Critical Path /// Computers the Size of Classrooms

2:16

Computers the Size of Classrooms

Interviewed 2014. On the evolution of game development.

Don Daglow

Roles: #Producer #Game Designer #Programmer

Credits: #NEVERWINTER NIGHTS #MADDEN NFL 98 #TIGER WOODS PGA TOUR 2001 #DUNGEON #UTOPIA #TONY LA RUSSA BASEBALL

Tags: #Technology #Fidelity

Added on July 19, 2016 · View Transcript

I think that every decade of game design, for me, has a wonderful naivety of what we didn’t yet know. And that’s actually part of what lets us do something that’s new as opposed to just copycatting what’s there. In the 1970’s when I was writing games on mainframes we didn’t know there was an audience. We didn’t think this was a business. Games would fill an entire room the size of our computer. Computers filled a room the size of a classroom. You’re never going to have one of those in your house; they cost millions of dollars each. So, when we wrote games we were writing them for university students who would kind of sneak around because you weren’t supposed to be playing games. And it was this underground, sort of forbidden, activity and it was very exciting which meant that we were only thinking about the experience. We weren’t thinking about money. We weren’t thinking about fame or any of the other things that can take and twist your head in bad ways. We were just thinking about the experience. Take your friends, take other university students, you understand, and entertain them. In the early 80’s with the first video game consoles suddenly everybody’s going, “Wow, you can do this?” I’ve never seen that on a screen before.” We look at the graphics now and we laugh. “Look at this little - big blocks of color. Is that supposed to be a human being?” But yet we had television - television commercials every night extolling how perfect our graphics were and how wonderful they were and now they’re laughable. So, the naivety of that was willing suspension of disbelief. We can give you a suggestion of an image. You fill in the rest from your imagination. That was the heart of game design and onwards from the 80’s into the 90’s into now. I think that 10 years from now we will look back and say in terms of online, in terms of mobile, in terms of all kinds of group experiences. “Oh, we had a wonderful naivety in 2014. There was so little we knew. Look at what we know now in 2024.” And that will be what’s special and nostalgic about this era and we’ll have some great, wonderful new thing we’ll be doing 10 years from now which is why the still game design as an art form will not be boring in 2024 because it will have our old new world view to be living within.

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