Video Gaming and Knowing Fun When You See It
"Interactive entertainment," which includes video and computer games along with other multimedia entertainment formats, has become a major pastime for Americans, rivaling Hollywood. (Photo courtesy: Nintendo)
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You've been assigned to rescue your best friends from a band of monsters strong enough to throw you across a fiery lake. You suddenly recall a secret weapon you have been saving for just this moment. You and your gang might defeat the enemy, and save the world from evil, if you can just remember how to engage that special trick in the next 10 seconds... Then you hear a hideous and distracting noise, "Have you finished your homework?"
Yep — it's "game over" for now. But wouldn't it be great if the video or computer game were never over?
"Interactive entertainment," which includes video and computer games along with other multimedia entertainment formats, has become a major pastime for Americans, rivaling Hollywood, or more often nowadays, partnering with it. Starting with simple hand-eye coordination games, the genre now includes 3-D animation and graphically intensive games in categories such as action, sci-fi, comic book, gothic, mythology, urban, stealth, strategy, sports, racing, fighting, adventure, and role playing.
Video and computer games started as an insider activity for freaks and geeks, especially younger people, but according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) the average gamer is 30 years old (35 percent of all game players are under 18 years old). Gamers play for an average of 6.8 hours a week.
Most gamers have been playing for an average of 12 years, so this is not a passing fad. In fact, it's a $7.3 billion industry, almost as lucrative as the film industry.
And it's not just for guys. Females make up 43 percent of all gamers.
Whether you're hooked on Halo, Sims, or Madden NFL, you could be the top developer, designer or tester of the next best-selling Playstation, Xbox, computer, Game Boy, arcade, or Internet game. You can even major in video games in college.
It doesn't take an engineering degree to learn how to make a video game. It does help if you know how to create fun.
What's In the Box?
Like all things computer, video games have become available in smaller and smaller boxes over time, with the latest hot handheld being Sony's slim 6.7" x 2.9" PSP (PlayStation Portable). The PSP has broken the monopoly that was owned for years by Nintendo's Game Boy. For lower-resolution gaming on the go, there are cell phone games and providers such as Gameloft that have a host of new titles worthy of downloading, especially in the role playing and real-time multiplayer racing categories.
For better graphics and action, you can't go wrong with your standard GameCube, Xbox, or PlayStation console game displayed on your home television, ideally a nice high-definition flat screen. Consoles are basically computers tailored for game play; they allow players to use manual controls to operate the game. The guts of consoles are a lot like the "insides" of a personal computer, including processing chips and boards, a hard drive, and software instructions that operate the game.
You can also get great gaming action on a PC via software games that you buy at the store and load onto your computer or obtain via the Internet. These are technically computer games, not video games. However, some high-end home computers can give you faster action and better graphics if they have superior graphics cards, storage, and speed capabilities as compared to a console.
Probably the coolest thing about computer games compared to console games is that they are often designed so that players can modify them without much trouble. These "mods," many of which are distributed via the Internet, offer users another level of creativity.
Powerful Processors
Not all games are designed purely for entertainment, but they still keep you glued to the screen. (Photo courtesy: Nintendo)
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If you took a screwdriver to a computer or console and opened up the box, you'd be shocked at how simple the guts appear. That's because a lot of a computer's know-how is stored in its processing boards or microprocessors, those flat green pieces of plastic, or chips, with metallic lines and dots chemically etched all over them. Processors control the logic of a digital device, such as a video game. You can think of processors as sequences of linked on/off switches, called transistors, that flow one into the next and handle everything from displaying or rendering graphics and action on the screen to starting up the game. The speed of today's processors is measured in Megahertz (Mega means million) or Gigahertz (Giga means billion). The higher those figures get, the more instructions per second that the processor can complete.
The new Xbox 360 console runs on a 3.2-GHz (Gigahertz) central processors and a 500-MHz (Megahertz) graphics chip. It can process 500 million polygons per second. (Polygons are two-dimensional, straight-lined figures such as triangles, quadrilaterals, and pentagons.) That's four to five times faster than the original Xbox. You've got to admire that.
