Game Development Reference
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seemed to assume that the idea of people playing video-game music was
inherently funny. When I told people about the group they sometimes
would burst into singing the theme from Super Mario Brothers , grinning
and giggling as they went. And let me be very clear—although it doesn't
come through in the writing of this topic, I am a person who is very
much in touch with comedy. And yet, I couldn't see where exactly the
humor was in humming the notes of a video-game song. But eventually
I figured it out. The problem was that the joke relies on a premise that I
believe to be completely untrue. The joke is, video games are inherently
stupid.
Once you realize that this is the fundamental underlying narrative
of the culture with respect to video games, so much else starts to make
sense. This is why we try to make our games look like movies—because
movies aren't inherently stupid! This is why we have a movement called
art games—because art isn't inherently stupid! This is why we focus on
technology. This is why we focus on immersion. This is why we believe
today that games can only be a means to the end of an eventual virtual
reality fantasy simulator. None of those things are inherently stupid, but
games are.
I refer to this condition as game shame . I can't say for certain when
it started, although it's likely to have existed well before the advent of
digital games. Was there ever a time when game designers were put on
the same pedestal as musicians, architects, or painters? I don't know,
but I know that in order to move forward we have to start respecting the
medium.
Preserving History
Want harder proof that game shame is a phenomenon? Look up the
term abandonware on the Internet. Abandonware is basically all digital
games created before the year 2000. (The reference year, by the way, is
constantly moving forward in time—as of 2012, it may actually be more
like 2003 or so. The cutoff date tends to be the current year minus about
10-15 years.) Regardless, the point is that you literally cannot buy a copy
of most of the digital games ever created. The company doesn't produce
them anymore, if they even exist. Not only that, but even if they do exist,
some publisher owns the rights to that game. So not only can you not
buy it, but you can't legally download it from anywhere, either.
Luckily, many people took up the mantle of preserving video-game
history by creating large databases of these abandoned titles. Some of
these sites, such as Home of the Underdogs and Abandonia, have ex-
tensive articles written about the games, manuals, and other accessories
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