Breakfast, Gaming Revolution, 5 o'Clock Tea2

8/12/2019 Breakfast, Gaming Revolution, 5 o'Clock Tea2

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Bucharest, Romania

BREAKFAST, GAMING REVOLUTION,

5 OCLOCK TEA A project on the mark left by the Anglo-Saxon Gaming Industry.

Student: Zamfirescu Mihnea- tefan Coordinator: Oana Clinescu

Class: 10th grade

Bucharest, April 10 th

MMXIV


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pp 3

II. Chapter I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pp 4

III. Chapter II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pp 8

IV. Chapter III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pp 16

V. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pp 20


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Introduction

Americans, shortly followed by the Japanese, were the first to jump on boardimplementing their ideas and creativity into something new, something freshand ever-evolving: computers. From the 1958 video- game Tennis for two, considered to have been the first one ever made, to Nolan Bushnell and hisrevelation, taking shape in Pong, along with Nintendo leaving luck toheaven and going out on a limb, in its switch to video-games, the world, in atime known to us as the seventies, had come a long way from the primitivetechnology of room-occupying computers; and if this time was great forinnovation and the wish to create something new out of the evolution oftechnology, the late eighties and nineties were perfect for it: not of coursewithout their early ups and downs the Gaming Industry, after all, hasknown two crashes, two recessions, if you will, out of which the one in 1983was almost the nail in the coffin. This only happened in the United States,but was deeply felt in the U.K. and Europe; Japan was just fine. Games gotcheaper, but worse. Nolan Bushnell and its baby, Atari, fell out of grace withaudiences: E.T. and Pac-man on the Atari 2600 made sure of that. Up to1985, people wouldn t hear of video-games. It was Nintendo s time , whichhad left the playing card business, with respect and appreciation from theirnative crowd, just a few years prior to setting its horizons on the rest of theworld. They actually managed to revive the interest in video-games andsaved this Industry from extinction in the U.S., with the NintendoEntertainment System, known as the Famicom in the East. Ironically, theNorth-American and Japanese video-games Industry grew on top of eachother in a symbiotic fashion, such as video-games themselves would not behere today without this invisible and unfelt bond, without one side of thecoin, or the other: the Orient and Occident coming together.

What about Europe? What about the Anglo -Saxon importance to video-games? I hear you say. I am getting there. Consider the introduction aboveof utter importance to what is to come. The British started leaving theirmark on the Gaming Industry, most notably, in the eighties. Many Britishgame companies had some time in the spotlight, across the decades, theyrose and they fell, and there are too many to consider talking about all of


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them. Ive chosen to focus on each of the few most important ones; whatdid they do? What was to be their future purpose?

So, to conclude, imagine this: waking up and having a wonderful, new andflavorful breakfast. But it is just the beginning of an amazing day. Thencomes your delightful 5 oclock cup of tea? The Anglo-Saxons strike back,and all your references are belong to yours truly!

The late 70s and early 80s saw, in the U.S.A., as much as in Europe andthe U.K., the rise and downfall of the Arcade; people wouldnt spend theirhard-earned pennies and cents, coins, once in the billions deep beneath thevideo-game cabinets and machines. With the evolution of technology,


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computers became smaller and more powerful, and so, new purposes werefound for them: home computers were invented. The dream of a computerused for many different utilities, in the homes and houses of men andwomen, was coming to fruition. The Commodore 64 was an American home

computer, and is widely considered the best-selling one: popular in Europeand the U.K. as well, it simply had more power than its competitors, at thesacrifice of it being more expensive.

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.

In the beginning

This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.So,alternatives were out in no time For Europe and the United Kingdom, theones to go for were the famed Sinclair ZX Spectrum, later models of whichhave been made by Amstrad, the Amiga 500 and many others. Lots ofBritish game developers had their programming kick-start on either the ZXSpectrum or the Amiga 500 , which, up to the late 80s , with video-gameconsoles becoming more and more mainstream, were the right choice for aplatform to play games on. The fall of the Arcade was felt in the U.K.spiritually, more than anything, as video- games werent given up on, butwere consider more and more niche they never died. So it goes thatthroughout the eighties, most British games never got o ut of their countrysboundaries. To be frank, game producers got away with a lot of copycatvideo-games: so this answers the question of what can happen when aproduct isnt available, but theres the opportunity of copying it, anddistributing that copy as your own, without fear of getting caught.

