Top 10 Most Influential Things to happen to the Video Game Industry

There are a lot of things within the Video Game Industry that we take for granted. Whether you like to sit on your couch with a controller playing your Xbox 360, or sitting in a leather computer chair microing your units with a mouse and keyboard, have you ever wondered how we got here? This is the Top 10 Most Influential Things to happen to the Video Game Industry. This is not just limited to games, but covers technology related to gaming, events, business practices of game developers, gaming culture, and everything else that influenced the entire industry.

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10. Bawls

"Grab your Bawls, and Run Like Hell!" This was the first energy drink marketed towards gamers. You couldn't find this drink in just any store. You have to do to your local Compucentre or any other computer store to buy them. It cost $2.25 per bottle and were also sold in cases of 12 and 24. It kept you up all night for those long sessions of Quake 3 Arena, Starcraft, and Counter-Strike. Eventually more caffeinated products were introduced such as mints, chocolate-coated coffee beans, and even Mountain Dew Game Fuel to promote Halo 3. You'll be wide awake even after 24 hours of gaming, but you're body aches. =\

How it influenced the industry: Drinks with more caffeine than Coke or Pepsi allowed players to game longer. Really, who drinks coffee while gaming?

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9. Arcades/Gaming Centers

While not the most economical way to spend your money for gaming, it was the cheapest. Drop in 25 cents or $1 and you're good to go for a few minutes of gameplay. There's a wide selection of games to choose from: Fighting games, light gun games, racing games, etc. It also had the social aspect of gaming because you can interact with other gamers as well. In recent years, arcades have been on the decline with arcade machines being replaced or mixed with high-end computers networked together, as well as game consoles on huge 1080p LCD TVs. These "Gaming Centers" retain this same concept, charging a few dollars for a hour of game time.

How it influenced the industry: Arcades and Gaming Centers promote the social aspect of gaming. Play games when you're out with your friends and have a great time!

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8. LAN Parties

Events were you Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) are popular amongst PC gamers, where hundreds (even thousands) setup their computer on a high-speed network in a large building such a conference center and playing games with each other with a 5 millisecond ping time for several days straight. These LAN parties are usually sponsored by companies like Intel, NVidia, Corsair, Razer, and others, supplying equipment for the event and providing prizes exceeding thousands of dollars for tournaments and random draws. Instead of talking trash to your opponents through your microphone or typing words, walk a few meters over to them and point and laugh at them. Careful not to get your ass kicked though.

How it influenced the industry: Companies can promote their gaming products while gamers can enjoy lag-free multiplayer games with enough players to fill the server.

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7. Shareware/Demos

Who could resist playing free games? This is why the Shareware Distribution Model was successful. Instead of shelling out $60 for a game and then finding out if you like it or not, you could obtain a limited, free portion of the game and see if it's to your liking. This meant that developers didn't need to spend much money on advertising, but they had to rely solely on the quality of their game in order to profit from it (which is how it should be). This is how companies like id Software and Epic Megagames (now known as Epic Games) got their start with little money in their pocket.

How it influenced the industry: It brought the "Try before you buy" concept to the Video Game Industry, and allowed people to startup game development studios with little expense. It also allowed companies to show off their product before the game is complete.

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6. e-Sports

This is not just for hardcore gamers. This is where players compete in their favorite games professionally. Major League Gaming (MLG) and the World Cyber Games (WCG) are just two example of leagues where teams compete for huge amounts of cash in games like Starcraft, Halo, and Counter-Strike. Professional teams are usually sponsored by a company such as Intel or Razer, and are promoted by having players wear paraphernalia with the company's logo on it during matches. In countries like South Korea and Germany, these games are televised on national TV.

How it influenced the industry: It's like watching ESPN, except you're watching people play video games. 'Nuff said.

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5. NES

The Video Game Market Crash of the early 80s was a grim time for developers and gamers alike in North America. A huge stockpile of consoles and poor-quality games for them meant no one wanted to waste money on them. The industry on the continent was revived with the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Not only did it have huge third-party support, but Nintendo also produced their own games such as Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda. By taking measures to ensure the quality of each game produced for the console, this provided their customers a basic level of assurance they need for them to be confident in their new investment. Fortunately, video games were going strong for both Europe and Asia and were unaffected by the market crash in North America. The NES was also the last great console to be unaffected by PC gaming.

How it influenced the industry: Even though the NES didn't save video gaming which is the popular belief, millions of us wouldn't be gaming today if it wasn't for the NES. It introduced a layer of quality-control for third-party games and gave North America a strong customer base for future games to come.

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4. Doom

John Carmack is a genius. While you kids were playing your kiddie games on the SNES and Genesis, some of us were blasting demons away with big guns in the depths of hell. Doom was the most innovative game of the time, having the most realistic graphics, the most violence and gore (Mortal Kombat being 2nd IMO), and even had network multiplayer for up to 4 players. The game was considered unproductive in the office environment because the staff would end up playing Doom deathmatch instead of "doing their job". Several games based on the Doom engine that were made were called "Doom-clones". Eventually, enough of these games were made along with the release of Quake and games based on that engine that people started referring to them using the broader term "first-person shooters". Console gamers also got their first taste of these games from ports of PC games. After a few years, John Carmack released the source code for Doom which led to the development of an enhanced version of the game by the community which added visuals comparable to that of modern games, such as transparency, texture filtering, anti-aliasing, the ability to look up and down, etc.

