The Armchair Historian's Guide (Excerpt)

8/9/2019 The Armchair Historian's Guide (Excerpt)

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The Armchair Historians Guide


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2 The Armchair Historians Guide

Copyright 2010 by Egsa Corp. All rights

reserved.

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FIRST EDITION

Published in July 2010

Printed in the U.S.A.

Although every effort has been taken in

preparation of this work, the publisher and

author assume no responsibility for errors

or omissions. Nor is any liability assumedfor damages resulting from the use of the

information contained herein.


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9The Armchair Historians Guide

Nobody cares any more.

All too often one can find these

words scattered across the

blogosphere, hidden in the prose

of fan-pages and the editorials in video gaming

publications and even in creeping into general

conversation among the trendiest gamers. When

spoken aloud, the words are usually couched

in modulated, well practiced tones that would

make even the most egregiously self-righteous

season one episodes of a twenty fourth century

science fiction series proud.

No one cares about points in modern games

anymore and certainly no one cares about

keeping score.

All that remains is the obligatory

smug lecture from a spry gentleman in a redtunic about how humanity has evolved beyond

its petty needs for the old 20th century ideals

of competition and how the modern gaming

economies of the future have made the

1: Ducit

Amor Patriae


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10 1: Ducit Amor Patriae

oppressive point systems of the past irrelevant.

Cue synthetic orchestra and fade to

commercial.

For even the most passionate, rational

devotee of gaming there is a moment of brief

pause. It is typified by that arcade moment in

Namcos Galaga or Seibu Kaihatsus Raidenwhen as a drizzle of missiles slowly turns into a

violent storm you briefly wonder if you are on

the right side of history. It is that tiniest moment

of reflection when faced with the growing

murmurs across the community of gamers

you briefly consider Could the Jean-Lucs be

right?

Could the era of competitive gaming based on

collecting points be an artifact of less evolved,

less refined 20th century tastes in gaming?

Is keeping score pass?

With Apologies to the 24th Century

Perhaps one of the most over used

aphorisms in use today is George Santayanas

aphorism on repetitive consequences. Often

paraphrased, the kernel of the common

expression is those who cannot rememberthe past are condemned to repeat it. Nearly

a century later a philosopher gamerfrom the

fabled lost arcade of Kallipolis might just as

easily remark those who did not experience


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the past are more likely to condemn it.

Historically the concept of using score to

track accomplishment in play predates the video-

game experience. The concept of assigning

a point value to accomplishing objectives,

besting our adversaries or to performing tasks

with higher efficiency reaches back to the dawn

of play. While there are many examples ofgames outside of the realm of video games that

have no direct concept of points, arguable the

most popular competitive games frequently

use the concept of points as a metric of simple

progression in a game. Shigeru Miyamotos

classic arcade game Donkey Kongtaunted

players with the simple question How high

can you get? While some saw this question

as purely rhetorical, wise and competitive

philosopher gamers could answer this question

directly by replying using their numeric score

or they could use an indirect score and reply

by counting the number of levels1 they had

passed.

Miyamotos Donkey Kongmay have

been one of the first videogames to so verbosely

ask this directly, but it was not the first video

game to pose such a question. While the future

might be known to the Jean-Lucs among us, itis quite possible that it will also not be counted

among the last games to ask.


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The rich legacy of keeping score in video

games comes to us largely from the ancestorof the arcade video game: pinball. Many of

our ideas in scoring and score based play were

tested and proven in the realm of pinball. Long

before the giant cosmic silverball2 fell from the

heavens and shrouded the industry in seemly

unending darkness, mighty pinball machines

walked the Earth. For a brief time beyond thememories of many arcade and pinball machines

stood side by side.

One Score and Fourteen Years Ago

In 1976, Midway Manufacturing Cos

periscope shooterSea Wolfbecame more than

one among many, it became a legend. With its

High Score counter in addition to a traditional

player score counter it is often credited as being

the first coin-operated arcade game to keep

track of the highest achievement in play. While

the high score kept only the numeric values of

the score, the simple act of including a high

score was in many ways as epic as man setting

foot on the moon. Like a boot print in the lunar

soil leaving a anonymous high score was like

leaving incontrovertible proof to any explorer

that followed that not only has someone had

been there before but here was a measure ofhow far they travelled.

While Midways Sea Wolf had paved

the way two-years earlier by placing the high


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score on the games attract mode, 1978s Space

Invaders by Taitos Tomohiro Nishikado uppedthe ante by placing the current high score right

above the action on the active game screen.

While it was still not known who had set the

on screen record, the record was now a clear

threshold that delineated the level of play

required by some gamer or perhaps the machine

itself to be the best.

Three years afterSea Wolfin late 1979,

Exidys Star Fire arcade game would change

everything. Designed by David Rolfe and Ted

Michon the game featured the first high score

table that allowed players to not only record

achievement but to claim their achievement

by using their own initials, coded callsigns

or gamer tags3 so that future arcade explorers

could not only see that someone had been there

before and how far they had travelled but for

the first time they could attach an identity to

the achievement. Like the monolith in 2001: A

Space Odyssey or the meeting at Devils Tower

in Close Encounters it was an awe-inspiring

message to every gamer in an arcade:

We Are Not Alone

By the 1980s not only were pointsbased systems for competitive play ubiquitous

but the idea of keeping score including

nonvolatile storage of scores was essential to

the arcade experience. Trailblazing pioneers


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like Walter Day became the first true historians

of the electronic gaming age. Through venueslike Days Twin Galaxies4 national scoreboard

for electronic gaming the history of some

of gamings greatest achievements on not

only arcade games but also pinball machines,

console game systems and hand held systems.

Without the thirty year effort of Walter Day5 and

the entire team at Twin Galaxies much of thehistory of gaming might have been lost during

the long night that fell upon the both worlds of

pinball and the arcade.

(Armchair Footnotes)1 What we call levels today may also be called game

boards for the sufficiently ancient patron of golden agegaming.2 More controversial theories from noted cosmologists

postulate that the cosmic silverball was in fact a slot

machine.3 Paleolithic gamer tags compared to what modern

gamers think of today or what BBS gamers might use a

few short years later.4

Visit Twin Galaxies at www.twingalaxies.com.5 In March 2010, Walter Day announced his retirement

from Twin Galaxies. His voice in gaming will be

missed.


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The Armchair Historian's Guide (Excerpt)

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