In North-America, some colleges at least had access to DARPAnet, thepredecessor to the Internet; they would share information, data, video-

games and that s how a small project was distributed with internal fanfare,and was received by the M.I.T. students with love; they turned it into Zorkthe Adventure game genre was born. A similar story is shared by the MMORPGs, specifically the ones following Dungeons & Dragons rules, a long timeago named MUDs. Were getting off topic, but with the brilliant invention ofthe mouse, brought onto the market by the two Steves behind Apple,shipped with the Apple II, everything related to computers blew up. Gaming


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was ready to bloom even on the battlefield of competitors. Small Industry,small chances the desire for hitting it big is bound to grow in the heartsand minds of some

From Virgin to colossus of the Industry.

Virgin Ltd./Virgin Interactive

The British Gaming Industry has seen both tales of success and failure. Andfailure comes with time; what once seems like a proper investment latergrows carcinogenic roots the disease spreads and it takes down whatstarted as a company which was to publish video-games, to nothing but aspeck of dust in the wind this is the story of Virgin Interactive.

The Virgin Group is widely known; it was created by the entrepreneurRichard Bronson and grew into a conglomerate now worth billions of pounds.

Things were not always so big and investing in something which becamepopular, video-games, seemed like the right choice: so, in 1981, Virgin Ltd.was born. With the financial backing of a massive investor, Virgin Ltd., laterto be renamed into Virgin Interactive, was the British game publisher toback you up in the event of you pursuing a career in this Industry. Gamemakers, such as the ones behind Beneath a steel sky and Broken Sword,Revolution Software Ltd., which achieved a high level of mastery in theBritish area of the point-and-click genre and were praised for it, orWestwood Studios, legendary amongst the Real Time Strategy crowd andknown as the ones to reinvent this genres wheel with Dune II and latercreate the Command & Conquer series, found their legs and made a namefor themselves through and with the help of Virgin Interactive. VirginInteractive is the cornerstone for the video-games publishing market, inEurope and the U.K., in the eighties and nineties. They invested and laterbought Mastertronic. Founded in 1983, a British publisher and distributor oflow cost computer games, Mastertronic was an exclusive wholesaler ofcomputer games to Woolworth's, Toys R Us and other leading retailers; itsold software in outlets such as newsagents, which had not been previouslyassociated with the software market and was, at its peak, the dominantsoftware publisher in the U.K.; acquisition by Virgin was a smart move. From


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Virgins contract with Disney, through which they were allowed to andproduced some of the best and most beloved Disney-themed games, such asThe Jungle Book, Aladdin and The Lion King, to publishing The Prince ofPersia, Double Dragon and many, many more games, which are now looked

back on with nostalgia and respect, this publishing house was crucial to whatvideo-games now stand for.

In the end though, it had to fall from the heights of its glorious history.Virgin Interactive was sold in 1999 to Titus Software and was renamed toAvalon Interactive; 2005 saw Titus go bankrupt and take the rest of itsacquisitions down with it You could say the British Virgin Interactivemirrors Brian Fargos American Interplay: both huge game publishing housesof their time, both crucial to the Gaming Industry as it is known today, bothcontinuously declined to the point in which they were acquired, partially or

fully, by Titus. And Titus was also going through some rough times in theearly 2000s: liquidation, not being able to pay employees or the rent for itsheadquarters Its all a drama in s omething which grew from the passion ofcreating, into a giant money-making business.

What did video-games stand for, and still do, for the producers who createthem, if not just that: their baby, their sweat, their hearts and minds putinto countless hours of work?