Moore and More Speed (view website)
Gordon Moore, co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corp., four decades ago predicted the explosion in transistor power driving the electronics revolution.
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Advances in the world of personal computers also ramped up the processing speed of gaming consoles. In 1965, Gordon Moore, founder of Intel, the microprocessor industry leader and innovator, predicted that the number of transistors that can fit on a microchip would double every year. He was right. This prediction, called Moore's Law, has been modified slightly to say that the transistor number doubles every 18 months, but even this remarkable rate of growth still holds and is expected to hold for the next 20 years.
The first personal computers sold widely to the public ran on Intel 8086 chips that contained 29,000 transistors and operated at speeds of 5 MHz. Intel kept developing faster and faster chips with such techniques as allowing processors to encode more detail in each unit of information or instruction (or bit), inventing a temporary instruction storage technique called virtual memory, increasing the amount of instruction memory (RAM) with which processors could communicate, and allowing processors to work on more than one instruction at a time (like multitasking).
Advances also came with new ways of sending more electrical power through chips and using new materials to keep chips cool. Engineers also figured out how to etch more and more and thinner and thinner circuit lines on wafers. More lines means more processing. For gamers, that means better graphics, faster action.
Today's chips can contain hundreds of millions of transistors.
From Pong to World of Warcraft
The world wasn't always full of virtual universes and MMORPGs (massive multi-player online role-playing games), or at least ones you could play at home. Video games have their roots in pinball games, with Gottlieb releasing the first Baffle Ball game in 1931. Pong, Space Invaders, Centipede, Asteroids—these classic games were among the actual video game pioneers. It all started with games played in the late 1950s and early 1960s on enormous machines, usually mainframe computers bigger than your classroom, that could follow and store the simplest of instructions. The first video games, usually adventure games with no graphics that required the user to move the character by typing text, were marketed in the 1960s. And later in the decade, experts figured out how to store the machinery and instructions for a single game in a box about the size of a pinball game. Arcade video games took off in the 1970s and some primitive console games, like Pong, made it onto consumers' home television sets. The first 10,000 copies of this game that plastered ping-pong table lines, two paddles, and a cursor "ball" on your TV set sold for $1,000 apiece.
In 1976, Atari produced the first game system, or console, that could handle different game cartridges, such as Tank and Space Invaders. In the early 1980s, Atari's Pac-Man munched up endless hours of teen time (and your own parents may very well have racked up a few hours way back then!). Atari and its start-up competitors marketed hundreds of games with graphics and sounds that were simple by today's standards.
Then came the video game crash of 1983 that sent Atari on a downward spiral and defeated copycat console companies like Intellivision, Colecovision, and US Games. The marketing of the Commodore 64, the first affordable PC, with its better graphics and easy-to-share games storable on floppy diskettes, was the main culprit along with a weak economy and dull games.
It took another decade, but eventually new video game companies threw billions of dollars at the effort to create games and gaming systems and finally fully exploit the PC as a consumer platform.
Hey, Japan? Arigato. Enter players Nintendo and later Sega and Sony. The video game industry moved from cottage industry to big business. The rest is history.
"The Big Crash of 1983"
Imagine that all the best video games suddenly disappear off the face of the planet. That's about what happened just over 20 years ago during the "Big Crash of 1983." Video games were only available, for the most part, at that time in the United States and Canada. Console games were starting to become more sophisticated but the birth of inexpensive personal computers suddenly gave players a cheaper alternative to expensive console games. Plus, personal computers had better graphics and the advantages of word processing and other applications. A flood of new and mostly poor-quality games sent demand and prices spiraling down. With declining sales and a flood of new video game start-up companies that resulted from a court case, several video game companies went bankrupt and others had to stall development of new games for lack of funds.
Also, some retailers started to think that video games were a passing fad and significantly reduced their shelf space for them.
The crash officially lasted three years, but Japan-based Nintendo was born in 1985 from its ashes and continues today as one of the top video game companies in the world. Once Sega came on the scene in 1989, the video game industry's center officially shifted from the United States to Japan.