How it influenced the industry: Further popularized the concept of "first-person shooters", and raised the bar for visual quality of video games. The release of the source code into the public domain had an impact within the open source community.

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3. Game Mods

A game mod is something that changes a game into something it's not, effectively turning it into a relatively different game. Quake had several mods such as Threewave CTF which standardized the Capture The Flag game mode in every modern first-person shooter out there, and Team Fortress which was remade for Half-Life and eventually spawned the commercial remake "Team Fortress 2". Heck, even Quake Team Fortress had it's own mods called "Deadlode TF" and "Mega TF" which changes the weapons and abilities of each class. Game mods extended the life of many PC games by double, triple, or even quadruple its shelf life.

How it influenced the industry: It is the most cost-effective way for game companies to extend the commercial lifespan of their products, and players gain more game content for free. It really stretches that $50 above and beyond its worth. Companies these days try to make their games as "modable" as possible. In some cases, mods are remade into commercial games.

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2. 3D Hardware Acceleration

You know it, I know it, and your parents know it if they work in the industry. Hardware acceleration offloads graphics-related calculations from the CPU to a separate processor and memory dedicated to it. This means you can get better graphics and higher framerates. Back then, graphics were pixelated to keep video requirements to a minimum. 3D acceleration was first used in arcades machines due to it's high cost. Eventually the cost of producing video cards for the consumer market became feasible, and we began to see games coming with the option to use hardware acceleration in the form of OpenGL and Direct3D. Once the new millennium began, hardware acceleration became a requirement. ATi and NVidia chipsets began appearing on consoles beginning with the 6th generation. And with the beautiful scenes we see in today's games, we absolutely need it in order to play these games at a playable framerate. After all, it is a fact that you play better at a smooth 60fps than a slow 10fps.

How it influenced the industry: It gave games better graphics, higher framerates, and an overall more immersive experience. All games made within the past decade use hardware acceleration.

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And finally, the #1 Most Influential Thing to happen to the Video Game Industry...

1. Online Multiplayer

Back in 1996, we were introduced to Quakeworld and QuakeSpy. Quakeworld is a multiplayer-only client for Quake with improves playability over the internet with features like "Player Prediction". Using an application called QuakeSpy (later evolved into GameSpy), players could easily locate servers to play on that supported up to 32 players. That's right. 32-player deathmatches! Some modern console games don't even support that many players! And even with the games like Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 (good game btw) that supports up to 4 players, all 4 players must be present at the console and TV to play, not to mention all players can see where each other is by looking at another player's portion of the screen. When you start QuakeSpy, you're guaranteed to find a server with people to play with because while players from North America are sleeping, Europe is gaming. The communication medium known as the Internet not only made multiplayer gaming more accessible, it was profitable for the companies.

Quake was free to play online. Before that, there were games that could only be played on a network. These games could be played online through network emulation using subscription-based applications such as TEN and Dwango. These cost money to play. However, it was not Quake that undermined this business model. Blizzard Entertainment released Diablo in 1997 stating that offering online multiplayer capabilities for free will boost game sales. PC game publishers started following this. Multiplayer games could be played for free online, and subscription-based online gaming because a thing of the past... only to be revived by Microsoft and its XBox Live service. Seriously, how did this happen?
As more online capable games were being released for the PC, console developers realized that the ability to play games over the internet was a solid investment to make. Starting with Dreamcast, console gamers got their first taste of online gameplay. By the time the 7th generation consoles were made, it was expected for consoles to be able to connect to the internet with a vast library of games having the ability to be played online.

There was also the introduction of Ultima Online, which popularized MMORPGs back in 1997. Although it uses a subscription-based business model, the reason behind it is to be able to maintain the game servers. Unlike games like Quake, Ultima Online has its own proprietary servers that the companies maintain to create the effect that there is only one world to play in, and everyone who plays will be in it. There are also admins hired to patrol the game and resolve disputes amongst players and enforce the rules and terms of service. This offered a completely different experience than that of first-person shooters where the worlds reset when a map changes or when you move to a different server.

How it influenced the industry: It introduced support for a large number of players playing simultaneously, and allowed players to interact and play with each other from as far as half a world away. With games capable of being played online, you can always find a human being to play with at anytime.

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It might seem like this list is biased, favoring PC gaming heavily overall. The reason for this is because a lot of the awesome things you see on consoles are being taken from features that were first introduced to PC gaming and then made available to consoles later on, but not the other way around. This Top 10 reflects everything (games, technologies, events, business practices, culture, etc.) that has influenced not just a single niche, but the entire Video Game Industry as a whole. Whether you're a casual gamer, enthusiast gamer, hardcore gamer, or professional gamer, you are affected by almost all of these (if not all).