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A personal computer game is a form of interactive multimedia used for entertainment played on a personal computer. Presently, the term more accurately encompasses games that run on general purpose computers, including certain earlier home computers models, which are capable of operating other applications besides computer games.

Like console games, personal computer games primarily require processing devices contained in a computer case, a display device in the form of a computer display, and input devices in the form of a keyboard and mouse by default to function. However, such hardware may currently be obtained as a set, along with additional audio devices, graphics processing units, and network devices. The modularity of most personal computers also allows for easy hardware upgrades.

Personal computer game are usually distributed using standard storage units for personal computers, such as compact discs and most recently, DVDs. Floppy disks have also been widely used in the past, and certain games are also distributed via the Internet through services such as Direct2Drive or from developers' websites.

History

The history of computer games has not received much attention from researchers. Although one might expect a consensus on such a 'young' research area, many details are more than cloudy. Which game, for example, was the first?

The usual answer is Spacewar!. In the 1960s computers were a luxury for the few. The machines were enormous and usually exclusive to research institutions or the military. In 1961, MIT students Martin "Shag" Graetz and Alan Kotok, with MIT employee Stephen "Slug" Russell, used a computer for statistical calculations for employees at the university. However, he and his friends had another interest; they were devoted fans of Edvard E. Smith's science-fiction saga Skylark. With this saga fresh in memory they constructed Spacewar!.

The first generation of games lacked the polish and AI seen in modern video games. They were often text games where the player communicates with the computer by typing the direction in which to move. Others were a hybrid of text and static graphics, as seen in the SSI Gold Box games like the original Pool of Radiance, or in the original Bard's Tale. One major genre of the 70s and 80s was the text adventure, or interactive fiction. The first text-adventure, Adventure (Crowther and Woods 1976) was created 15 years after Spacewar!, for the PDP-11; during the late 70s scaled-down text adventures would be created by Scott Adams and others, for personal computers of the day. In the 80s, personal computers became powerful enough to run even full versions of Adventure and some of its imitators. By the late 1980s, text adventures had been mostly supplanted by graphical adventures modeled after Sierra's King's Quest.

With the arrival of the mouse, textual interaction was gradually replaced by graphical interfaces. In the 1980s, strategy games gained popularity in the wake of successes such as Sid Meier's Pirates! (MicroProse, 1987) and SimCity (Maxis, 1987).

Some of the more graphically intensive computer games were based on the IBM PS/2 Model 30 - with a 20 megabyte hard drive and 256 color MCGA graphics. Many of today's popular games originated on the Commodore Amiga computer platform, since it had the most advanced colour graphic and animation capabilities at the time of its introduction in 1985.

With advances in technology other game types were developed as computers became powerful enough to control and render more moving objects. These included flight simulators (Comanche, Microsoft Flight Simulator series), Microsoft Games' Mechwarrior series, and strategy games (Command & Conquer, StarCraft, Warcraft). Around the same time, 16-bit systems were largely unable to create 3D texture maps. However, systems did have enough power to use simple flat-shaded polygon environments, often a selling point in flight simulators and racing games of the time.

In the early 1990s third-party developers Apogee Software, created shareware demos of games that allowed people to play the first section of the game for free but required payment to play the rest. These have since been replaced by free downloadable demos of games, or demos that come with gaming magazines.

The FPS genre was created with the release of Wolfenstein 3D (id Software, 1992) and remains one of the highest-selling genres today.

While leading Sega and Nintendo console systems kept their CPU speed at 3-7 MHz, the 486 PC processor ran at a much faster 66 MHz allowing it to perform many more calculations per second. 1993's 3D first-person shooter Doom was a breakthrough in graphics and design, while gaming consoles were still limited to 2D side-scrollers like Nintendo's Mario series. As technology grew more sophisticated, dedicated games consoles caught up with the advances made by personal computers, paving the way for third-party developers to share game franchises like MDK between the different platforms,

Many early PC games included extras such as the peril-sensitive sunglasses that shipped with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. By the mid-1990s these extras had been dropped, but many games were still sold in the traditional over-sized boxes that used to hold the extra "feelies".

