Best Before

Videogames, Supersession and Obsolescence

James Newman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136502651
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Despite record sales and an ever-growing global industry, the simple fact is that videogames are disappearing.

Most obviously, the physical deterioration of discs, cartridges, consoles and controllers means that the data and devices will crumble to dust and eventually will be lost forever. However, there is more to the disappearance of videogames than plastic corrosion and bit rot. Best Before examines how the videogames industry's retail, publishing, technology design, advertising and marketing practices actively produce obsolescence, wearing out and retiring old games to make way for the always new, just out of reach, 'coming soon' title and 'next generation' platform.

Set against the context of material deterioration and the discursive production of obsolescence, Best Before examines the conceptual and practical challenges faced within the nascent field of game preservation. Understanding videogames as rich, complex and mutable texts and experiences that are supported and sustained by cultures of gameplay and fandom, Best Before considers how - and even whether - we might preserve and present games for future generations.

1

VIDEOGAMES ARE DISAPPEARING

No really, they are

Disappearing? Surely there can be little about the contemporary videogames marketplace or the state and status of videogaming as a mainstream cultural practice undertaken and enjoyed by millions of people across the world that can lead us to think that videogames might be disappearing. Even if we believe Peter Vesterbacka, whose company, Rovio, is responsible for Angry Birds and the now infamous assertion of 2011 that ‘console games are dying’, this only describes a shift in the preferred platform and context for play rather than signalling any decline in the popularity of gameplay itself (Ha 2011). In fact, partly because of the addition of platforms such as Apple’s iOS devices, all indications point to the fact that the games market is growing apace with new titles, new platforms and new opportunities to play revealing themselves with each passing year.

Retailers’ shelves heave under the weight of new and soon-to-be-released titles, whether these be the annual (re)iteration of FIFA or Madden, the somewhat less regular instalments of Mario Kart, Halo or Street Fighter, or new titles like Child of Eden or Heavy Rain. Thinking ahead, the sheer number of titles available for pre-order alone must reassure us of the longevity of videogames as a medium. At the time of writing in late 2011, Nintendo have just launched their 3DS handheld console that boasts glasses-free 3D and Augmented Reality gaming, while the successor to the Wii, the Wii U, has been seen and played publicly for the first time at 2011’s E3 trade show. For its part, Sony has spent much of 2011 drip-feeding information, technical specifications and teaser trailer videos of games for its forthcoming handheld console, the PlayStation Vita (codenamed ‘Next Generation Portable’ or ‘NGP’).

The speed with which new platforms and delivery mechanisms can establish themselves and proliferate is little short of astonishing and speaks of the apparently insatiable desire for new gaming experiences. The iTunes App Store is a case in point, with analyses of the range of available titles suggesting that gaming is not only far and away the most populous genre of app, but that the iTunes App Store game catalogue significantly outweighs those of the previous few decades’ worth of consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), MegaDrive, Xbox et al. combined (see Gaywood 2010, for instance). Such is the significance of gameplay as a mainstream practice that Apple, a company historically, if not notoriously, cool about gaming (see Gilbert 2005), now routinely touts the graphical performance of games such as Infinity Blade and Real Racing HD. Infinity Blade (then known as Project Sword) was demonstrated on-stage during the official launch of the iPhone 4 at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in 2010. ‘It’s on a phone’, opined Steve Jobs with mock incredulity as he encouraged the audience to marvel at the potency of the audiovisual demonstration they had just glimpsed (Jobs 2010). By 2011, Tim Cook introduced Apple’s latest revision to the iPod touch as ‘the most popular portable game player in the world’ (Cook 2011).

The sheer number of available games, ‘coming soon’ titles, new and in-development platforms must allay any fears that videogames are a passing fad or the equivalent of the digital roller-skate or virtual hula hoop. If we want to be assured not merely that there is a future for gaming but that the future of videogames is truly innovative, exciting – perhaps even unimaginably so, as what was once the stuff of science fiction becomes retail product – then the rows of pre-order boxes for the raft of ‘coming soon’ games as well as new hardware platforms make a materially persuasive case.

