Console Wars
Authors: Vijay Chaitanya, Siddarth Sreekumar, Ashwin Kurian Wilson
Concept Note
The prototype demonstrated is an interactive tour that tells about the history of video gaming console. The study addresses the evolution of consoles largely based on the US region. The form of this tour has been designed as a storytelling game, which tells about various factors that were responsible for the rise or fall of the console companies through 8 generations.
Reason for choosing the artefact
Gaming consoles were chosen as an artefact to study because through time games have been shaping our interests, explorations, strategy, and entertainment. The consoles specifically have been associated with aspects such as social status, a fantasy device, a friend and a portal to explore alternate fictional universes. On the other hand, there has been a lot of controversies over games such as involvement/addiction of gaming, the behaviour of people playing a certain type of game health concerns and impact on academics.
Questions based on data
-How there are only 3 console companies which are surviving today when there have been more than 70 different consoles throughout history?
-How the US experienced a major video game crash in 1983?
-What were the reasons for Japanese domination in the market of gaming consoles?
-How technology, lifestyle, economics, and infrastructure played a major role in promoting gaming consoles?
Justification of the form
To replicate the feeling of playing a game through a console we decided to make the form of the prototype in a manner that allows control and navigation through a game controller. Moreover, as seen in most of the digital games the content has been designed to unfold as we progress through the game.
Formulation of narrative
We looked at the history of gaming consoles right from the invention of “Brown Box” by Ralph H Baer (Poh, 2019) all the way to current-generation PlayStation 4. The idea of many small/medium companies of the past which made a remarkable contribution to console design, form, and technology advancements was something that interested us.
Japan didn’t invent the first computer game. That accolade goes to “Space War!”, a game created in 1962 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States (Jacopo Prisco, 2019).
The gaming console market has long been dominated by the top three firms of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Since the departure of Atari from the market, these have been the only firms with mass produced consoles for consumers to buy. This is due to the console industry being very fixed cost based, and the consumer base is very loyal to their brands (Economics 243 Fall 2018, 2019).
In 1983, the video game industry was hit with a recession that nearly spelled the end of video games for an entire generation. Critics were calling video gaming a fad, and many prominent companies went bankrupt or stopped making games entirely. This recession is known as the Great North American Video Game Crash (Bugsplat.com, 2019).
The general PC video games industry is consistent with nearly all of the assumptions of monopolistic competition from microeconomic theory. video game addiction can almost certainly be made worse by other psychological issues (e.g., depressed mood), it may also contribute to these problems in a circular fashion (e.g., depression encouraging excessive gaming, which makes the depression worse, which leads to more gamin…) (Techaddiction.ca, 2019).
Some people dealing with an addiction to video games may also struggle with issues such as depression, low-self-esteem, high stress levels, and shyness / social anxiety. If they recognise the problems that excessive gaming is causing yet are unable to control it, they may also experience feelings of shame, guilt, or a sense of powerlessness(Techaddiction.ca, 2019).
Back in 1969, a man named William Rusch filed a patent application for a “Television Gaming Apparatus” that used a paddle-type control to move onscreen objects that collided with other onscreen objects. The resulting patent, RE28,50716, was eventually licensed to Magnavox, who then used that technology to release the first video game console: the Magnavox Odyssey. When a rival upstart company, Atari, released their Atari 2600™ home console that also sported paddle controls, Magnavox took notice and Atari took a license for its “PONG” game. In the decade after that, Magnavox successfully asserted its patent in multiple lawsuits against Seeburg, Bally-Midway, Mattel, Activision and Nintendo, demonstrating without a doubt that a strong patent is the perfect way to protect your intellectual territory. The Odyssey system and PONG game launched what has since become a multi-billion dollar industry, and the ‘507 patent rightfully deserves the title of the Number One Video Game Patent(Gamasutra.com, 2019).
Future Scope
We want to explore more on the social and political contexts, use of gaming console as a home entertainment system, various patents by the manufacturers, and reasons for patents belonging to a particular geography.
A narrative which we plan on exploring is video game addiction focusing on health and social concerns.
We aim to make the experience more interactive by gamifying the whole journey through various generations.
References
Poh, M. (2019). Evolution of Home Video Game Consoles: 1967–2011 — Hongkiat. [online] Hongkiat. Available at: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-home-video-game-consoles-1967-2011/ [Accessed 6 Nov. 2019].
Jacopo Prisco, C. (2019). How Japan changed video games forever. [online] CNN. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/12/asia/future-japan-videogame-landmarks/index.html [Accessed 6 Nov. 2019].
Economics 243 Fall 2018. (2019). Sony Slowly Turning an Oligopoly into a Monopoly. [online] Available at: https://econ243.academic.wlu.edu/2016/04/07/sony-slowly-turning-an-oligopoly-into-a-monopoly/ [Accessed 6 Nov. 2019].
Bugsplat.com. (2019). What was the Great Video Game Crash of 1983?. [online] Available at: https://www.bugsplat.com/articles/video-games/great-video-game-crash-1983 [Accessed 6 Nov. 2019].
Techaddiction.ca. (2019). Six Problems Caused by Video Game Addiction — TechAddiction. [online] Available at: http://www.techaddiction.ca/addiction-to-video-games.html [Accessed 6 Nov. 2019].
Gamasutra.com. (2019). The Ten Most Important Video Game Patents. [online] Available at: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130152/the_ten_most_important_video_game_.php?page=6 [Accessed 6 Nov. 2019].
