[game_preservation] Generations standards?

[Devin Monnens]

Personally, I think the 'generations' term is a bit overused and isn't
really very meaningful (to the average person) when we talk about anything
older than about 10 years. Generation is also used when discussing cell
phones (2G vs 3G), so I am a bit curious as to how and where this
terminology arose. 'Current Gen' 'Last Gen' and 'Next Gen' is used rather
frequently when talking about games in retail, and this is usually what
people are thinking - anything older than PS2 can really be considered
'classic' at this point, which effectively limits our realm of thinking.

The other reasons have to do with arcade hardware and PC hardware, which
have always been above that of consoles (possible exception being the few
months immediately following the launch of PS3). And of course handhelds,
which are always behind. It's a real pain to understand game history simply
because there are so many different platforms working simultaneously, each
influencing the other. For instance, the C64 and ZX Spectrum aren't
regularly compared with the NES and 7800 despite being contemporaries.
People seem to either talk about consoles or computer games, but not both. I
think there's a paper in covering this split and what kind of influence each
platform really has on the other (I think it's definitely gotten a lot
closer with today's hardware). And I can reinforce this with my research,
but the computer game and the console game are really two separate threads
during the 70s. There were dozens of games written in BASIC (not counting
Spacewar) that were influencing future design before Odyssey and Pong. None
of these (probably because they were text-based) seems to have influenced
Atari.

Still, you give some excellent ways of thinking about game hardware from
this period. There's definitely a split, but as you say, it's not as
dramatic as we like to think. To address some of your issues for definition
(and here I'm not really sure 'generation' is useful), here are some
interesting points:

The Turbografx falls into the same boat as 2. It was advertised as a 16-bit
system, when it just has a 16-bit graphics chip and an 8-bit cpu. I think in
this case, you can take a look at the system as a whole and see how it was
basically designed to compete with both 8 and 16-bit systems (the Famicom as
well as the SNES and Genesis). This comparison of 'next-gen tech' to
'current' or 'last-gen' tech is something important to marketing and I think
also defines how we think of technology (is the iPad right now 'current gen'
or 'next-gen' technology? It's been out less than a month, so can it really
change the way we think about technology?)

Regarding the crash, the April issue of Game Developer has an excellent
overview of this courtesy of David Crane. He doesn't say it out right, but
the crash is an indirect result of the success of Activision and Imagic,
which made millions of dollars as third party companies. This inspired in a
six-month period, no fewer than 30 companies to pop up, none of which had
any idea how to make a game, but who had contracts with their investors to
make games. As a result, dozens of crap games flooded the market. The unsold
games were sent to warehouses where investors bought them up for say $3 a
cartridge and sold them to retailers for $4, saying they could sell them for
$5. The math of 8 $5 cartridges for one $40 cartridge meant that none of the
good games would ever sell until that glut emptied the market. The only guy
who probably made any money off this whole fiasco was the entrepreneur who
bought out the warehouses - everybody else just seems to have been blinded
with the idea that the stuff would sell just because it was a videogame.

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Martin Goldberg <wgungfu at gmail.com> wrote:


> Has the SIG done any work with defining generations standards for

> documentation/archiving use?

>

> A recent discussion/debate I had with a collector had me revisit some

> issues I've had with the 2nd/3rd generation definitions, and

> definitions in general.  The quandary is the different standards

> people use to denote "generations".  Release date, intended

> competitors, generation of technology, or a mixture of all three.

>

> For example, we can look at the consoles from '76-'89 (collectively

> the commonly referred to "second" and "third" generations) in several

> different ways:

>

> 1) Technology.  All are part of the "8-bit era" of technology, and we

> can split that era in to three generations of 8-bit technology: a)

> Fairchild, RCA, 2600, Bally, Odyssey2, and Intellivision  b)

> Colecovision, Atari 5200, Vectrex, Sega SG1000, etc.  c)Atari 7800,

> Famicom/NES, Mark III/Master System.  All three of those represent

> defined leaps in technology directly in response to the previous

> generation's design and market presence.  An issue with this approach

> can be when an "older generation" technology appears during a newer

> generation's market.  Such as a Pong console released in 1982 (which

> there still were), or for example my company's release of the Atari

> Flashback 2/2+ during the current generation.

>

> 2) "Bitness".  Related to method 1, some divide 2nd and 3rd by and

> refer to it as the 3rd generation as the "8-bit era".  This stems from

> the misconception that somehow the earlier generation 8-bit consoles

> must not be 8-bit because of their poorer in comparison graphics

> capabilities.  This leads to issues with a) Are we describing the

> bitness of the CPU or graphics generator?  b) Presentation of

> "bitness" arose more as a marketing tool, and in actuality not all

> components under the hood were in support of that claim.

>

> 3) Market changes.  I.E. Second and Third generation are often defined

> by pre and post crash consoles.  The issues with this are that a) The

> crash was a U.S. phenomenon.  b) It fails to take in to account the

> elements of definition 1, and throws two different 8-bit hardware

> generations in to a single "second generation" while throwing the

> third in to it's own.

>

> 4) Market presence.  When was it on the market and actively being

> sold?  Issues with this can be a) Generations overlap, and more so in

> the case of the 2600 (1977-1991) and the Famicom/NES (1983-2003).  B)

> Consoles being sold at the same time (i.e. "on the market") are not

> always actually intended to be direct competitors.  In modern terms

> such as when the PS2 sales overlap PS3/Xbox360/Wii.  Or for example

> when you have the rebranded 2600 Jr. being sold and marketed at the

> same time as the NES/Master System/7800, but clearly not intended to

> directly compete.

>

> 5) Release date.  This is tied with Market presence.  The problem with

> release date and market presence it that they can also be circular in

> reasoning for a definition.  They rely on the establishment of

> definition of generation to place it within in the first place.

>

>

> I myself have leaned towards a definition combination of 1 and 4,

> being based chiefly on 1.  I.E. what does the technology represent

> generation wise, and who were it's actual intended competitors.  And

> because we're already long established in the media with the current

> generation being Seventh, I've resigned myself to being forced to just

> split the "2nd generation" in to "Early Second" and "Late Second".

>

> Thoughts, revelations, etc.?

>

>

> Marty

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>




-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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