Small video-game developers, either individual people or teams, medium-sized or small, call themselves, nowadays, Indie developers: they have animportant role in this Industry all on their own. Indie game makers tend toinnovate, tend to try something new: the only choice with small games, andthem wishing to break out and get known. But people didnt have theluxuries of being able to self-publish a video-game, or use a means of doingso such as Steam Greenlight, through the Internet, twenty, thirty yearsago Twenty, thirty, forty years ago was when the foundations for video -games were laid flat, and when each and every video-game designer,producer, programmer or developer hoping to get a big break had to be

innovative.


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The Stamper brothers, Tim and Chris were just the right guys to count onfor making a move. They had worked in Arcades for some time, but theywanted more. They wanted to make their own video -games for the homecomputers. These two started under the name Ashby Computers andGraphics, Ltd., based on their hometown, Ashby-de-la-Zouch. In time, theyfound success; they pioneered video-games with an Isometric perspective orengine, called Filmation games, with Knight Lore, their first game under anew label, Ultimate Play The Game. They had been making loans, and wereup to their necks in them; it paid off, and for two brothers and a small team,a profit of 100.000 seemed unimaginably sublime. Yet, Tim and Chris had


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a reputation of being rough bosses, working along their employees for sixdays a week with late hours. They owned the biggest game developmentcompany in the U.K., so, in 1985, it was simply a shock when they made thebold move of selling the Ultimate Play The Game label, forming another sub-

division inside Ashby Computers and Graphics Ltd.

Its a story not so much unique, as it is RARE.RareLtd./Rareware

Take a look inside your banana cave. Youre in for a big surprise. From thatpoint, the Stamper brothers had Rare Ltd. on their hands. They knew the

home computer gaming market was out and game consoles were in. Ashort time ago, theyd gotten their hands on an import console, called theFamicom, from a company named Nin tendo rings any bells? They foundout Nintendo would eventually release it world-wide, under the nameNintendo Entertainment System, or the NES, for short. Without asking foranybodys permission, the Stampers decided to learn how to program for thenew console; they proceeded without no documentation whatsoever. It wasup to them to decode the hardware by their own engineering prowess. Thiswas Rares purpose. Unbeknownst to them, Nintendo had proudly announced

their console could not be reverse-engineere d and yet, the Stampers andthe Rare division did just that. Theres something important!

And so they flew to Nintendos headquarters in Japan, to show off the techdemos, and what they had accomplished. Nintendo was stunned: two Britishguys had hacked their unhackable machine?!? And more than that, theydmade great tech demos?!? And theyd already owned their successfulcompany?!? AND they had come to them of their own accord?!? From thatpoint on, Rare, and the Stamper brothers had an unlimited budget, providedall their new games would only come out on the NES.

The NES era came and went for them with great success, with games oftheir own, like Slalom and the difficult Battletoads, ports and licensed titles.Five years came and went, and the Super Nintendo Entertainment Systemwas on the horizon. Now a second party developer for Nintendo, they wereknown as Rareware.


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Tim and Chris decided to revolutionize graphical capabilities; having scaleddown the number of projects being worked on at the same time, they didthat, for the SNES, with nothing but some monkeys and their bananas itwas time for Rareware to swing back into action.

Their game would revive a forgotten mascot of Nintendo and its goldengoose, Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto himself was involved in the project andlater complained Nintendos games should be more like Rares butRareware had huge ambitions: a 3D platformer game. Unfortunately,consoles didnt have the power to achieve such a feat. So, in a brilliantmove, what did they do? Well, they made the 3D models and animatedthem, on the most powerful computers available; they then proceeded toturn those models into sprites, or moving images, which were then put intothe final game: Donkey Kong Country. It looked a generation beyond every

other game out on the market, courtesy of those sprites. DK Country has ahuge importance in what it means to evolve and try new things. It became afranchise, and was a leap of faith which largely paid off. But how could wetalk about the SNES without mentioning the FX chip? This FX chip would beadded to the console and allow it to run 3D games, advanced and surreal forthe early 90s. Developed by Argonaut Games, also a British developer, withsome help from Rare, it was to showcase the power of the SNES and wascreated and shipped alongside Star Fox, a space shooter like no other. Theacclaimed sequel, Star Fox 64, was later released for the Nintendo 64. Do

you know the Internet meme Do a barrel roll!? Well, it was due to Slippy , acharacter loathed or loved by many, and his constant annoyance that thisbecame and Internet sensation.