The added competition from console games and the early 2000s explosion in computer game development was the trigger to redesign this packaging and by 2001 PC games were almost exclusively sold in smaller DVD-sized game boxes.

PC game development

Game engines

The term "game engine" arose in the mid-1990s, especially in connection with 3D games such as first-person shooters (FPS). Such was the popularity of id Software's Doom and Quake games that rather than work from scratch, other developers licensed the core portions of the software and designed their own graphics, characters, weapons and levels — the "game content" or "game assets."

Later games, such as Quake III Arena and Epic Games's 1998 Unreal were designed with this approach in mind, with the engine and content developed separately. The licensing of such technology has proved to be a useful auxiliary revenue stream for some game developers, as a single license for a high-end commercial game engine can range from US$10,000 to $750,000 and the number of licensees reaching several tens of companies (for the Unreal engine). At the very least, reusable engines make developing game sequels much easier and faster, a valuable advantage in the competitive computer game industry.

Notable developers

Developers of PC Games can be split into two distinct groups, Development Teams or Studios and the individual Programmers of those teams. Listed below are a number of influentual or notable developers of PC Games.

Development groups/companies:

Programmers:

  • John Carmack - Employed by id Software, worked on all id Software PC games.
  • Richard Garriott - Founder of Origin.
  • John Romero - Has been employed by id Software (working on early games for the Quake and Doom series), Ion Storm whilst creating Daikatana, and recently Midway Games.
  • Gabe Newell - Lead programmer for Valve software.
  • Sid Meier - Has been employed by Microprose and worked on many of their games, has since founded Firaxis and further developed sequals to earlier series.
  • Will Wright - Lead programmer for Maxis, and concept designer of SimCity and The Sims.
  • Peter Molyneux - Lead developer for Lionhead Studios, and previously Bullfrog Productions.
  • Tim Sweeney - Developer for Epic Games, built the Unreal engine.

Distribution media and marketing

Traditional distribution

Typically, computer games are distributed to local retailers on standard storage media, such as compact discs and floppy disks, although some games also installed portions of data files on the owner's hard disk to reduce processing times. As such, computer games may run from an inserted removal media, the hard disk of a computer, or both.

Different formats of floppy disks were initially the staple storage media of the 1980s and early 1990s, but have largely fallen back in practical use as the increasing sophistication of computer games raised the overall size of the game's data and program files.

Compact discs have largely replaced the role of floppy disks, storing roughly 600 to 700 megabytes of data per disk. This capacity was sufficient for most computer games released during the 1990s, although a handful of such games required multiple CDs, such as the two CD Command & Conquer set, which contained missions and video cut-scenes for one of the two warring factions in each of the CDs.

The introduction of complex graphics engines in recent times has resulted in additional storage requirements for modern games, and thus an increasing interest in DVDs as the next compact storage media for personal computer games. The rising popularity of DVD drives in modern computers, and the relatively large capacity of the new media (a single-layer DVD can hold up to 4.7 gigabytes of uncompressed data, or more than five times as much as a single CD), have resulted in their general adoption as the standard format for computer game distribution. To date, CD versions are still offered for certain games.

Shareware

Shareware marketing, whereby a limited or demonstration version of the full game is released to prospective buyers without charge, has been used as a method of distributing computer games since the early years of the gaming industry. Shareware games generally offer only a small part of the gameplay offered in the retail product, and may be distributed with gaming magazines, in retail stores or on developers' websites.

In the early 1990s, shareware distribution was common among fledging game companies such as Apogee Software, Epic Megagames and id Software, and remains a popular distribution method among smaller game developers. However, shareware has largely fallen out of favor among established game companies due to its risky nature and traditionally low margins, with some notable exceptions such as PopCap Games continuing to use the model today.

Web-based delivery

With the rapidly increasing popularity of the Internet, online distribution of game content has found considerable use among developers. Most web-based games were initially limited to simple, low-bandwidth content in the form of graphically-sparse HTML and JavaScript pages. These websites, such as 2025 in 1996, did not require expensive high-speed connections, and so were accessible by the majority of internet users. Over time, emerging technologies such as Macromedia Flash, combined with the falling cost of faster internet connections allowed websites such as Neopets to increase their use of graphics.