Big Platforms, Big Players
In the video game industry, hardware or console manufacturers have an edge over companies that just produce games or software for machines. That's because console manufacturers have won the legal and technological battle that prevents competitors from making games that work on their consoles. Today's big console manufacturing players are Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, and their top machines are GameCube, Playstation 2, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PSP.
The game industry has grown and is now larger than it ever was. In pure income, Sony leads, but Nintendo has more profit after expenses, according to DFC Intelligence, likely thanks to owning the handheld market with Game Boy for so long. Microsoft is clearly an up-and-coming powerhouse, although its first version of Xbox reportedly lost $1.5 billion in its first 18 months. The latest version, Xbox 360 was released in late 2005 to rave reviews.
And don't count out Atari. Its Classic Game Console is a must-have among gaming connoisseurs.
There is one exception in the industry to the "hardware wins" rule. Electronic Arts, the makers of the Madden NFL games among others, ranks No. 1 among companies that create games that can be played on computers and all the leading consoles.
Major in Video Games?
You can major in philosophy and still end up a game designer. However, it doesn't hurt to think about engineering, programming, art skills, or an actual degree in video gaming.
Carnegie Mellon University now offers a master's degree in game development where you have to pass courses called Introduction to Entertainment Technology, Building Virtual Worlds, and Game Design.
The University of Southern California is another big-name entertainment school that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in gaming. Full Sail Real World Education, in Florida, is a small school that also offers well-regarded degrees in video game design. For your "reach" school, you might try applying to Digipen, a 2-year/4-year accredited degree-granting institution that trains future game developers. It's tough to get into but most of its graduates get jobs, possibly because it is across the street from Nintendo in Redmond, California. Nationwide, more than 50 colleges and schools offer gaming-related coursework, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
Some required reading is Break Into The Game Industry: How to Get A Job Making Video Games, a book by Ernest Adams, a former game designer at Electronic Arts, who worked on the Madden NFL games early on.
But repeat this mantra: Degrees are good. Experience is better.
How to Make a Video Game
Believe it or not, but playing a lot of video games is a requirement if you want to be a successful game designer or programmer. Experienced players know what is out there, what is missing, and what makes a game fun.
Pythagorean Theorem
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The next requirement: have a good story to tell and know how to tell it. Interactivity and a killer immersive environment go a lot farther if they animate a tale that's like a book you can't put down.
Video game production breaks down into four main areas: design, artistry, programming, and testing. Good storytelling skills, and experience with fun games are the threads that run through all four areas.
The design and development team comes up with the characters, how they interact, the overall concept for the game, and the elements of the game. The artistic team creates images, landscape, sound effects, and soundscape. The programming team plans and writes the software instructions for the game. The testing team beats out the game's bugs by playing it relentlessly for weeks, or longer.
Development teams initially brainstorm short scripts and sketch out storyboards. Later on, they map out, in detail, how events in the game could unfold.
Video game artists sculpt with "digital clay," doing the work of rendering and animating characters, modeling the background scenes, and refining the texture of surfaces in the game such as skin and eyeballs. Modeling software allows artists to create a creature's basic design starting with simple shapes. The simpler the shapes, the less computer processing speed required, which is good because it saves speed for the action itself. Later, characters' mesh digital frames are covered with virtual skin and color. Animators study real-world creatures and use them as reality checks for how game creatures' muscles move.
The sound artists on the team develop musical scores and sound effects that evoke emotions during the game. But since sound artists don't know exactly what will be going on during the game as it unfolds, they have to create a basic score that won't interfere with dialogue or action noises. They also have to think of where a game will be played—at a relatively quiet home computer or in a noisy arcade. Arcade game sound must be louder and simpler.
Cartoonist Linda Causey takes a humorous look at the Pythagorean Theorem, credited to Pythagorus, a Greek philosopher who lived from 580 to 500 BC. His theorem states that the sum of the two sides of a right triangle, both squared, will equal the square of the hypotenuse.
