My
main recommendation is that you take the time to explore old games. Every game I have mentioned today is available free on the Internet.
There are links in the transcript on my website. I found it hugely
entertaining. Also nostalgic. It reminded me about my own history – why I got into the
games industry and a little bit why I got out. It’s nice to know that the industry has a history and that we are part
of such a passionate and creative tradition.
Coming
at this as a historian rather than a practitioner, it is interesting to see how
games are classified and how they evolve over time. It is interesting to see turning points as one genre dies and another is
born. It is fascinating to see how
today’s developer faces problems that are similar to those faced by pioneers,
even though games have increased in size twenty or thirty-fold in the last ten
years. It’s interesting to see that there is rarely such a thing as a
completely original idea: generally people evolve ideas and apply them to new
situations and exploit new technology. There seems to be an informal canon of
‘great games’ but no real rigour has been applied to either the history of
computer games or their classification and analysis. At this point I will use the academics cop-out: more work is
required to explore these themes.
In conclusion, as the man said: “those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.” So I look forward to giving the same lecture this time next year. Thank you.
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