Week 2 - Gaming History after 2000 - Dark Souls

How the Dark Souls Franchise has changed the Gaming Industry

The game series created by FromSoftware, that was released in 2011 with the first game "Dark Souls". This game took the gaming community by storm with its challenging mechanics and the intense fights that occur throughout the game. The series is seen by the gaming community as one of the hardest, mechanically challenging games there are out there. All the different features this game has, allowed it to impact the gaming community and give game designers a new look on the possibilities with game creation.

The main goal of this game is to accomplish defeating multiple bosses that can be found littered throughout the vast landscape in the Souls series games. This may sound like a simple game with a standard story mechanic of progression being through defeating a tough enemy, but Dark Souls takes this to a whole other level that no other game had show before. This is due to all areas in the game out to get you and take you down, from the simplest enemy in a new area ranging to a almost impossible boss to defeat. The challenge in this game, had not been seen by the gaming industry before, as most games like to be able to keep the player base by making the game easy and normally have difficulty levels for people whom wish to play a harder game. Dark Souls differs from this difficulty slider as they want to make their game as hard as possible and have only the most determined players finish their game.

Another interesting aspect of this game is that there is no one guiding you throughout the areas, new players might accidentally stumble upon one of the harder bosses in the game if they take the road less travelled without realising and can really turn the pressure up on their skills. This series teaches patience to players, otherwise it is highly unlikely that they will succeed through this game. This requirement of patience can often put of aggressive players from the series as they find this game to be impossible, but it can also teach players and give them new skills. This game is different to most mainstream games as the game will try its best to make players no want to player their game. Due to this fact, it has created a massive gaming community of people who wish to take on the challenge of this game with highs and lots of lows everywhere you go. There was no game like a Souls game before the release of the first Dark Souls and a main reason is that one of the lead designers of the game, Hidetaka Miyazaki, believes that "genre is shackles" which from this game is true, as it may have created its own genre of Souls-like games. 

Essentially, the three games that make up this series, are like no other and has taken the gaming industry by storm with it creating its own genre of game play and now we are starting to see more games being created by other developers trying to recreate what makes Dark Souls so great and challenging. 

Reference

Miyazaki H, 2016, Hidetaka Miyazaki on Twitter, viewed 26 Feburary 2017, <https://twitter.com/HidetakaMiyazak/status/809856842272768000>.

Week 1 - The History of Games before 2000

How Tetris was a Success

In an industry that was not created until the complications of war arose and the advancement of technology was required, Tetris was born in 1984 during the cold war in Soviet Russia. This was created from the depressing times the people in Russia were experiencing and Alexey Pajitnov, whom was a computer programmer at Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, thought of the idea of Tetris and put that idea into action. Tetris is now a world-renowned puzzle game that is addicting and brings fun along with it, but how did this gaming hit, become so big and change the gaming industry forever?

Tetris became a successful game in 1984 and has been world renown ever since and has been able to create a line of games that are still being made now keeping up with technology and the demand of someone always wanting to play Tetris. At the time, Tetris was taking over the world with its simple puzzle mechanics and at the time Pajitnov was "wary of making it too complex" which was a good way to look at it and wouldn't be the franchise it is today, even admitting he "would not change anything" about it in today's world. The simple puzzle formula of Tetris made it great to start out as a beginner and allowed people to get better with the progression of levels making the blocks fall faster and giving people less time to react, making it competitive and the reason Tetris is still around today. 

Tetris also grew in popularity as it was one of the first games to be released on a handheld console being the original Game Boy console released by Nintendo. Tetris had so much success on handheld consoles that the popularity of it has been one of the main reasons that Nintendo has created more handheld devices. The great success of Tetris lead to further iterations of it but it still has the same focus on the simple elements of the game which are the greatest aspect of the game and it the main reason why it was so popular. A producer from the makers of Angry Birds described Tetris as “probably the first break out casual video game” which it was as the simple controls and aim kept it casual and fun.

Finally, Tetris has been a huge success in the gaming industry and due to its simple mechanics, which make it fun and addicting. Also, the timing of the game also helped people take their mind off the problems in the world and continued to help establish one of the long lasting handheld console brands from Nintendo.

Andrew Hudson

References:
Govorun K 2015, 'The history behind the success of Tetris' viewed 20 February 2017,<http://in.rbth.com/economics/2015/07/20/the_history_behind_the_success_of_tetris_44305>.