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Programmers use mathematical concepts and equations to turn ideas, art, and music into a game. For instance, a basic programming skill is figuring out if a shooter can hit a distant target. First, you have to remember your graphing skills and a little basic geometry. The shooter and target will be at specific x,y points on a graph. Let's say the shooter's ammo can only travel a maximum of 10 units on the graph (the "space" in which the game is played). To figure out if the shooter can hit the target, the game must calculate the distance between them. You can make this calculation for the game by representing the distance between the two points as the hypotenuse of a triangle. If you draw lines parallel to the x-axis and the y-axis to create the rest of the triangle, you'll see that you can use the graph's units to count off the distance of the triangle's legs. Then you can use the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the length of the hypotenuse—in other words, the distance to the target. If that distance is greater than 10 units, your shooter is out of luck.
Beyond geometry and trigonometry, it is helpful to understand math that involves vectors, which are used widely to represent movement because they designate a quantity that has both a direction and a magnitude (think speed or strength). For more advanced games and approaches, programmers rely on calculus and linear or matrix algebra.
Game programmers have different specialties like graphics, sound, the software that stores and reproduces graphics, and artificial intelligence code that dictates how characters will react to player commands as minimally "intelligent" agents.
The job of testers sounds easy—play games all day. But it takes dexterity, coordination, discipline, and skill to find errors in video game software or pacing that is too easy or too challenging or confusing. Then you have to write down the precise steps in game play that led to the error so that programmers can find the bug in the code. Typical errors are characters that bump into solid objects that the game doesn't intend, drop-outs of sound and graphic elements, or modules that won't start up.
How to Write Computer Code
Video games, computer games, and all computer software applications operate based on a sequence of instructions called a program. Programs often include a series of steps, much like a recipe for baking cookies. Every one of those steps, called an algorithm, must be described in detail for a program to work and must be linked logically for the program to operate smoothly and not crash. For example, in a recipe for baking cookies, you might read, "beat the butter, eggs and sugar together." If you have baked cookies before, you know what that means. But to a computer, it is not obvious. You must describe the meaning of beat, for instance. That set of instructions on the meaning of "beat the butter, eggs and sugar together" is like an algorithm.
Programming for video games involves knowing some art, science, math, and engineering because you want to depict a virtual world that is recognizable and engaging to users.
There are numerous languages for writing computer programs. Most video game programmers use BASIC, Visual BASIC, C, or C++.
Many programmers like Visual BASIC because it has a user-friendly graphic user interface that makes it easier to write code and it corrects common errors.
If you have a copy of Visual BASIC, this code below will print the words "Welcome to My World" on your computer screen.
Private Sub Form_Load ( )
Form1.show
Print "Welcome to My World"
End Sub
Let's say you want to write a program that does some simple math for you.
The Visual BASIC code below will calculate the results and print them on your computer screen: 30, 10, 200, and 2.
Private Sub Form_Activate ( )
Print 20 + 10
Print 20 - 10
Print 20 * 10
Print 20 / 10
End Sub
Playing with Polygons
One of the main techniques artists use to model objects for a 3D game is to work with polygons.
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Objects and action in video and computer games can be displayed in either flat two-dimensions, (examples include Rayman, Super Mario, Donkey Kong, and various card and puzzle games), or in three-dimensions (think of Super Mario 64, Tomb Raider, or Psychonauts), to give a stronger sense of reality and objects moving through space. Most of the top-selling video games these days are produced in 3D. Artists for 3D games build or sculpt, if you will, images within the digital environment, not on paper.
One of the main techniques artists use to model objects for a 3D game is to work with polygons. Polygons, as you might recall from geometry, are just straight-lined 2D objects such as triangles, quadrilaterals (such as rhombuses), and pentagons. Tape a few dozen edge-on against one another in space and you can model just about anything in three dimensions. In the digital graphics world, the more polygons you use to build an object, the more detailed and realistic your objects appear on screen.
Characters, cars, and other plot-driving objects in top-selling video games nowadays are made of tens of thousands of polygons each. That's great, but it can present a computer processing trade-off. All those polygons require a lot of computer code and processing to render. Eat up too much processing on all that, and there's less time left for cranking out action and interactivity. Top programmers know how to balance these two issues or work around them with powerful machines that process game directions.
