game.

My reluctance is not a reflection of the game, which is by all measures popular, fun, and imaginative. Guitar Hero is more than a game actually. It’s a pop culture and gaming milestone that has opened doors for an entire genre of new-age musical video games. No, my reluctance is a reflection of my own personal issues and biases.

It’s like this. I’ve been a performing musician for years, and I have first-hand appreciation of the hard work and practice it takes to play an instrument. In fact, after 30-plus years of playing, I still consider myself an amateur. I relish the thought of younger generations learning to play real guitars and other instruments, but I’m afraid that kids who could be learning to play real instruments will instead spend their time learning to tap buttons on fake instruments. My musician friends, others in the blogosphere, and the pop-culture media are voicing a similar concern.

Recently, the adult cartoon South Park aired an episode that illustrates this issue in characteristically irreverent but poignant ways. Plus, the 2009 New York Times article, “While My Guitar Gently Beeps”, has explored the contempt for music video games in great detail and provided some psychological insight into attitudes resembling my own. So, even though I know I’m not alone in my trepid attitude towards Guitar Hero, I’m still a bit embarrassed by feeling this way.

As a result, I’ve taken the first step—admitting that I have a problem. And now I want to recognize and give credit to the good cultural points of Guitar Hero and other music video games. So, consider these points:   

1)      Guitar Hero teaches basic rhythmical concepts. I realized this when I first played the game in our NCHEG arcade (just because I don’t own a Wii guitar doesn’t mean I’ve never played the game—after all, this is my job). The best technique isn’t just a matter of simply following the colored indicators; it also requires timing the button pushes to the beat of the song.

2)      Guitar Hero World Tour (originally referred to as Guitar Hero IV and the latest game in the series) teaches cooperation through the introduction of drum and microphone controllers, which is certainly a skill required in successful real bands. Groups of otherwise momentous talent have ultimately failed because they lack this skill.

3)      Guitar Hero, and most video games in general, teach success through perseverance, a quality most musicians know intimately.

4)      Not entirely unlike reading sheet music, players of Guitar Hero are required to follow displayed patterns with corresponding finger movements. Being able to read ahead and anticipate the next note makes for a more successful performance.

5)      Guitar Hero fosters musical appreciation. Rather than shuffling through the music of their older family members, young Guitar Hero players are introduced to some of the greatest music of previous generations. There may even be a new generation of classic rock fans being cultured on Guitar Hero and similar music video games.

I don’t accept other supposedly positive qualities sometimes attributed to Guitar Hero, such as the claim that the game inspires kids to pursue real life musical training and careers in the music industry. Although I’m sure this is true in some cases, I doubt that this is any more common than players of Madden NFL pursuing football careers, or players of Call of Duty enlisting in the military. Claims have also been made that Guitar Hero helps kids deal with stage fright and performance anxiety, but this remains unverifiable.

Despite the positive qualties I see in Guitar Hero, I remain disappointed. Guitar Hero doesn’t teach us  more transferrable music skills.Then again, why should I expect it to?  It is, after all, a game. And perhaps it and similar music video games will open the door for more serious games, eventually teaching music to future generations of rock stars.

I guess it couldn’t hurt to ask for a guitar controller this Christmas.

New Interest in Old Text-Based Adventures

“You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.”

“There is a small mailbox here.”

These words introduced me to computer games, though I didn’t actually read the words on a computer screen—I read them in stacks of perforated, green-and-white-striped printouts that my older brother, Chris, brought home from school. The stacks of printouts came from an amazing game he and his friends had discovered on the high school’s computer system (a DEC PDP-11) and played on a teletype terminal.

The game invited the player to guide a character through a vast underground realm by typing commands such as “GO WEST,” “LIGHT LAMP,” and “KILL TROLL.” Together my brother and I reviewed where he’d been, drew maps to figure out where to explore next, and brainstormed how to solve the game’s puzzles. How could he open the jeweled egg he found in a tree? What combination of buttons operated Flood Control Dam #3? How could he keep the thief from stealing his stuff? To kids like me, who played Dungeons and Dragons and read Choose Your Own Adventure books, this new game offered endless possibilities, even if I could only experience it vicariously through my brother’s play.

The game was Dungeon, a renamed version of the classic mainframe game Zork. Gamers of a certain age will recognize it immediately as a text-based adventure. Will Crowther created the first text-based adventure when he programmed Colossal Cave Adventure in 1976. Don Woods modified and expanded Crowther’s program in 1977, and the program, known usually as Adventure, spread to mainframe computer systems nationwide.  It inspired numerous programmers to devise their own text-based adventures, including a group of MIT students who developed Zork.

In 1979, several of Zork’s creators helped found a software company called Infocom. Infocom divided the mainframe version of Zork into several parts, elaborated them, and issued them as Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III. Infocom published numerous other titles as well, including Starcross (1982), Deadline (1982), and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1984). Infocom’s text-based adventures featured a spare writing style, a wry sensibility, plenty of mind-challenging puzzles, and some of the best packaging in the history of computer games.

Text-based adventures thrived in the early 1980s until role-playing computer games with graphical interfaces, such as Ultima and Might and Magic, eclipsed them in popularity. It would be a mistake, however, to think of games like Zork as merely the earliest ancestors of today’s high-powered fantasy games like World of Warcraft and Fable. While limiting the player’s actual options to a manageable set of recognized commands, those pioneering text-based interfaces, could, in the hands of a good programmer and writer, provide the illusion of a world of infinite possibilities. Zork and other games of that genre were smart, funny, and fired the imagination. Most of all, they elevated the role of puzzle-solving to a central feature of computer games, though too few games today (Professor Layton and the Curious Village stands out as one) match the complexity of the puzzles in these text-based adventures.

Few people play text-based adventures today, but a number of enterprising individuals are exploring their history and significance. Nick Montfort has published a history of the genre: Twisty Little Passages. Dennis Jerz recently published a fascinating article that rediscovers not only the original source code for Colossal Cave but also the original cave in Kentucky that inspired the game. And recently I talked with Jason Scott who is finishing up a documentary about text-based adventures titled, Get Lamp.  If you’re interested in learning more about Jason’s efforts you can go here or watch this trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzOPVe7Usms&fmt=18.

I can’t wait to watch Jason’s documentary to relive some of my own memories. When I reached eighth grade, I got access to the school’s PDP-11 and no longer had to “play” vicariously through my brother’s printouts. I could play Dungeon on my own. Playing opportunities were scarce at school, however, so I never completed Dungeon. Fortunately my parents purchased a home computer bundled with Adventure, and my brother and I spent weeks finishing it. I even got a copy of Zork I and Zork II. I finished Zork I but not Zork II.

Thanks TEDx

To everyone who came out to the inaugural TEDx Rochester—and especially to those who stopped by to play an arcade game or two in the lobby of host Geva Theater Center—I would like to send my deepest thanks. It was an honor to be part of this event and to speak about the rich history of electronic games and our current initiatives at NCHEG.

The “I remember when” stories many of you shared between games are a reminder of why we at NCHEG collect, preserve, and make these resources available to you. It is always terrific to talk with other passionate gamers.

For those who were not able to join us for this night of “ideas worth sharing,” video of my presentation, as well as my colleague Scott Eberle’s presentation on play, will soon be available in a future blog.

Plus, we would love to see you for our evening with the CHEGheads at Strong National Museum of Play on Friday, November 13 from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. We will be sharing with you some of the museum’s exciting future plans for a major electronic games exhibit.

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International Center for the History of Electronic Games^® • Strong National Museum of Play • One Manhattan Square • Rochester, NY 14607 • USA