For Rareware, the biggest beasts of all came during the Nintendo 64 era, outof which Goldeneye 007 left the most significant mark on gaming. Goldeneye007 was to be a small, licensed, movie to game adaptation, which grew andgrew throughout its development cycle. It was a fine tuned First PersonShooter and most importantly, it was on a console! The FPS genre waswelcome and had its place on PCs, with colossi such as Doom, Quake andWolfenstein 3D, all by id Software, Duke Nukem 3D and many othersbelonging on it. And yet, ambition and bravado was Rares way Ironically,a last-minute addition by one of the programmers, consisting of split-screenMultiplayer, was arguably the most important part of the game itself. It soldconsistently from month to month; whereas most games would see the mostsales at their launch, Goldeneye 007 kept growing in popularity. It is now


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considered a masterpiece. More than 8 million copies sold over the spam ofyears tell its true and unrivaled role in the Gaming Industry. Rare continuedto release amazing products like Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark and thecartoonish yet darkly and maturely comic Conkers Bad Fur Day. Rare is still

around to this day; though owned by Microsoft and laying low, with Tim andChris Stamper not a part of it anymore, its importance is one for the historybooks.

Myth of the aliens

Mythos Games

What did video-games stand for, and still do, for the producers who createthem, if not just that: their baby, their sweat, their hearts and minds putinto countless hours of work?

Small video-game developers, either individual people or teams, medium-sized or small, call themselves, nowadays, Indie developers: they have animportant role in this Industry all on their own. Indie game makers tend toinnovate, tend to try something new: the only choice with small games, andthem wishing to break out and get known. But people didnt have the

luxuries of being able to self-publish a video-game, or use a means of doingso such as Steam Greenlight, through the Internet, twenty, thirty yearsago Twenty, thirty, forty years ago was when the foundations for video -games were laid flat, and when each and every video-game designer,producer, programmer or developer hoping to get a big break had to beinnovative. Such is the case of the creator of a respected and quiteimportant Real Time Strategy video-game, Julian Gollop; with elements ofpolitics and resource gathering sprinkled into it, named in the U.K. as UFO:Enemy Unknown and in the U.S. as X-COM: UFO Defense, it was published

by MicroProse. Julian founded Mythos Games and put everything into hisgame company; unfortunately, the only games to have become popular andto have left a mark were UFO/X-COM and its sequel. In 2012, the game wasrecreated by Firaxis Games, with his guidance, under a name referencingand combining the original British and American titles: X-COM: EnemyUnknown. The reimagining had a very positive reception, and acknowledgedthe originals role, as a thinking man s game.


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The galaxy is at peace...

Influential female characters in games

A famous explorer once said, that the extraordinary is in what we do, notwho we are.

Women in video-games are a sensitive and controversial subject ofdiscussion, if only for the fact not many women were working on them up tothe late nineties, when the Industry opened up for people showing interestin it, and when the giant publishing houses Interplay and Virgin Interactivefell flat on their faces. And in true manly fashion, what women were depictedin video-games, were mostly deprived of any real traits, or any realcharacter, emotions or thoughts, in favo r of p leasant shapes to admire: asdetailed as the times allowed them to be. I say most while also going out ona tangent, since some game creators took the dive and had interesting andwell-developed female characters be at the center of their video-games: aprime example, pun intended, is Samus Aran, of the Metroid franchise.

When Metroid came out world-wide, neither the game manual nor thatmonths Nintendo power number revealed anything related to Samus

gender it was supposed to be a surprise left by the programmers for theending; she wore an energy suit for the duration of the game. And playerswere stunned: Samus Aran was a female i n a fantastic, innovative andintricate video-game?!? And even though sales were not that high, Metroidhas gained a cult following along the years. The Nintendo Gamecube wouldsee this heroine revived on it once again, and in great fashion, years afterSuper Metroid had been released. And its her that shook the GamingIndustry to its roots, showing everyone female protagonists were apossibility; female characters did not have to wear scant clothes, or be

soulless they could sell. Samus remains one of Nintendos fledglingmascots to this day; she indirectly caused the creation of another femalecharacter so brave, so charming and intelligent, good-looking yet agile, shewould be, in it of itself, a small revolution a second attack, brought on by ateam of British guys


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Do it.