Enter Player Alice
So what if you don't have all the skills or experience today to build your own video game. Check out Alice, www.alice.org, a virtual programming environment that makes it easy to tell your own stories in a 3-D digital world that you control. And you don't have to learn a programming language. Anyone can do it.
This easy-to-use, fun, and free software allows you to choose from a gallery of more than 700 characters and objects to create your own animated world.
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Serious Games
Not all games are designed purely for entertainment, but they still keep you glued to the screen. We're not talking about educational games for younger kids. Some of the latest simulations and virtual reality software for more mature folks address situations like city planning, diplomacy in war zones, and other deadly serious topics. Airplane pilots have been using flight simulators of course for years.
A group of developers and designers at Carnegie Mellon University is collaborating with the Fire Department of New York on "Hazmat: Hotzone," a simulation that uses video game technology to train firefighters, cops, and Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) about how to respond to hazardous materials emergencies.
"Looking forward, the future for us is to train many new firefighters/officers and keep them as safe as possible while performing an inherently dangerous mission," says FDNY Fire Academy Chief Nicholas Santangelo. "The technology demonstrated by Carnegie Mellon will greatly enhance our ability to achieve that goal."
Hazmat: Hotzone begins with an instructor choosing a setting and hazard to create a training scenario. A team of firefighters then enters the virtual scenario, each firefighter situated at his or her own computer station. The first responders can communicate over radios, via "virtual" face-to-face, and work as a team to investigate the situation and safely guide civilians out of the hazardous areas and into the safe zone. The key to a successful scenario is taking the proper precautions, recognizing the signs and symptoms quickly, making the best decisions possible, and communicating as a team to save lives. The firefighters can then review and critique the scenario, even playing back the key points during the scenario.
Hazmat: Hotzone is created to fill a gap in training, not to replace classroom lectures and expensive, large-scale, field training exercises. Still, computer-based training is a more efficient and less expensive way to train repetitively and frequently for hazmat emergencies.
Carnegie Mellon demonstrated Hazmat: Hotzone at the 2004 Fire Department Instructors Conference East, where fire departments from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maryland tested and confirmed the necessity of this type of training. Ultimately, Carnegie Mellon plans to turn Hazmat: Hotzone into a tool with enough depth and flexibility that it can be used at fire training centers nationwide. The goal is to give it away free of charge.
Bodies at Rest and Motion
Newton's Second Law is quite handy for game makers.
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For the most part, players of 3D games want the action to be as realistic as possible. That requires video game programmers who know the physics of rigid or solid bodies—you know, objects, like moving cars, whirling dancers, footballs, and snowballs. Physics used to be a class most students dreaded. It prepared you for a career in building bridges or manufacturing medical devices. Nowadays, that physics class can be your key to writing really cool, convincing video and computer games.
There are several keys to physics-based realism in games, according to David Bourg, author of Physics for Game Developers. First, don't model everything that moves in your game. That would eat up too much processing time. Focus on the physics of the key elements.
Second, get to know Newton's Second Law of Motion. That's the famous one, where F = m * a, or in English, force is equivalent to a body's mass times its acceleration. The behavior of objects in a game, in other words how they move, is determined by the forces that act upon them. So Newton's Second Law becomes quite handy for game makers. Other types of motion and forces to simulate in a video game are friction, gravity, drag (such as the drag on a swimmer through water), springs (such as the movement of clothes fluttering in the breeze), and lift forces (like the force that helps airplanes take off). For more details, check out Bourg's book, and the next time your science class gets dull, just imagine how the lesson du jour could help you create your next blockbuster video game.
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Video Games and Violence
You've been living in a cave if you haven't heard some critics say video and computer games cause violence and maybe should be banned. In fact, there is legislation pending in several states to ban video games with violent content. It's a complex issue because there have been some copycat crimes based on game scenarios with increasingly photoreal images and complex plotlines. But researchers currently disagree about whether violent video games make people violent, just as they disagree about whether violent music lyrics and movies make people more violent. Some research shows that violent video games have no effects on players, while other find they are associated with being more aggressive, having more aggressive thoughts, fighting at school, criminal behavior, and being less interested in helping others.
