The Thrifty Gamer

The beginning of the video game industry, which started with the early days of mechanical machines and slowly progressed into the Atari phenomena had several set backs or failures. Reading through the first 10 chapters of Steven L. Kent’s novel The Ultimate History of Gaming I cannot help but notice two key failures that hindered the industry, but later was corrected and capitalized upon.

Key failure number one is marketing. When you think of the word marketing a plethora of images appear running through your mind rampant, but in the early days of gaming marketing seemingly played a small role or performed incorrectly. Case in point was the Magnavox Odyssey, the first installment of the many home consoles to appear in our living rooms through the years. Ralph Baer, the father of the Magnavox Odyssey was quoted saying this, “Magnavox did a really lousy engineering job-Magnavox over-engineered the machine. Then they upped the price phenomenally so that the damn thing sold for $100. Then in their advertising they showed it hooked up to Magnavox TV sets and gave everyone the impression that this thing only worked on Magnavox TV sets.” Though over engineering the product was a huge failure in its own right, the mistake was marketing the Odyssey alongside of their companies TV sets in an attempt to not only sell the console but the TV sets as well. If Magnavox would have advertised the Odyssey in its purest form as a Home Console, and nothing else the sales of the product would have been substantial instead of minimal in the beginning. Consumers felt like they needed to not only buy the console but the TV sets as well, which in all reality the console would have worked on their home TV as well.

Key factor number two is originality. In today’s environment of video games we have several titles coming out vying for the title of being the most original. In the beginning of the industry we has several companies taking an idea like Ping Pong, changing the name and premise of the game then releasing the title as their own. Downward spirals ensued as Ping Pong morphed into Atari’s Pong. Space Wars, Steve Russell’s original attempt into video games on a monitor was morphed so many times that I’ve lost count. Now I know there have been countless numbers of games that you can easily say that the game is just a morph of this game or that game ripped off elements of this game, but what it all boils down to is having an originality factor that can keep the consumer or gamer interested.

Based upon today’s video game industry we can successfully deduct that companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, and game developer’s like Infinity Ward have researched their history and learned upon the failures that Magnavox and Atari made. I mentioned Infinity Ward because I feel they’ve taken Video Game Marketing to whole new level with the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Though I do not necessary agree with some of their viral marketing, but one must not forget the buzz created around the No More Russians level in COD MW2. The leaked footage created such a buzz that the game was banned in Australia and created such a heightened awareness of the game that record sales ensued that I am sure will take years to match or break.

Game developers such as Media Molecule have taken originality to a whole new level as well, with the development of Little Big Planet. www.littlebigplanet.com states,“ Little Big Planet is a unique platform adventure game with a huge social community, which enables players to, play, create and share with others.” Little Big Planet is not only original but re-play factor is extremely high due to the fact that the player can create his or her own levels to play and share them with their friends to play and critique.

The video game industry started out as a twinkle in the eyes’ of such god’s as Ralph Baer and Nolan Bushnell, but due to their accomplishments and failures we have a multi-billion dollar industry that we all love and will never go away.

Kent, S.L. (2001). Forgotten Fathers. In S. Levey (Ed.) ,

The Ultimate History of Video Games (pp. 15-26). NY,

NY: Three Rivers Press.

Revoir, P. (2009, November 11). Storm over Call of Duty game that allows players to massacre civilians. Daily Mail, 12265881, Retrieved from

Http://www.dailymail.co.uk.news.article-12265881/Call-Duty-Political-storm-brutal-video-game-allows-killin-civilians-airport-massacre.html

Sony, S. (2009, November 17) Game guide.

Retrieved from www.LittleBigPlanet.com

Written by JasonParman (70 pts ) in Console Gaming Blog
Last Edited on Mar 16 2010, 10:26 PM
Tags: Modern Warfare 2, Little Big Planet, Odyssey, Atari, Pong, Video Game History

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