With the advent of fast internet connections, web-based delivery found increasing use as a distribution medium for large computer games that could be stored on the player's computer. Services such as Direct2Drive and Download.com allow users to download large games that would otherwise only be distributed on physical media, such as DVDs, as well as cheap distribution of shareware and demonstration games.

Service-based delivery platform

GameTap

GameTap is a subscription-based video game service by Turner Broadcasting System (TBS). Dubbed by TBS as a "broadband entertainment network", the service provides subscribers with the ability to play hundreds of classic arcade and computer and video games for a single, flat monthly fee. Subscribers can play as many games as they like without it affecting their fee.

Steam

Steam is a online content delivery, digital rights management and multiplayer services developed by Valve Corporation. The content delivery component of the system provides downloads of games and expansion packs to users' hard disks, including a pre-load feature to allow users to purchase and install locked game content prior to its retail release date, but only unlocking the game after this date. The success of the system has led to speculation that Seventh generation video game consoles may implement a Steam-like system for online content delivery.

Piracy and warez

Software piracy has come to include the distribution and sale of computer games that are copied on to CD-Rs or DVD-Rs. The lack of enforcement on such storage media has resulted in common "ripping", or duplication, of original games; while hacking tools, widely available on the Internet, has aided in the creation of codes bypassing copy-protection. This has threatened legitimate sales, while creating flourishing businesses in parts of the world that cater to the production and distribution of illegally copied and distributed software and games, usually done for profitable ends.

Other ways of hacking usually requires less effort in hacking the code by obtaining it through other users in IRC channels, and open networks like Kazaa. Unauthorized distribution of copyright software is generally considered illegal, but when it is given away for free use it is not. Pirated software has disabled features in games such as online play because hacked code is not of the original, and has largely prevented users of pirated games from fully utilizing the game's multiplayer.

Emulators

Emulators are software based content from the internet for PC and Console gameplay. They mostly consist of old school videogames, or of old arcade games from systems and arcades that are no longer playable. Because of its hard accessibility and its distribution of copyright material, emulators are mostly pirated or for private nostalgia.

Expansion packs

Expansion packs are add-ons to an existing game. Expansion packs generally add new content like: units, missions, maps, and/or areas. Since they are just designed to add new content to a game, the original game is needed in order to utilize an expansion pack.

Popular and notable genres of PC gaming

Personal computers, due mostly to input available from the keyboard, mouse, and third-party joystick peripherals, have been the home of genres that have never proved popular on video game consoles. The PC, due to its relative advanced hardware compared to video game consoles, has seen the development of new genres of gaming not possible on other systems at the time. The most notable example of this is the first-person shooter. Some games, such as SimCity and Wing Commander have been ported to console, but to less success. The genres that are popular today are in stark contrast from the games that were popular throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Adventure games and turn-based games used to be very popular, but have been since usurped by games that focus more on reflex as opposed to critical thinking.

  • Action Shooter:
Notable examples: Wolfenstein 3D, Descent, System Shock, Doom, Half-Life
  • Squad-based Shooter:
Notable examples: Delta Force, Ghost Recon, America's Army
  • Tactical Shooter:
Notable examples: I'm Going In, Splinter Cell, Raven Shield

Notable examples: Dune II, StarCraft, Age of Empires
Notable examples: Civilization, Worms, Heroes of Might and Magic
Notable examples: SimCity, Populous, The Sims, Black & White, ''Spore

Notable examples: Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, EVE Online
Notable examples: World War II Online, PlanetSide

Notable examples: Football Manager, Championship Manager, Total Club Manager, Out of the Park Baseball

  • Military tactical strategy/simulator:
Notable examples: Harpoon, 688 Attack Sub, Steel Panthers
  • Business simulators:
Notable examples: Railroad Tycoon, Theme Park
Notable examples: Falcon 4.0, Microsoft Train Simulator, Live for Speed

Notable examples: Microsoft Solitaire, Battle Chess, Nibbles, Bejeweled

Notable examples: Zork, NetHack, Legend of the Red Dragon

Notable examples: King's Quest, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Bioforge

Notable examples: Wasteland, Ultima VI: The False Prophet, Fallout, Dungeon Siege
Notable examples: Diablo, Dungeon Siege

Characteristics unique to PC gaming

Moddability and user-created content

Main article: Mod (computer gaming)
Computer games have a large and active following of mod communities. This may be attributed to easier access to the games' coding and perimeters using editing tools, courtesy of the personal computer's capability to run non-gaming programs. Also, easier access to the Internet using a personal computer may help make games modding and mods more accessible to common computer gamers.