The PlayStation and a Tomb Raider; Core Design

Youve probably heard about another Japanese company: Sony. It grewimmensely, to the point of being a Corporation, in the years after World WarII, when it helped Japans economy not collapse and eventually evenbecome a powerhouse How? It did it through its solid hardware and line-upof products, such as the cleverly-titled Walkman, and its relations with theWest.

Prior to the SNES 1990 release, Nintendo called on Sony to help themcreate an audio chip for the console. Hardware engineer Ken Kutaragi made

it his job to help his fellow compatriots. It was the reason why the SuperNintendo Entertainment System single-handedly blew the competitionsconsoles audio quality out of the water; even the biggest one of all, knownas the Sega Genesis in the U.S., and as the Mega-Drive in the U.K. andEurope could not compete with its audio quality. Mastertronic was the reasonthe Mega-Drive sold better than its competitor in the United Kingdom.

The SNES was a success, but it used cartridges Cartridges were forNintendo to manufacture on their own and ship to the game makers; theywere expensive... And, with the introduction of a new and powerful means ofstocking information by none other than Sony, the Compact Disc, or the CD,Nintendo obviously wanted in. CDs were able to carry up to 100 times moredata tha n Nintendos proprietary cartridges. Nintendo signed a deal withSony and so, Ken Kutaragi and his team got to work on a hybrid SNES,using both cartridges and CDs. The name for it was the PlayStation.

The PlayStation was presented by the Sony Corporation at that years CESconvention, in June 1991. A day later, Nintendo would announce, out of thinair, they had cancelled their plans of working with Sony and would jump

ship, now on Panasonics side. The result of that alliance was, simply put,awfully catastrophic: the Panasonic 3DO was such a bad console it died inno-time. But some game-makers did the impossible and made good gamesfor it; one of those was the British-based studio Core Design: theirs andSonys stories were about to cro ss into one of gigantic success ofproportions


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Sony was betrayed, was backstabbed by Nintendo! From then on, all tiesbetween the two giants were severed. Furious, Ken Kutaragi one day bustedin Norio Ohgas room, no less than Sonys own President, and in the middleof a business meeting, telling him they needed to do something about what

had went down, telling him they needed to get in the Gaming IndustryNoria Ohgas answer is, put simply, legendary in its own right: Do it.

Sonys own PlayStation would go on to be the best-selling, most successfuland prolific game console of the 90s, due to the Corporations ties with bothWestern and Eastern game developers and publishers, as well the ease withwhich programming on it went One of those Western game developers wasCore Design.

There hadnt been any notable female protagonists in video -games ever

since Metroid was released; Core Design tried, at first, with development onthe game starting in 93, going for a smooth 3D action -adventureexperience, with a females model having been used as a males placeholder.The Team at Core Design wisely chose to keep the female character as theprotagonist and so, Lara Cruise was born ; later renamed to Lara Croft, shewas the main selling point of the video-game: Tomb Raider. Lara was a kick-ass heroine, a female Indiana Jones, who had both the looks and the brains.Tomb Raider sold like hot cakes and Sony later signed an exclusivity dealwith Eidos Interactive, Core Designs publishers, for Lara to go PlayStation -

only. And so the Tomb Raider franchise revitalized the wish for a femaleprotagonist, and was just another reason to own the most popular consoleout there: right alongside Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy VII,Resident Evil, Silent Hill and many more. Lara Cr oft: sounds familiar? Thatsbecause if you know the name Angelina Jolie, you also probably know amovie she was the main star of, namely Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Thesmashing video-game went, in a turn of events, for the big screen. AndSamus Arans unive rse was expanded a few years later with new andexcellent installments from a studio no one expected anything out of. So itsno wonder why Tomb Raider is so important And it came out of someBritish guys with a heart of gold.


