Talk:Video Games

Good idea for a proposal but I do wonder if we can find some ways videogames evolution is different in IB. *Here*, home gaming is an outgrowth of the video arcade which itself is an outgrowth of the "game of skills" penny arcade going back to fairs from centuries ago.

What if instead the home gaming industry what an outgrowth of the videotext (minitel) industry more prevalent *there* ? first you would have had message board dedicated to traditional games that cam be played over time (think chess by mail). Then, some company would start dedicated server for original game (think the original rogue) leading to the second generation of gaming which would steadily move away from traditional board games.

Eventually, people would want to have more then basic graphics for their games so that companies would introduce "videograph" terminals within enhanced graphic capabilities for gamers. From there, "terminals war".--Marc pasquin 21:42, 23 August 2017 (PDT)

Hmm. So perhaps more emphasis on things like DnD-style RPGs and roguelikes, then? That seems like the most logical derivative of videotex-type systems to me, at least. Perhaps westerners *there* finally understand JRPGs and all they entail. (Seriously, people, they're really not that hard to grasp.)

Also, we need to adjust timeline to IB. Not too much, maybe just... IDK, move the numbers up 15 years or so. Juanmartinvelezlinares 06:25, 24 August 2017 (PDT)

Yeah, I think RPG would probably fit well as the basis of IB's e-gaming industry. It might even be that role-play in a wider sense then D&D is the norm so that instead of platformers and FPS, you would have "sport team manager", "Diplomats" or "administrator" simulations each forming genre in themselves with a each having large selection of titles available.

you're also right about adjusting the timeline although there is a way to keep it somewhat in line with *here*. For example, in the late 70s, instead of an electronic game division, IB version of nintendo might have created a division centered on boardgames which might later have formed the basis for some of their e-games. "King Kaiju" (alt Donkey Kong) could thus have started life as a game where players throw dice and advance along the board representing a building trying to rescue their loved one while avoid "kaiju attacks" squares or other obstacles given by other players.

I am also thinking of turn-based games being even more pre-dominant than *here*. Would it work? I think the current levels of graphics *there* would be like Playstation 1 or 2 *here*.

--General tiu 17:44, 24 August 2017 (PDT)

game consoles and home computers *here* entered the mainstream in the late 70s and since computers *there* were established as being roughly 15 years behind their counterpart *here*, console would likely only have hit the market in the 90s. However, based on an old discussion, keith (who developed most of what we know about IB's computer) said that computers from 2005 with enough graphical capabilities to play graphic games existed but would have been extremely rare outside of the professional sphere either due to cost or space involved. This would seem to make a dedicated gaming computer market unlikely at the time.

So either we push the beginning of gaming consoles even closer to the present or else we assume a different origin in keeping with established facts which would have ramifications on its development.

When I think of my own experience (born in the 70s), I tend to associate playing videogames either with the arcade or on my home console (a brand spanking new Atari 2600). What I remember being touted as improvements back then was pretty much always in regard to the sensory experience: better graphics & better sounds. This make sense since in an arcade environment, senses are what's going to make someone chose to spend his time and quarters on this or that game cabinet. Further developments with consoles and home computer likewise had to follow suit: home computers ended up with greater colour palettes and dedicated graphic cards because makers knew people increasingly bought them to play games.

When the internet came into the picture, the problem was that limitation on speed and data transfer meant that one of the milestone of the internet, from a gamer point of view, was when it would be possible to play online the same fighting games. This meant that better speed and data transfer became a priority because few people were interested in playing a lag-less version of this sort of games if they had to look at obsolete graphics (8 bits wasn't vintage enough at the time to work on nostalgia). So *here*, better graphics and sounds, or at the very least maintaining a currently acceptable level of them within new platforms, are a very large part of what drive games forward.

*There*, if we assume that e-games were first played on videotext terminals, the sensory aspect, would not be a driving factor behind innovation. For one thing, the technology is fairly limited in term of what it can achieve in that area but the type of competition between game designers would also be different.