Females make up 43 percent of all gamers. (Photo courtesy: Nintendo)
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In fact, violent crime in the United States, especially among young people, has fallen at the same time that video games have become mainstream entertainment. It could be that this trend masks an even lower crime rate that would occur without video games, but it is unreasonable to state that video games are responsible for a large portion of the nation's crime.
Still, some critics object to the depiction of violence in video games, a genre that is popular with young people. Video games are increasingly realistic with advanced gaming consoles and faster-than-ever chip speed. Senator Hillary Clinton and other American politicians have called for a federal investigation into the gaming industry and its system for regulating the violent content in games.
Games are rated for their content, just like movies, and only 16 percent of games sold in 2004 were rated M for Mature, according to the Entertainment Software Association. Many games give players a chance to develop morally, improve their ability to multi-task, learn through trial and error, solve problems, become more flexible in the face of adversity, relieve stress, and sometimes work as teams with multi-player games or in the effort to get past stuck points in games.
Nintendo's Steve Okimoto says the violence issue is definitely important and that parents can take an active part in monitoring the games that their kids are playing.
"I think they're much more immersive than movies, so games can have a larger impact on players," he says. But he opposes legislation banning or censoring video games.
Share This with Your Parents
Video and computer game critics may have some points, but here are a few things you might want to point out to them, courtesy of the Entertainment Software Association:
- The best-selling computer game genres are strategy games and games targeted for families and children
- The best-selling video games are action and sport games, with fighting and shooting games making up only 15 percent of the market
- 47 percent of most frequent gamers play computer and video games with friends, so it's a social activity
- Video and computer games improve players' ability to process a lot of information at the same time
- Video games are an excellent learning tool because the software behind them can adjust its difficulty according to a player's progress or preference
- Video games can teach reasoning skills, memory strategies, and hand-eye coordination
The Future of Gaming
Xbox 360 just came out and new consoles from PlayStation and Nintendo are due out any minute now, with better graphics and parallel processing for faster action. PlayStation 3 will have high-end processing for more complex and faster game play. The Nintendo Revolution will allow for play via a wireless controller that senses the players' motions.
For now, new games for consoles, not PCs, drive the market. It's all about waiting for the next great console game.
XtraReal People
Name: Steve Okimoto
Title: Manager of Developer Relations, Nintendo, Redmond, Washington
How long with Nintendo: 14 years
Past jobs at Nintendo: Project Engineer, Software Engineer, Software Engineering Manager, and Developer Relations Manager
Jobs before Nintendo: Systems Engineer for Electrical Systems group at Boeing Commercial Airplanes
How did you get into the video gaming field as a career?
I was over at my cousin's house, playing video games all afternoon. We took a break to rest our thumbs, and I glanced through the newspaper. In the Help Wanted section, I saw that Nintendo was looking for a Project Engineer in the Redmond office. This was a perfect chance for me to work at a company that I truly loved!
I had worked at Boeing as a Systems Engineer, so I figured that I could easily transition to a new role in the Engineering department at Nintendo. There's a huge difference between designing airplanes and designing video game hardware, but there are also some common areas. Both involved coordinating with other groups, as well as creating and maintaining a schedule. And both involved electronic components and circuits, so my college and work experience helped out in that respect.
After passing several interviews, I was offered the position. I knew that I'd made the right decision to work for Nintendo when my boss gave me a Super NES system to take home and practice with. The Super NES wouldn't be released to the public for another couple of weeks, so I felt like I had made it to the inner circle!
Did you have any interest in working in this field before you got into it?
I was definitely into video gaming culture at the time. But I didn't think I would ever have an opportunity to work in the video game field. Most jobs in the game industry are for programmers or artists, and I didn't have any experience in either area. Also, games were primarily created in California, so living in Washington State pretty much limited my chances. Since Nintendo is based in Redmond, Washington, it turned out that I was living about 15 miles away from a major video game company.
