Hidden Adventure in the Digital Games- History of Easter Eggs in Digital Games
Intro
People love adventures, the thrilling and pleasure of diving into unknowns and reviving the secrets is from our blood and bone. Video games give people a perfect place to experience that thrill by creating fantasy unreal worlds and the journal that you may never experience in your life, but beside these casual contents on the surface of games, there usually are some hidden adventures or treasures in the game which is Easter Eggs. For some players, the passion to find these hidden treasures for some players outweighs the passion to play the game itself. In the movie Ready Player One, these players have a stylish name called “Easter Egg hunter”.
Many Easter Eggs in the game is sophisticated, often including riddles, the place where hard to find, and players may need to do a series of certain actions in the game to trigger them. Easter Egg hunters would spend massive of time and efforts to seek Easter Eggs in the video games, and the passion drive them to do is explained previously, yet why did game developer put these mysteries Easter Eggs into the game is confusing. If we start to think about this question, there are more questions emerge to us: When did the first Easter Egg in the video games come? What’s the history of the Easter Eggs in the video games? Why the Easter Eggs culture is so popular in video games? I will introduce the history of the Easter Eggs and the Easter Eggs hunter’s community in this essay. Targeted for the exploration of the secrets of Easter Eggs in the video games, this journal will demonstrate that the Easter Eggs have gradually developed as new layers of meaning are added by developers, and that the gamers’ passion is tuned for the revealing of these layers.
The first
While the history of Easter Eggs has gotten richer with time, its origins can be traced in part to a graphic video adventure known as Adventure. This is a video game that was first released in 1979 for the Atari 2600 game console. It was based on a concept that required the gamer to explore an open-ended environment with the intention of finding a hidden magical chalice that would then be returned to a golden castle. The player also had to overcome the enemies that roamed the environment, and these included dragons which could eat avatars. As interesting as the concept sounds, it was only included by the programmer, Warren Robinett, as a personal stamp mainly because programmers were hardly every credited for their work. Although the egg was Robinett’s closely guarded secret, it was discovered by a teenage player.
Although Atari’s initial interest was to get rid of the chamber because they were considered to be Robinett’s initials, the cost of its removal proved high and the company eventually decided to leave it alone. The manager of the company’s video game department, on the other hand, was excited about the finding. However, that the Adventure history, as interesting as it may sound, is not actually the first game to have had the Easter Egg; it was only the first in which such coding was discovered. Games such as the Video Whizball already had the concept but in more advanced codes that could not be easily cracked, and that is because programmers never intended for such encryptions to be found.
More Interesting Eggs
Notably, the conception of the idea as described above was interesting, and in its growth as a common feature of digital games, it has been impacted by history in various regards. Note, for example, that when the manager of the video game department found out about the initials that had been secretly planted by Robinett, he observed that finding of the feature was as interesting as finding of the Easter Egg in the Christian mythical contexts. He then named the feature the Easter Egg. The other impact of history on the egg comes in the form of entertainment in media in which common figures, like Will Smith and the politician Al Gore, were immortalized as Eastern Eggs that had to be unlocked as characters. This changed the mere idea of getting a hidden egg to something more exciting.
Whereas the concept was first popularized by Atari’s Adventure, it eventually became mainstream. However, it is its depiction in classical games that show how it was appreciated. An example of a classical game that shows how interesting the concept was perceived is Doom II which was released in 1994 for GT Interactive. This game was modeled with a first-person shooter player with a hidden ending which could only be discovered once the player had shot the final boss monster in the face. This then took the gamer through the grizzly scene to a side in which the head of the game’s co-creator, John Romero, was placed on a stick. It also featured a backward sound file that instructed the gamers that they could not win or complete the game before killing Romero.
