Supposedly serious games (So Hungry & Passage), like Heavy Rain are not mechanical enough to be truly serious. I look at the real origin of serious games (Pac-Man, Space Invaders), and how these evolved into more serious game worlds, which brought with them more serious decisions (currency and risk/reward in The Legend of Zelda). I then look at the current state of serious games, and the excuses developers make when dealing with the prospect of making these games. I finally bring it all back to Dark Days (which i covered elsewhere), in the hope of showing that new kinds of serious games are feasible with current generation technology and non triple A budgets.
The history of first-person perspectives in arcade games, and how the third-person perspective became popular in Japan with the release of Space Invaders, and some reasons why Taito chose to pursue this perspective rather than the one used in their first action flight Sim Interceptor. I then cover the boom of FPS games in Japan, and some possibilities why Japan never embraced the style even after seeing its market potential.
I go through the early split between Action and Adventure games as shown through Kings Quest and Pac-Man, the rise of the action adventure game as seen through Nintendos triple play, and finally the on-going tension in balancing non-linear worlds with the power of action, as shown through the Zelda and Shenmue series.
What are they, and what aren't they? Cinematic techniques and their inherent strengths & limitations in the video game medium.
The mid 90's arcade collapse, why it happened, how it happened, and the main culprits. (ongoing article edit)