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That was great... Now do it again.Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc./SCEI

Now don't get all upset and start hurling your controller at the cat, becausehe might throw it back

With the PlayStation right around the corner, it was only a matter of timebefore Sony would form their own international publishing arm and starttaking developers under its wings

While the PlayStation welcomed third party support, meaning a line-up ofvideo-game developers with no real ties to Sony, yet ready to work on theplatform, such as Namco Bandai, Activision, Electronic Arts, the list going on

and on, it nevertheless also had the newly-minted and owned teams onboard, working greatness awaited.

Indeed, the teams behind SCEI, branching mainly into Sony ComputerEntertainment America, or SCEA, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, orSCEE, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, or SCE WWS, andSony Computer Entertainment Japan, or SCEJA, with each of thesepublishers owning them separately from one another, did some great thingsfor Sony s consoles.

Some British teams acquired along the years by SCEE are the recently laid-off Studio Liverpool, with the amazing and futuristic WipEout under theirbelt, SCE London Studio, who brought the not-so-popular PlayStation Homesocial hub into the spotlight, Guerilla Games, notable for their mastery of theconsole FPS genre, as Rare once did with Goldeneye 007, through theKillzone series, their now sister-studio Guerilla Cambridge, once known asSCE Cambridge Studio and responsible for the MediEvil games, as well asworking on the fantastic Little Big Planet along with Media Molecule, yetanother game developer owned by SCEE and putting out great content such

as last years multi -awarded Tearaway.

Many more teams behind SCEE do their best to give Sonys consoles asgreat of a success as possible. Who knows what the future holds in store forBritish game developers looking to work with and for Sony


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The biggest beast of all: the times The times have caught up with theGaming Industry. And these days allow the freedom necessary for video-games to cros s new and uncharted grounds. Ive saved the contemporaryBritish game developers for last


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Ladies and Gentlemen! You've read about it in the papers!Rocksteady Studios

Not a lot was known about Rocksteady prior to when they were given thelicense to make a Batman video-game, none other than one of the greatestsuper-heroes of all time, and the creative liberties necessary to do so, bytheir publishers, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

What came out of that license and their love was 2009s Batman: ArkhamAsylum. It was a masterpiece, it is a masterpiece and it shall remain a modelof innovation to the Gaming Industry, of what it means to do a super-herovideo-game justice: so innovative was it in fact, many games try to replicatethe amazing free-flow combat system first seen in it; Arkham Asylumintroduced a whole new audience to a new yet authentic Batman, voiced bynone other than Kevin Conroy, put against the Joker, voiced by Mark Hamill.His comic book roots were ever-present and respected, as it was as loyal tothem as it could: even the most minor of Batmans enemies, such asScarface the puppet and its Ventriloquist, were hinted at. The Batman:Arkham games are now a successful and fantastic franchise; withRocksteady behind the wheel, you cant spell Arkham without Mark Hamill

You plant a seed, a tree will grow in that exact same place.Lionhead Studios

Lionhead Studios is a fairly independent British video-game developerformed in 1996, later acquired by Microsoft, and is responsible for one of themost turbulent game franchises in this Industry: Fable.

Peter Molyneux was one of its original founders; he left the company in

2012, but it was his excitement, energy and history which lead Lionhead topopularity. Peter is active in this Industry to this day. He had previouslyworked at Bullfrog Productions and was the man responsible for designingone of Amigas best and most thoughtful games, along with its sequel: theaward-winning Populous. So Lionhead was in the spotlight and pressured ina way, by both his name and his excitement and press statements, prior to


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releasing Fable. Fable never really lived up to the hype created mostly byPeter Molyneux, but it was never his intention to make gamers feel cheated:plans would switch as the game was made. Fable was still a great RPG andsold enough for Microsoft to solicit a franchise out of it But everyone

remembers Pe ters famous tree talk; his wishes never came to be.