Did you find it interesting or engaging or fun immediately or did that grow over time?
It was definitely interesting from the beginning. One of my first projects was Demovision, which was used in retail stores to show Game Boy games on a television set. I remember going to the local electronics store with my friend and showing them what I had been working on. That was a nice feeling.
And of course, my coworkers and I would end up playing games after work. We played mostly the latest video games like Mario Kart for SNES. We also logged onto our UNIX workstations, and played Aviator, an air combat game, with eight people over the corporate network.
What do you do in your current job?
My job is to make sure that new game developers meet our standards and to act as the point of contact when they have problems. I get a chance to travel to developers throughout the U.S., Canada,
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and Europe and to learn about their companies, skills, and interests. I also attend E3 every year for Nintendo. This is the largest convention for the video game industry, usually held in Los Angeles. It is where all of the game companies show off the latest games they will be releasing that year. I usually attend a lot of meetings during the show, but always reserve some time to walk around the show floor to try out the latest games before they're released to the public.
Are there a lot of openings these days for people interested in working in video gaming?
I think there are many more openings now than there were when I first started... Entry-level positions in the game industry are typically for game testing. You end up playing the same games over and over, for about a year, but you learn what makes a good game. Companies often promote their best testers to assistant positions in other areas, such as design or production.
What types of jobs are available for young people who might want to work in video gaming?
Most companies don't hire anyone under 18. That doesn't mean you can't work on your own PC game in your spare time. Many aspiring programmers can start out by building mods for Quake 3 or Half-Life 2. You also could create your own web site focused on reviewing popular games. Either of these ways can help you learn what it takes to make a game and decide if it's really something that you want to focus on after high school.
What are the latest developments in video gaming and what might we expect in the near future?
The Nintendo DS will have games that support multiplayer games over the internet via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. It's free, and you'll be able to play Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and Tony Hawk with players in the U. S., Canada, and Europe.
The Nintendo Revolution will be a "virtual console," because it will allow you to download games from other Nintendo platforms like the NES, Super NES, and Nintendo 64. It also plays Nintendo GameCube games.
Were you a tech-oriented person in high school?
I was a tech-oriented person in high school. I was in AP Math, Chemistry, Physics, and English. I also took several courses in Electronics, which taught me how stereos, televisions, and electronics components worked. This is when I got interested in studying electrical engineering in college. Electrical engineering is probably one of the more difficult degrees in college, but I think it was well worth it, and I've never regretted my choice.
When I was growing up, there weren't any computer programming courses available. I mainly had to learn on the job and by studying books. I would definitely recommend any programming courses offered at your high school, just to get your feet wet.
What do you do for fun outside work?
I still find time to play some video games outside of work. Mostly during my commute to work, so it's limited to my Game Boy Advance and my Nintendo DS. I really love the game Advance Wars: Dual Strike. It's a great strategy game.
I also love long distance running. I've run in two marathons and probably a dozen half marathons (13.1 miles). I usually take my MP3 player with me and run on the roads near my home.
I have a 13-month-old daughter. She keeps me pretty busy too.
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Major companies and industry organizations:
Entertainment Software Association www.theesa.com: The ESA is the U.S. association exclusively dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of companies that publish video and computer games for video game consoles, personal computers, and the Internet.
Electronic Arts: www.ea.com
Microsoft Corp.: www.microsoft.com
Atari: www.buenavistagames.go.com
Midway Games: www.midway.com
Nintendo of America Inc.: www.nintendo.com
SEGA of America: www.sega.com
Sony Computer Entertainment America: www.usplaystation.com
Vivendi Universal Games: www.vivendiuniversal.com
E3 Expo: www.e3expo.com The Electronic Entertainment Expo is the world's largest trade event exclusively dedicated to showcasing interactive entertainment and educational software and related products
International Game Developers Association: www.igda.org IGDA is a non-profit membership organization that advocates globally on issues related to digital game creation.
DFC Intelligence www.dfcint.com A strategic market research and consulting firm focused on interactive entertainment and the emerging video game, online game, interactive entertainment and interactive television (ITV) markets.