Modding had allowed much of the community to produce game elements that would not normally be provided by the developer of the game. This may include objectionable contents that are related to sex and violence.

In the case of the PC port of San Andreas, a third party modification was found to enable a disabled sex mini game abandoned by the developers of the game. While it was also revealed that the mini game was unlockable using third-party tools in the console port of the game, the availability of the mod through the Internet may had helped garnered more publicity and controversy, and forced the game to be re-rated, recalled, and criticized by computer and video game critics such as attorney Jack Thompson.

Online gaming

As personal computers pioneered the concepts of multiplayer gaming, and especially online gaming, it is logical for this platform to see a deeper extent of online gaming than its console bretheren. PC games support many more players, on average, than the equivalent console game. Battlefield 2, for example, supports up to 64 players in its PC incarnation, but only 24 players in its console version, Modern Combat. In fact, QuakeWorld, which premiered in 1997, allowed 64 players at a time when console didn't even have internet gaming capabilities. MMORPGs on the PC platform allow for hundreds of simultaneous participants in any given area, with thousands of players across the game world. This ability for more participants is not due to bandwidth, but do to superior processing and storage capabilities compared to video game consoles.

Preferences

PCs are popular for console emulation play and for setting up as game systems. The variety of third party controllers and adapters, like the Gravis gamepad, Microsoft Sidewinder and flightsticks show the superior feel for comfortable controls. Recent graphics cards such as Geforces and Radeons can hook up DVI inputs to high-definition television for superior gaming via a larger screen area and sometimes higher resolutions in the living room as well. While game systems have come close to having the ability of playing games on a monitor, keyboard and mouse (see Sega Dreamcast), they have not been able to emulate the feel of gaming in both the living room and office environment.

Computer gaming hardware

Hardware

Most setups will include a keyboard and mouse. Other common gaming peripherals are headset and microphone for faster communication with teammates or opponents in online games, joysticks for flight simulators and steering wheels for driving games.

PC games have to deal with the constantly improving PC hardware market that makes it potentially confusing for game buyers to tell if a new game is compatible with their machine. New CPUs and graphics cards are coming out all the time and many games have a minimum hardware requirement, with successive new releases often requiring newer and faster processors or graphics cards. Unlike consoles, a 3-year-old PC will not be able to run the latest games. Unfortunately, many PC owners buy pre-packaged PCs and simply don't know the speed of their computer's processor or graphics card. Even if they do, the complexities of trying to deal with all the possible configurations of graphics card, processor, motherboard and RAM can lead to PC games being much more buggy than their console counterparts.

Operating systems

At present, computer games commonly require a specific operating system such as Microsoft Windows to function. Mac and Linux operating systems have significantly less support than Windows among the big game developers but compatible versions of popular games are becoming more commonplace. As of 2005, very few companies publish or port titles to the Mac OS; the most notable publisher is Blizzard Entertainment. The Macintosh has seen some notable titles being its exclusive domain, most notably the Marathon series developed by Bungie (of Halo fame). Even with more titles being made for the Apple platform, it typically takes over a year for the titles to reach the system. Even fewer companies publish Linux versions; iD Software and Epic Megagames are the only major commercial game developers to make available Linux versions of their titles.

Installing and running computer games has become much easier with recent operating systems. Many gamers remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s, having to utilize boot disks in order to free up enough RAM to get the games to run. Moreover, specific hardware drivers, presently, with the advanced hardware architecture of modern operating systems combined with graphical platforms like DirectX have made computer games much easier to configure and run properly on a multitude of hardware.

