This ramped up with the classic adventure games of the '80s and '90s, but Romero said developers today are taking interactive storytelling further than many thought possible - although it's triggered a long-running debate. While multiplayer is perhaps the natural form of gaming for many, the evolution of single-player games has seen the medium become better at telling stories. Tournaments were happening everywhere back then."
#JOHN ROMERO TIDINESS THEORY MOVIE#
If you've heard of the movie King of Kong, you might remember that a couple of the main players met at a 1982 arcade tournament. There were arcade tournaments for many years with cash prizes given to the big winners.
"But esports started in the '80s with the arcade boom. "Quake was the prime game to use in esports for years, then it shifted to Counter-Strike," said Romero. But with the home computer, they became single-player."īy the time Quake was released, there were even team-based deathmatch tournaments being organised - real competitions with cash prizes, and several leagues springing into existence around them. "Chess, chequers, pretty much all board and card games - games have always been multiplayer. In the wake of Doom's release, there was a rise in LAN parties where gamers would lug their hefty CRT monitors and computer towers to a friend's house for a weekend of deathmatches. As multiplayer became more popular, more people wanted to play together at events. On a similar note, he observed that esports is another facet of the industry he has seen evolving. "Doom came out at the right time when local area networks were emerging and modems were everywhere, so Doom kinda broke the single-player spell of the previous 20 years since the start of the computer games industry." But with the home computer, they became single-player. "Chess, chequers, pretty much all board and card games, baseball, basketball, football - games have always been multiplayer. "For as long as people have played games, they have largely been multiplayer games," he explained.
But when people first started bringing computers into their homes, video games quickly became "overwhelmingly single-player" - although for Romero, this felt somewhat odd. Next, he discussed multiplayer, which lies at the core of the most popular games on the market. "So it looks like Origin is also repeating itself in another manifestation," he adds. Interestingly, he notes, the RPG company he used to work for - Origin Systems - was acquired and later shut down by EA, and the publisher now uses that brand for its digital distribution service. "We have repeated the pattern of digital distribution from the '80s into a faster, sleeker model." "The only difference between using Steam and downloading games from a BBS in the old days is the speed has gone way up," he told attendees. And while it may feel like something only high-speed broadband can enable, Romero likened it to the bulletin board systems used to deliver games in the early days of his career. The first pattern he discussed was digital distribution, very much the dominant delivery model in the industry today. He finished the talk with reflections on patterns he's seen repeating throughout his career and commented on how they're presented today, as well as offering an insight into where he sees the future of the industry heading. The legendary designer kicked off the three-day event, which is part of EGX Rezzed, with a session entitled 'A Life In Games.' In it, he discussed his personal history and career, not only relating it to the iconic titles he's worked on but the other revolutionary games that came out around them. That was the sense you might have taken away from John Romero's opening talk at this week's Careers Fair. Everything has changed, and nothing has changed.
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