To underscore the situation, developers, publishers and industry trade organisations miss no opportunity to proudly boast of the size of their national and global sales figures and the rapidity of their growth. Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, recently announced that over 50 million Wii and 100 million DS consoles had been sold worldwide while, according to the Entertainment Software Association, ‘On average, nine games were sold every second of every day of 2007’ (Iwata 2009). Platforms and distribution systems that just a few years ago were non-existent now deliver games in astronomical numbers. By way of example, Doodle Jump recorded its 10 millionth download from the iTunes App Store in early 2011, while downloads of Rovio’s Angry Birds healthily exceed half a billion across all platforms at the time of writing, with new versions planned for consoles, handhelds and mobile devices (the Angry Birds Rio tie-in posted 10 million downloads in its first 10 days of release; Crossley 2011). In the wake of these demonstrable success stories, it is small wonder that governments promote their national videogame industries’ contribution to the creative sector. In the UK, games development is proclaimed as ‘one of our most important creative industries’ (Woodward 2006), while the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts’ skills audit proudly boasts that, ‘At over £2 billion in global sales, the UK’s video games sector is bigger than either its film or music industries’ (Livingstone and Hope 2011: 4). Projections from Pricewaterhouse Coopers suggest that the future is equally rosy: ‘the sector will grow at an average annual rate of 10.6 per cent between 2010 and 2014 – faster than film, music and TV’ (Livingstone and Hope 2011: 20). In the US, the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) is not shy in noting the size of the games sector’s contribution: ‘In 2009, the entertainment software industry’s value added to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $4.9 billion’, or the rate and sustainability of its growth against the prevailing economic trends: ‘From 2005 to 2009, the entertainment software industry’s annual growth rate exceeded 10 percent. Over the same period, the entire U.S. economy grew at a rate of less than two percent’ (ESA 2011a; see also Siwek 2007, 2010).

And yet, for all this apparently manifest growth, innovation and diversification, the simple fact remains that videogames are disappearing.

Perhaps I should be a little clearer about what I mean by ‘disappearing’. My point here is not about industry growth, the quality of games or any yearning for what is sometimes referred to as a ‘golden age’ of gaming (Day 1998; Kent 2001; Whittaker 2004). I do not mean to suggest that we are headed for the kind of self-destructive market crash that was experienced (primarily in the US) in the early 1980s in which consumers temporarily turned their backs on what was seen as a marketplace supersaturated by quickly made, low-quality, cash-in products (see Taylor 1982; Cohen 1984; Kent 2001; also Consalvo 2006). It is worth remembering that, even in the aftermath of a crash of catastrophic proportions, which saw prices slashed and infamously drove Atari to bury in the desert its inventory of literally thousands of unsaleable cartridges rather than store it in warehouses, such was its negative equity (McQuiddy 1983; Guins 2009; Montfort and Bogost 2009), ‘videogames’ did not disappear. If history teaches us anything about videogames as a medium, as an entertainment form, it is that they are remarkably durable. If we look at this macro level, then certainly videogames appear to be enjoying a level of cultural acceptance and penetration that they have long sought. Not only does the marketplace appear to be in rude health, but also an increasing number of university curricula are dedicated to delivering the next generation of games developers and critics for the ‘next generation’ of videogames.

However, if we delve a little deeper, a more disturbing picture emerges. If we consider individual games rather than the health of a medium, we start to see vulnerability. If we turn our attentions to the games that already exist rather than taking solace in the multitude yet to come, we begin to see a somewhat unexpected fragility. If we consider ‘old’ games, the games that were once ‘coming soon’ and that had their moment at the cutting edge, taking centre stage at retail, being advertised on television, online and in print, but which are now outdated, superseded, and unsupported by their publishers and developers, we often find surprisingly little, and what we do find are sometimes only unreliable traces of existence.