For example, the lack of a standard interface in the 80s meant that a game had to be ported to be playable on the multiple computers available at the time. Because the result varied widely, it was easy to compare graphics, sounds and speed simply by looking at 2 versions of the same game. IB's Games designers, unlike *here*, would not need to create multiple ports of their game since every users on a national network would have the same type of terminals. Since users would have little to no choice in term of terminals, there would be no race from the hardware side to look better and there would be no drive on the game designer side to use the hardware capability to the max to gain an edge over their competitors.

So what we a looking at for the 1st generation are games that require little to no graphics and in which reaction time of players will make little differences. As suggested RPG and turned based games would fit perfectly within that description. In the first case, pen and paper version rely mostly on oral description and one early successful computer RPG, Zork, was purely text based. lags would also not be an issue since the outcome of an action is either based strictly on the result of an algorithms or on a decision made by another player after a reasonable amount of consideration.

Improvements made by game designers to compete with other would have to be at the server end only. It would concentrate on things like better parsers, licencing popular IP for gameworlds, more ways to interact with the fictional world, etc... They might also try to develop the community into the sort of fanbase we see *here* more commonly built around movie or tv show IP (Imagine a Mass Effect based equivalent to the trekkie community).

Because the gaming community would not have be based on a mainly visual media, advancement in graphics and sounds would probably be part of a later and wider movement toward creating terminals in which face-to-face conversation could take place rather then strictly be a way to fulfill a need that few gamers would have. This would help explain why dedicated gaming console would only appear decades later then *here* since to justify the cost of buying a second videotext terminal just to play games, at least from the average IB denizen point of view, you would first need to make graphics and sounds seem like an important aspect of gaming.

Another possibility is that gaming consoles began with only a tangential link with the gaming community at large. They could originally have been marketed as "educational aids" for very young children. The first generation would be all-in-one (no cartridges) with activities like counting, learning the alphabet, etc... Interactivity would be limited ("press the red button when....." sort of things) and to compensate for the lack of reading skills, most of the hardware would be dedicated to images and sounds. As these kids become older, the console companies might try to retain them with new ones that have games with less educational value but where graphics are still the prime attraction.

Eventually, as consoles stop pretending to be educational and develop a wider selection of games (either via cartridges or by way of a dedicated network), a split would occur between "serious" gamers who put the emphasis on substance and their community and play videotext-based games on on side and the "recreational" gamers who prefer console games which are graphic-heavy but little complexity in term of gameplay.--Marc pasquin 12:46, 25 August 2017 (PDT)

PS: this ended up being longer then planned.

So in IB, the division between "hardcore" and "casual" still exists. I would also note that each country could have developed a specialization. --General tiu 19:57, 26 August 2017 (PDT)

If consoles and videotext-based games evolved in parallel in a manner I described, the divide seems to be inevitable to me. The 2 groups would sincerely believe their games are better but their respective perception of what skills should be emphasized or even more fundamentally, what makes a game fun would just be too different to reconcile.

I would assume that you would inevitably end up with some sort of specialization in the sense that, for cultural reasons, some type of games would be more popular in one country then another and that to feed this popularity, game designers in that country would produce more games of that sort. An "Hibercrosse Manager Simulation" game for example would be fairly limited to New Francy players since the sport itself occupy a niche market outside the country. On the other hand, because Hibercrosse is often jokingly referred to as "the other religion" of Neofrancians, you would have a large diversity of games covering every aspects of it ranging from games which covers different eras or leagues but also more light-hearted ones like "Mascot Quest" and "Ice Resurfacer Timed Challenge 2017".--Marc pasquin 08:37, 28 August 2017 (PDT)

I don't have enough expertise in or knowledge of this subject to make a comment. You guys go with it!Caeruleancentaur 10:19, 28 August 2017 (PDT)