1994 also saw to the release of the NBA Jam Tournament Edition which also captured just how important the concept was and how passionate it made its players. The game was entirely based on the Midway’s basketball thrill. By entering some secret codes, fans were provided with access to an additional forty characters. The significance is that it applied the concept in a different way. Instead of using the usual hatches and rewards that would come in various inanimate forms, in this game, the gamers were rewarded with the characters as their treasure findings. Finding the Easter Egg in this sense also allowed the gamers to switch all the teams’ orders to be allowed to swap players. Interesting parts came in seeing these famed characters carrying out stunts, like Al Gore doing a dunk for the basket.
As the above two classical representations capture the different ways in which Easter Eggs are used in games, one underlying factor remains common, and that is the idea that the finding of the egg must present a pleasant surprise that contributes to the quality of the game. In other words, like in the real Easter games in which people struggle to find the brightly colored eggs, gamers take the finding of an egg in the console games to be a milestone achievement worth celebrating, and that is because at times finding the eggs can be a task that not only requires experience, but also wit. Take, for instance, that no one knew about the 2009 Batman: Arkham Asylum until six months after its release when the developers shared with people, trying to encourage them to look for a fireplace that they would then bomb to reveal the Easter Egg. Notably, such discoveries come with thrills for gamers. That is the main reason for which they refer to themselves as Easter Egg Hunters.
The Hunter For the Egg
The kind of passion described above has led to the development of Easter Egg Hunter Communities. These are communities of devout gamers whose biggest inclination is to navigate the games with the intention of finding the Easter Eggs. Their attachment, in other words, is not with the game and the features that it has, but with the Easter Egg itself. That means that they can purposely buy a game not with the intention of playing and mastering its ways, but with the intention of finding the egg or eggs before moving on to the next game. Notably, today’s technology has provided platforms from which the communities can share their discoveries online. Take Reddit, for instance. This is a social media platform that has been known for the creation and facilitation of activities of communities, Easter Egg Hunting Communities included. When gamers make discoveries, or when they feel that there are ideas that they need to share their quests, they use such platforms to share the information, Deperna says in her article. While it may be argued that what they seek is guidance, the underlying factor in their identity as a gaming community is the passion that they have of hunting for the eggs.
An example of an Easter Egg Hunter Community is the Facebook page @theeasteregghunter which is managed by a gamer known as James. The page constantly analyses secret video games for over 1,300 followers. They also share findings of Easter Eggs in particular games, encouraging the followers to find them. Another famous community is known as the Post Arcade. Although this particular platform is not as interactive as the @theeasteregghunter, it is based on the involvement of gamers who provide information on egg hunts on different platforms, including renowned magazine platforms like the Financial Post. Like other communities, this community is modeled to provide information and subtle hints on hunts. In general, such hunting communities also seek to inspire a passion among readers to see games in a different way, a way that accounts for the very distinct features that can either make a game simple or difficult to master.
What we can say from this…
As has been demonstrated in the three games analyzed in this journal, one factor is observable in the Easter Eggs video games; the use of Easter Eggs is becoming more complex with time. Take, for instance, that although NBA Jam Tournament Edition provided a unique sense of the concept, the finding of its Easter Egg was not as complicated. To the contrary, Batman: Arkham Asylum was more complex and gamers only learned of the Easter Eggs after being told about it by the game’s developers. While the intention in future development may not be to make the finding of the eggs too complex, the observation of the passion in the online platforms has inspired a trend which will ensure that the future integration of the concept in the game will come with new layers of meaning. These will not be limited to the game. They will also be outside the game, making sure that the gamers and hunters find the game relatable to some ideas which are readily observable in everyday environments.
Despite the fact that the discovery of Easter Eggs as an important part of games came entirely by surprise, its evolution into one of the most attractive and passionately pursued concepts of video console games has continued over time. This is evidenced in the features of classic games, like the NBA Jam Tournament Edition which hardly compares to today’s console games that at times successfully hide the eggs. Egg hunting communities also contribute to the changes since they highlight that the eggs make an important part of the games. They show, in other words, that the mastery of the game should not be considered as the most important element if one cannot find the Easter Eggs. What these trends show is that the use of Easter Eggs, the hidden adventures, will continue to evolve as the concept is used to stimulate players.
Happy hunting!!