Many older games of the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s became incompatible with Windows 2000 and Windows XP, even when utilizing the built-in backwards compatibility modes. This is due to the internal structure of the operating systems being changed from where hardware could be directly accessed, to where it has to go through the hardware abstraction layer. Recently, a freeware DOS emulator entitled DOSBox has allowed many of these previously incompatible titles to yet work again. DOSBox is also compatible on Linux, opening up a wealth of software titles which were previously unavailable. In 2004, a commercial product entitled WineX was launched which allows many modern games to run on Linux, even though they are designed for the Windows platform.

Multiplayer

Support for networked multiplayer through Internet or LAN connections has become a requirement for many genres, like first person shooters, real-time strategy and racing games. The Internet has also allowed the creation of massively multiplayer online games supporting hundreds to thousands of simultaneous players.

Cultural impact

Controversy surrounding PC-games

As long as PC-games (and any other videogames) exist, there has been debate about the influence of violence in video games on the person who plays the game. This is debate especially concerned with the influence on (younger) kids. In short, the debate goes between two groups. Firstly, parents and guardians who put the responsibility with developers, pointing out that games have become more and more violent and gory over the years. Secondly, some people prefer to defend the artistic freedom of developers, and put the responsibility with parents and guardians, saying that they should keep an eye on their kids to prevent them from playing games they are too young for.

Recently, another cultural aspect of video gaming has hit the media, namely video game addiction. Video game addiction can have several negative effects, such as a negative influence on health and on social relations. Moreover, lately some deaths have been reported as a result of people playing video games for extremely long periods at a time. The problem of addiction and it's health risks seems to have grown with the recent rise of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG's).

For more information about the violence debate and video game addiction see the article about video game controversy in general (so including video games on other platforms than the PC).

Japan

Many Japanese gamers view personal computers as a business tool, and that games are best played on dedicated hardware. However, some genres like bishōjo games are popular. The MSX Computer series also impacted the future of games for computers and consoles alike.

UK and US

Gamers in the UK and US have embraced PC games from their inception and most PC games are developed in these countries. Among hardcore gamers there has traditionally been a subset of this group who will spend tremendous amount of money upgrading their PCs several times a year, just to keep up to date with the latest technological developments in gaming.

Most Western gamers play PC games over the Internet in the comfort of their own homes or bring their own PCs to designated places (e.g. someone's home, or a commercial venue) to play against each other in a Local Area Network. These gatherings are known as LAN parties and have the benefit of much faster connection and response times than playing over the Internet, as well as feeling much more social.

Southeast Asia

LAN parties are less common in Southeast Asia, with the majority of competitive PC gaming going on in LAN gaming centres, particularly in Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea. These are much more prevalent than in the western countries and can sometimes occupy an entire floor of a shopping centre. They allow gamers to play competitively without the technical knowledge required to set up the LAN as well as providing access to Internet games. This can allow gamers in MMORPGs or team FPS matches to coordinate much more effectively than if they were communicating through headsets. They avoid potentially crippling communication problems such as lag.

Screenshots

Image:Zork screenshot.png|Zork I
(pictured running on a modern emulator)
Infocom (1980) Image:BBC Micro Elite screenshot.png|Elite
David Braben and Ian Bell (1984) Image:Minesweeper end.PNG|Minesweeper
Robert Donner (1989) Image:The Secret of Monkey Island.PNG|Secret of Monkey Island
LucasArts(1990) Image:Stunts jump.png|Stunts
Brøderbund (1990) Image:Dune 2 screenshot attack on base.jpg|Dune II
Westwood (1992) Image:Doom ingame 2.png|Doom
id Software (1993) Image:UO LB assasination.jpg|Ultima Online
Origin Systems (1997) Image:GTA1 PC in-game screenshot.png|Grand Theft Auto
DMA Design (1997) Image:TheSims.jpg|The Sims
Maxis (2000) Image:Microsoft-flight-sim-2005-boeing-737.PNG|Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004
Microsoft (2003) Image:Civilization4ss.jpg|Civilization IV
Firaxis Games (2005) >

See also

External links

Computer and video games

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Personal computer game".

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