Mario is missing

To illustrate some of these points, it is instructive to recount an apparently simple task I set my game studies students. It involves one of gaming’s most well-recognised characters: Super Mario. Many will recognise him as a plumber, with some knowing that he was originally a carpenter. Aficionados will know that before he was ‘Super’, before even he was ‘Mario’, the character was known only by his rather more literal and gameplay-centric ‘Jumpman’ soubriquet when he appeared in Nintendo’s 1981 Donkey Kong (though exactly when in 1981 is a topic of some discussion; see Patterson 2011). Donkey Kong is revered in the canon of videogames not only because it introduced the character that would later become Mario, who would become Nintendo’s corporate mascot and a globally recognised cultural icon (see Sheff 1993), but also because the title was one of the first and most influential ‘platform games’ (a genre that was part of the mainstay of 1980s and 1990s gameplay; see Curran 2004; Loguidice and Barton 2009). Let us not forget also that this was the first meisterwerk of designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary ‘father of modern video games’ and ‘the “Steven Spielberg” of the gaming world’ (BAFTA 2010). With that on board, and recognising that what we are dealing with is one of the truly seminal titles in videogaming’s history, it should be easy enough to find out about it and locate a copy to play through. Or so one might think.

Where to start? If I know my students, Wikipedia will be the first port of call for many. Once we’ve navigated the disambiguation of Donkey Kong the character versus the game, we find some useful, if potentially confusing, information. There are literally dozens of ports, conversions, translations and clones of the game. As such, Donkey Kong appears on myriad platforms and systems. However, we know that Donkey Kong was originally an arcade, or Coin-Op, game so this should be our starting point as the ports and translations are versions, remakes and remodels of this ‘original’ incarnation. And so we encounter our first problem. If we want to play this original version, we have to find a 30-year-old Coin-Op cabinet. Maybe champion Donkey Kong players like Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe (see Seth Gordon’s 2007 The King of Kong) have them on hand, but the chances of finding a working cabinet are slim at best, let alone a 1981 Donkey Kong machine with its custom graphics and decals.

Cancelling the trip to the funfair at the end of the pier, we should perhaps widen the search to investigate some of the many console and home computer ports, conversions and clones. But which ones? Even a quick glance reveals that there are dozens and that, despite their name, they are in fact not all the same, with some having levels missing or omitting animation sequences found in the Coin-Op version (their omission is particularly important given that, as Moby Games (Donkey Kong n.d.) suggests, ‘Donkey Kong is also notable for being one of the first complete narratives in video game form, told through simplistic cut scenes that advance the story’). Nonetheless, ColecoVision Donkey Kong looks promising. Helpfully, Wikipedia’s editors note that ‘Coleco’s version was a more accurate port than earlier games that had been done’ (Donkey Kong (video game) n.d.). Unhelpfully, they do not explain what ‘accuracy’ means, or how or by whom it is measured, so it is difficult to judge whether this refers to the integrity of the technical conversion, the consistency of the graphics, sound or structure, or the feel of the gameplay. However, we can see that the ColecoVision console’s technical specification does not match up to that of the Coin-Op hardware. Although they use the same central processing unit (CPU), albeit running at different clock speeds, the sound chip is different, the screen resolutions do not tally and the ColecoVision is capable of displaying just 16 colours compared with the Coin-Op’s 256-colour palette. And then we have the controller. The Coin-Op had a chunky, microswitched joystick with a large ball to grip onto with the left hand, with a momentary-switched button falling under the right hand for making Jumpman jump. The ColecoVision controller’s button layout is wholly different and there is no joystick at all. We should remember also that, like all of the different home computer and console conversions, ColecoVision Donkey Kong sets out its action for a display in landscape orientation rather than for the portrait orientation of the Coin-Op (presumably based on the reasonable assumption that most domestic television sets attached to consoles are not rotated through 90 degrees).