The art of war

Creative Assembly/CA

Theres not much to say about CA, other than theyre responsible forrevolutionizing the Real Time Strategy genre in their own right, with theirTotal War franchise : from Napoleon, to Sun Tzu

Find anything? He's got half of Mexico in here!

Rockstar Games/R*; DMA Design/Rocktar North

It all begins with two British brothers, Sam and Dan Houser: they wanted tobe rappers. Not knowing much about music or the music Industry, right afterfinishing their studies, they joined the BMG music label in London. Not muchtime passed and, in 1993, they were separated into a new section of thecompany, BMG Interactive; they wanted a change, since the desk jobs weredull and not at all what being in the music Industry seemed like: a far-cryfrom rap. Their philosophy and constant fresh approach, along with theshock factor derived from the love of hip-hop, would follow them throughouttheir careers.

They were happy to work under BMG Interactive; though they did not havethe slightest of programming skills, their creative input was a long-awaitedbreath of fresh air. And then, they met the Central Scotland- based crewbehind the famous and darkly comic Lemmings series: DMA Design WithDMAs programming expertise and the Houser brothers originality, theydreshape the Industry into one where mature video-games, for matureaudiences, would be a norm. With BMG Interactive later disbanding, the


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team at DMA Design, with some support from the Houser brothers, hadmade Grand Theft Auto, with its add-on, London 1969, and Grand Theft Auto2, which stood out as open- world games, awaiting exploration at the playersleisure, while also providing enough content and having a dark sense of

humor; they were a shocking revelation, were called killing simulators bysome, and hailed as fantastic games by others. The games sold and, inturn, gained fans, or the hate of such men as the much-reviled JackThompson. Meanwhile, in New York, Take Two, a growing publisher, waslooking to hire game developers who made darker, edgier games Theylooked towards Sam and Dan Houser and Grand Theft Auto, or GTA forshort, and gave them the opportunity to form their own game company,with the headquarters in New York. What was their answer? A resoundingyes! The only problem was how they would name the company; the answercame to them in the form of Rockstar. They were rock stars, just of adifferent kind: rap took a back seat.

In the years to come, they bought DMA Design altogether and renamed itRockstar North, meanwhile making solid games. 2001 is the year R*,ironically Rockstar North, to its core a British game developer, created GrandTheft Auto III, a massive 3D, next-gen-for-back-then open-world sandboxgame, making fun of the American society through Liberty City, an obviousparody of New York City, and being serious all at the same time. The gamewas just brilliant, a blast; but the violence once again drove people to

either fear its impact on society or embrace it as a new form of matureentertainment. And besides its magnificence, it sold and it sold and itsold. And Grand Theft Auto is now one of the biggest behemoths of theGaming Industry, along with Rockstar Games and their sub-division,Rockstar North; R* North has also developed, besides all the GTA games tohave hit store shelves so far, Manhunt and Manhunt 2 the sequel wasbanned in Australia and several countries for its violent content. ThoughRockstar has had numerous rough times with rating boards, an examplebeing the hidden line of code in San Andreas, which, discovered by a modder

not long after the games launch, was made into the Hot Coffee Mod, theirgames still remain the best-selling. GTA V broke the $ 1 billion mark in threedays.

Video games are bad for you? That's what they said aboutrock-n- roll. -Shigeru Miyamoto


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. All your history are belong to us- Machinima-based show on thehistory of video-games

-Wrote, edited and directed by Nicholas Werner; narration by RobTalbert- Episodes used as inspiration: MMO RPGs, Adventure games,Rare, X-COM, Tomb Raider, Lionhead Studios, Rockstar Games,

Interplay.

2. G4 Icons- G4s history of video -games show

-Episodes used as inspiration: PlayStation.

3. Wikipedia

-Found information on: computers, the Arcades, home computers, Atari, Nintendo, Sega,Microsoft, Mastertronic and Virgin

Interactive,Interplay, Rare, Ltd., Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.and its owned respective game studios, Rocksteady Studios,Lionhead Studios, Creative Assembly and Rockstar Games.

4. Wikiquotes and different other websites for the quotes used.

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