Game On

A while back in June I was lucky enough to go see an exhibition on video games. Now as most people who know me I do have a thing for them. I did my honours thesis on the economics of video games, and although I pretty much bombed it I definitely enjoyed learning all about the video game industry. Since that time I have seen quite an evolution in the industry and in particular the understanding the effects of platform choice and technology really shape the video game industry and provide a testing ground for graphics and sound technology for compters.

During my thesis I encountered some systems that I had never heard of and it was good to see what they actually looked like. These early systems were the first consoles that I encountered once I descended into the dungeon of video games. They had the classic Pong - the first actual arcade game machine - on display. It looked so ancient! The early games on display were classics for each system and brought back memories from my childhood as I begged my parents to buy an Atari and later a NES games system. I was pretty surprised that I never saw Super Mario Brothers at a game station, only the original Mario Bros..

Part of the fun of the exhibition was that you were allowed to play the games. I watched my friend play Tetris and was amazed at how good she was. It was like appreciating art. I also played Pro Evolution Soccer 5 000 000 or whatever the latest version is now. The graphics were pretty amazing on this (comparing it to my version of PES 9) and I felt the difficulty was from trying to adjust to the way the camera now operates. Lastly I played puzzle game against my friend and got whipped, and learnt that I am probably a little competitive .

Besides classics, they had lots of background information on video games. They had a music section (just like Borders), an art section (sonic and mario/ pokemon art), and a game design area. In the game design area they had a layout of two games - Max Payne and GTA III. Looking at the layouts I got a feel for how complicated it is to design the virtual worlds seen in the games. You can see my wonderment of the next GTA game San Andreas here (it looks like some of the pics have been deleted from the web). The amount of detail that the artists use start from photographs and then transcribed into digital art and mathematics, pretty amazing stuff, in a nerdy way :).

The last part of the museum had the most modern games. They had the dancing craze games as well as the new HALO. That HALO looked pretty amazing and fun to play, providing you didn't play against the teenagers there who were just kicking everyone's butt.

They had the Nintendo WII on display and a range of sports games. They had tennis on display and it looked pretty cool. You take the controller and swing it round like an actual tennis racket. It looked like it would take a while to get used to, yet once the skill was acquired lots of good games would follow. The experience difference between books and games was interaction, in the game you get sucked into action, unlike a book which tends to be more passive. I guess the next step in game technology is be in the game itself.

It wouldn't be a Nintendo themepark without a Mario on display, and here you see me in the next genration of games as I try to escape from the clutches of Mario and video game exhibition.


PS: Cameras weren't allowed inside the exhibition so I wasn't able to take any photos. Something about copyright blah blah blah. Doesn't this just get old!

The tickets and free game to keep me occupied for hours