It's occurred to me given the juxtaposition of the classic game reviewers on the internet (Angry Video Game Nerd, et al) and the age of the games they take on, what if Video game development were delayed? Is it possible for the world of 2010 to come into play, with internet and all, but with video games still running on 8bit or 16bit power?
AH Challenge: Delay Video Game Development
- Thread starter Emperor Norton I
- Start date
Probably not; the very first "video" games were invented almost as soon as the first relatively easy to use programming languages (assembler). I mean seriously, pretty much the only way is to simply not have computers.
You might even have to start earlier and butterfly away Turing's work at Bletchly Park. It's harsh, but one way to do that would be to have him be found out to be gay earlier.
Nah, it had more to do with military requirements (there were a lot more Minutemen around than Apollos). So you'd basically have to get rid of the Cold War...
Another factor is the fact that some form of "advanced simulator" is a boon for the military. It's cheaper to train pilots and tank crews in electronic simulators than to give them the chance to wreck an actual machine. That's why the US Military funded and supported the development of an early incarnation of the First Person Shooter. Back in the late 1970s, the US Military developed a tank simulator. According to Modern Marvels (I'd say that's reasonably reliable source), the software of the game was repurposed in 1980 to make the video game Battlezone. Flight simulators developed in parallel.
So, to delay video games of some sort (because once they get into the market, improvement is inevitable), you'd need to prevent the military from investing in it, which is very difficult.
So, to delay video games of some sort (because once they get into the market, improvement is inevitable), you'd need to prevent the military from investing in it, which is very difficult.
wolf_brother
Banned
Actually, the first 'video game' was on a Cathode ray tube in 1947. And even without computers, Tennis for Two was a video game developed on an oscilloscope used for radar systems in 1958. Even without computers, we're going to have video games.
Possibly if you avert WWII altogether..
And then you have Spacewar in around '52.
So there are plenty of people making games for whatever computer system existed at whatever time.
Yeah, but I don't think you're going to be selling video-game oscilloscopes any time soon. For commercial video games, as opposed to one-offs created by bored technicians, you absolutely need modern-ish programming languages and microchips. That's still a hard row to hoe, though.
A good way to make this happen is using the video game crash of 1983. Game makers kept churning out so much shit that cost nothing to make that people simply stopped buying them and stores stopped selling them. Coleco and Mattel left the market and Atari held on for dear life. What brought video games back from the dead was Nintendo's ROB the Robot, which made the NES an "entertainment system", not a gaming console, which meant stores would now agree sell it. And with the success of the NES, the North American gaming market was booming again.
Have Nintendo not come up with that gimmick and gaming is essentially dead in the Western world (Europe got America's hand-me-downs).
Gaming will still be alive in Japan, so I do believe it would still get a second chance in the U.S. at some point, but you can definitely delay consoles similar to Xbox and Wii for at least a decade or more.
Have Nintendo not come up with that gimmick and gaming is essentially dead in the Western world (Europe got America's hand-me-downs).
Gaming will still be alive in Japan, so I do believe it would still get a second chance in the U.S. at some point, but you can definitely delay consoles similar to Xbox and Wii for at least a decade or more.
I beg to differ. You seem to equate gaming with gaming on a console.
Europe had a thriving videogame market through home computers. And even if you manage to wipe out Commodore and Apple somehow, it would still be there...
J.D.Ward
Donor
What happens if Clive Sinclair's Spectrum computers never become popular?
What Sinclair produced was not primarily a technical innovation - the limitations of the Spectrum were well known.
What he did produce was a social change - people got used to thinking of a computer as something for the home.
The best POD here could be an major economic depression following from the oil crisis of the 1970s. If the average family have little or no discretionary income, there will be liitle or no demand for new tech luxuries.
The problem is that the OP specifically requests a TL where there are PCs in every home--just not video games. Which is impossible. Anyways, that would probably only delay, not eliminate, the market for home computers.
EDIT: Not to mention that the 1970s did see a major economic depression and the end of the post-war boom. It's why Carter and then Reagan won, after all, the high inflation and unemployment.