Rise Of The Videogame On Discovery Channel
Everybody get your DVR's ready — The Discovery Channel is getting ready to launch its five-part documentary series Rise Of The Videogame on Wednesday, Novmber 21. Chronicling the history of interactive entertainment from Pong to the PS3 and beyond. The hour-long episodes will air every Wednesday at 8 PM (with copious repeats) for five weeks.
Personally, I love watching documentaries about games, because you get to see all the old footage of arcades and Atari games... you know, things that don't exist anymore... Seriously, I eat these kinds of things up with a spoon, and this particular series sounds like it'll be fun and intellectually stimulating. Two things that don't usually go together. For full details on the episodes, make the jump!
Discovery Channel videogame documentary coming soon [Totally360.com]
Level One: It Started with a Twitch - Wednesday, November 21 at 8 PM (ET/PT)
The videogame started not with a bang but with a ping. Unlike other forms of entertainment, videogames turn the viewer into a player who actively shapes the outcome of their experience. At first video games and the creators were as misunderstood by the public as rock & roll in its infancy. But those closest to the videogame business persevered and never lost sight of the ability videogames had to become a dominant form of entertainment.
Level Two: The Rise of Mario - Wednesday, November 28 at 8 PM (ET/PT)
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, instead of controlling spaceships and tennis rackets, videogame technology allowed players to command recognizable characters with real faces and back stories. This paralleled the importance of the hero's journey that was popular in movies of the time like “Rocky” and “Star Wars,” as well as mirrored the rise of individualism and conservative meritocracy, where one man can make a difference. Game creators were liberated to create more complex videogames with heroic journeys, and Japanese creators like Shigeru Miyamoto rose to prominence with star characters Super Mario, Luigi and Zelda.
Level Three: The World is Yours - Wednesday, December 5 at 8 PM (ET/PT)
It was a foreign concept to early game designers but with games like “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” and “DOOM”, video games grew from their primitive 2-D roots into richly detailed 3-D worlds. These groundbreaking 3-D games led the industry down new paths both thrilling and troubling. Critics questioned if these games were getting too real, too violent and too addictive. For the first time game designers had to grapple with tough questions.
Level Four: Power to the Players - Wednesday, December 12 at 8 PM (ET/PT)
Since the invention of the computer man has feared "the machine" and its ability to think. But a computer's unique computational power has also led to the development of seminal games that are unpredictable, intelligent and malleable. "God games" like SimCity and Civilization simulate entire worlds and let players experiment with cause and effect. Other designers have used artificial intelligence to create lifelike characters and worlds that shape themselves to each player. And some games are so technologically advanced that they have become tools for learning, or better yet, creative expression.
Level Five: Can a Game Make You Cry? - Wednesday, December 19 at 8 PM (ET/PT)
Can a computer game make you cry? With the introduction of PlayStation 2's "emotion engine" in 1999 game developers had the technology to enable deep, moving stories that tugged at gamers’ heartstrings. The rise of online virtual world games added another emotional dimension, letting players make real connections (including marriages) through a virtual game and helping them escape a world rife with violence and terror.
Wootini
Posted to Video Games on 7 November 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: discovery channel, documentary, rise of the videogame
Ooooo, this should be good. This isn't some random-ass documentary made by a game website (though the GameTrailers retrospectives are actually quite good). Discovery Channel does some good work with these, so I'm excited.
It's interesting though that only the last part seems to focus on emotional connections in video games. I can say, having grown up through the 8-, 16-, and 32-bit generations that games could form such connections long before the PS2 came along. Square got an impressive amount of emotional mileage out of those tiny sprites.
Definitely be DVRing the first episode, since I'll be out of town. If it's really, really good I might do the rest of them, even though the pre-crash stuff is what I care about the most (and SMB and Zelda don't count as "late 1970s and early 1980s" in my book.)
Awesome!
Though 10 bucks says they find a way to put some sort of "disaster" or "forensic investigation" spin on it.
The Rise of Video Games: Nostradamus' other newly discovered prediction of fall of mankind.