501 #8 - Essay

 How have video games evolved, particularly in the realm of 3D modelling, animation, and graphics?

Intro: 

Video games are a very new medium, the first video game was created back in 1962. That’s only fifty years ago! And yet there is quite the history within that fifty years, from oversaturation, market crashing, and misogynistic market segregation, but the most obvious development in video game history is its visuals. 

The real beginning of video games began in universities, created by students using then-cutting edge technology. Spacewar! was created by Steve Russell in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the first real video game [show clips of Spacewar].

Sec1:

Early games were simple 8-bit graphics, and any character animation was essentially just key frames [show clips of Super Mario Bros/Donkey Kong/Space Invaders]. There really wasn’t much room to work with at the time, pretty much conserving every bit. Game developers of this time had to get creative to get their designs across.

It was simply technological limits. This, of course, improved with home console innovations.

Sec2:

The prelude to polygonal 3D was 2.5D games, creating the illusion of 3D with 2D objects [show clips of Wolfenstein 3D]. 2.5D games have been around for a while, the earliest recorded 2.5D game was Interceptor (1975) where the player controls the background with the joystick to give the illusion of being in 3D space [show clips of Interceptor]. This type of pseudo-3D game ran into the 80’s, overlapping with the beginning of polygons as consoles and computers became more powerful. One of the most popular games of its time was Doom [show clips of Doom], which sold out very quickly and ended up breaking servers with the mass amount of people trying to log on at the same time. This was after advertising multiplayer capabilities

Sec3:

Early polygonal 3D was very simplistic. It was mainly found on consoles, since they were becoming more powerful. The earliest recorded commercial polygon game was I, Robot (1983) on the Atari [show clips of I, Robot] … yeah, we’ve come a long way. A notable achievement was 1996’s Quake, which could render up to 200 polygons at once. From around that time, consoles began to rapidly improve. For example, Quake 4 released in 2006 and could render 2,600 polygons at once. [show comparison footage]

Sec4:

Sony’s Playstation 2 (released in 2000) was the first console to use DVD’s (although some previous consoles used CD’s instead of cartridges, but DVD’s have much more storage capacity), and included backwards compatibility. The increase in space and the power of the console allowed for a higher number of polygons to be rendered at once. 

The 00’s also saw customisation in 3D, games like Elder Scrolls Oblivion (and later, Skyrim) [show clips of character building in Oblivion] allowing players to customise their character’s appearance, Sims with more options for character customisation as well as house building [show clips of character building in Sims 1/4], and Spore, with creature building that allows the player to play as a fully customised animal [show clips of creature building in Spore]. This is a great intersection between physics engines, AI, and 3D graphics.

Sec5:

In modern games, polycount isn’t even considered anymore. A single character can take 150,000+ without affecting the hardware. So these days, it’s all about shaders, textures, and physics. 

Game engines have also become so widespread among the public, like the Unreal engine, which is free to use, allows even individual people to make very nice looking games, obviously depending on how much time and skill the individual puts in.

The quick improvement of 3D graphics in games is most evident when comparing games in the same franchise. The Last of Us came out in 2013 [show clips of Last of Us] with graphics considered among the best games could offer, but The Last of Us Part II, which came out in 2020 has graphics which are noticeably improved [show clips of Last of Us 2 (preferably something to show lighting/water/clothing]. Clothing, water effects, and combat sequences are all visually better, as is the way the player is able to interact with the environment.

Far Cry is another franchise this can clearly be seen in, I mean, just look at the original Far Cry from 2004 [show clips of Far Cry] versus the most recent Far Cry: New Dawn from 2019 [show clips of New Dawn (preferably showing environment]. This is only a 15 year difference! Not to mention map size increase that made Far Cry 5 and New Dawn so big, fast travel stations were changed from just outposts to any landmark. 

Speaking of map size, I can’t go on without mentioning Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017) along with it’s expansion Frozen Wilds [show clips of Horizon (preferably showing lighting changes or environment]have a huge map with various biomes, rainforests, coniferous forests, swamps, deserts, mesa canyons, and deep snowy mountains, all with changing daylight and weather systems that the character will react to.

Sec6:

With the very recent release of the Playstation 5 and the Xbox X, even the near future of games is exciting. Horizon: Forbidden West [show clips from trailer (preferably underwater segment] promises underwater gameplay, and with the new console, possibly larger maps again, Cyberpunk 2077 [show clips of gameplay trailer (preferably character builder] has advanced character customisation that allows complete control over the player character (even down to genitalia). 

The game industry itself has been well sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic, as developers can work at home and numbers of gamers have reached record highs (lockdown, ammirite?), of course, trade events like E3 being cancelled has hurt indie developers, and production of consoles, which are made in China, have slowed, but overall it’s doing fairly well.

Personally, I am very excited to see where we go next.

Bibliography:

teachinghistory.org (unknown) Ask a Historian: The Gaming Revolution. Available at: https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/25764 (Accessed 02/11/2020).

PopCultHQ (2018) The Evolution Of Polygons in 3D Video Game Graphics. Available at: https://popculthq.com/2018/02/26/evolution-polygons-3d-video-game-graphics/ (Accessed 02/11/2020).

History.com (2019) Video Game History. Available at: https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/history-of-video-games (Accessed 02/11/2020)