Surveying the other console and home computer conversions we find further and different variations. Many versions omit the intermissions that punctuate and drive the narrative frame, cut animation sequences or even strip away entire levels. Others modify the levels they do include, presenting different numbers of platforms and obstacles to traverse before rescuing the princess, thereby altering the gameplay dynamic and rhythm, and demanding new strategies and tactics. In extremis, Nintendo’s own Game & Watch handheld Donkey Kong (DK-52) distills gameplay and audiovisual presentation to their absolute barest. DK-52 offers monochrome graphics via two built-in LCDs accompanied by little more than rudimentary blips for a soundtrack. Similarly, DK-52 is based exclusively around a radically stripped-down version of the Coin-Op’s first level, which is played ad infinitum with only an increase in speed providing additional challenge (see Newman 2004 for more on Game & Watch gameplay design and structure). Perhaps DK-52 captures something of the essence of Donkey Kong’s gameplay, but only a novice player would mistake it for the Coin-Op even though both carry the Nintendo badge, even (or perhaps especially) in its audiovisually ‘updated’ and ‘enhanced’ guise as part of 1994’s Game & Watch Gallery collection for GameBoy Advance.

Indeed, updates and enhancements add considerably to the complication and, as of 2006, Nintendo offers a version of NES Donkey Kong running under emulation and available via the Wii’s ‘Virtual Console’ digital download service. Designed for use with the ‘Classic Controller’, which is a hybrid of various Nintendo console controllers, it necessarily deviates from the specificities of the NES pad. Indeed, as it is a conversion of the NES incarnation, replete with omissions and limitations (however well implemented on the Wii), the Virtual Console Donkey Kong is treated by many reviewers as necessarily flawed.

Don’t download it.

Don’t download it, because this isn’t the true Donkey Kong. This Virtual Console release is of the NES version of the arcade classic, not the arcade classic itself. Whereas the coin-op original had four full levels of play, the NES conversion only has three – it’s only 75% complete.

(Thomas 2006)

Even this brief example raises a number of important points. The widespread practices of porting, converting, translating and re-releasing give rise to a proliferation of titles, each making different claims to originality, authenticity and definitiveness, and each contributing to the story of Donkey Kong as a ludic, technological and cultural artefact. Quite simply, the more you look, the more you find. Which of these games is Donkey Kong? Are they all Donkey Kong? Is it possible, or desirable, to identify a single entity or incarnation we can confidently demarcate as Donkey Kong? Certainly, all of these (con)versions quite legitimately bear the title Donkey Kong and we are not dealing with sequels, spinoffs or the products of an apparently cavalier attitude towards intellectual property (IP) infringement (Monkey Kong, Donkey King, etc.). Perhaps only the Coin-Op cabinet contains the real Donkey Kong and all other console, computer and handheld versions here are derivatives or ‘manifestations’ of the original ‘work’ (see McDonough et al. 2010, esp. pp 24–27 on the problems of deploying library and information services’ bibliographical frameworks such as the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ ‘Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records’, IFLA Study Group 1997, in relation to videogames). However, moving beyond issues of classification and documentation, how do we account for and deal with the myriad titles that clearly carry the mark of Donkey Kong but are, simultaneously, distinctive games in their own right? Each has its own control system, level design and its own particular take on the aesthetic, whether born of artistic intention, technical limitation or the ability to utilise the capacities of later generations of hardware and software such that the ‘enhanced’ remake purports to better embody the original vision than the original ever could. Each of these different versions is similar enough to be Donkey Kong, yet different enough not to be.

Of course, while selection and definition present real issues, they are but part of the problem. Regardless of whether we plump for the Coin-Op, a console, handheld or home computer version, we still have to locate a playable copy. Although we noted a plethora of opportunities to buy new games, or even to pre-order games still in development, purchasing games released 30 years ago is altogether more challenging. And let us not forget that even if we were able to track down the ColecoVision Donkey Kong cartridge, our quest does not, indeed cannot, end there. The cartridge will not play on any currently available videogame system, as no current platform offers ColecoVision compatibility. As we will see later in this book, it is hard enough, if not actually impossible, to run a PS2 game on a PS3 console, so what hope is there of resurrecting games designed for a console three decades out of production? Consequently, in order to play our ColecoVision cartridge we will need a ColecoVision console, thereby instantly adding to the complicat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 VIDEOGAMES ARE DISAPPEARING
• 2 NEW GAMES
• 3 OLD GAMES
• 4 GAME(PLAY) PRESERVATION
• REFERENCES
• INDEX