Gaming news, reviews, discussion sites:
www.gamespot.com Offers access to game reviews, news stories on games, previews of upcoming games, downloads, guides, cheats, and hints for gamers.
www.mpog.com A news, downloading, discussion, and review site for massive multi player online role playing games.
www.gamediscovery.com/development/
www.gignews.com/index.html Gig News
Happy Puppy www.happypuppy.com Games to download, cheats for how to succeed at games, movies related to gaming.
The code for Pong can be found here
Publications
Official Xbox magazine
Nintendo Power
Official Playstation magazine
GamePro
IGN
GameFAQs
Schools
Digipen (www.digipen.edu) - An educational institution that offers a Bachelor of Science Degree program in game development. Students not only learn the skills for making games and animations, but they also learn how to perform in teams, design complete projects, and produce on a schedule.
Full Sail Real World Education (www.fullsail.com) - A media arts college that features degrees for creative minds in Computer Animation, Digital Arts & Design, Entertainment Business, Film, Game Design & Development, Recording Arts and Show Production & Touring.
Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (www.etc.cmu.edu) - Offers a two-year Masters of Entertainment Technology degree, jointly conferred by Carnegie Mellon University's College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science. Carnegie Mellon is relatively unique among U.S. universities in being able to offer this kind of degree, as it offers top-quality fine arts and top-quality technology programs.
USC Interactive Media program (Website) - The USC Master's Degree in interactive media features an intensive 3-year program designed to prepare students for creative careers in the emerging field of interactive entertainment.
Gaming Glossary
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Algorithm: A formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem or accomplishing some end. The set of steps must be unambiguous, are often repeatable, and have a clear stopping point.
Animation: A simulation of continuous movement created by displaying a series of graphics or pictures. Animation on computers is one of the main elements of multimedia presentations.
Artificial intelligence: (AI) Computer science that is concerned with designing systems that exhibit the abilities and behaviors associated with human intelligence, such as understanding language, learning, reasoning, and solving problems.
Chip: (or microchip) A small piece of material, usually silicon, on which a circuit is chemically printed or etched. Chips today can contain millions of electronic components. Computers consist of many chips placed on circuit boards.
Circuit: The complete path of an electric current, including its source.
Console: A device made for playing video games that generally allows the player to interact with the game through a controller such as a handheld control box with buttons or a joystick.
Hertz: A unit of frequency of electricity vibrations equal to one cycle per second. One million cycles per second is a MegaHertz (MHz) and one billion cycles per second is a GigaHertz (GHz). The speed of microprocessors, sometimes referred to as clock speed, is often measured in GigaHertz. Each computer instruction requires a fixed number of cycles, so the clock speed of a microprocessor determines how many instructions per second that it can carry out.
Graphics card: A circuit board that plugs into a personal computer or console to handle graphics computations and enables graphics capabilities.
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Hardware: Computer components that you can touch, such as circuit boards, chips, disk drives, monitors and display screens, keyboards, and printers.
Interactive: Capable of accepting input from a human, such as data or commands, in real-time.
MMORPGs: Acronym for massively multi-player online role-playing games.
Mainframe computer: A very large computer that can allow hundreds or thousands of people to use it simultaneously for different tasks or programs.
Microprocessor: (or processor) A silicon chip that serves as the brains of a computer by controlling its central logic and carrying out instructions.
Parallel processing: The use of more than one computer at a time to execute a single program or solve a single problem. Parallel processing allows programs to run faster because there are more computers working on pieces of it at once.
Polygon: Two-dimensional, straight-lined figures such as triangles, quadrilaterals, and pentagons.
RAM: Acronym for random access memory, a type of computer memory that can be accessed without touching the adjacent storage units.
Rendering: Making computer graphics look more real by adding shading and color variations that yield three-dimensional qualities.
Software: Electronically stored instructions that allow a computer to execute tasks.
Transistor: A device made of semiconductor material that amplifies an electric signal or opens or closes a circuit. Transistors, which you can think of as a switch, are the key ingredients of all digital devices and components, including chips or microprocessors, and computers.
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