Since its emerge as a genre of science fiction in the 1980s steampunk has transformed into a sub-culture with developing fan communities all around the world. Its distinctive features based on Victorian fashions, recreation of this fashion with modern tools and equipment, and solving modern day’s problems with steam powered, bronze coated unrealistic machinery. (Ferguson 66). Although the elements that created steampunk were mainly based on fashion, Rebecca Onion expanded this idea by claiming most steampunk works based on aestheticism, and a relationship of visuality between retro-Victorian style and contemporary technology (Onion 138). This relationship between style and technology helped creating a unique connection for popular entertainment of today and became intriguing for the generations of modern age. As one of the most popular ways of entertainment, video games were the most suitable choose for answering public demands and steampunk games started to be published by game developers. The children of the modern age showed their interests almost immediately and steampunk themed video games became one of the most loved genre for video game enthusiasts.
Game developers first started to work on steampunk games as early as 1985. The game called The Eidolon were published in December 1985 by Lucasfilm Games. As a prototype it did not provide fully created steampunk world as gamer are familiar today. But it opened the way for further development in the industry. The game started with player’s discovery of the Eidolon, a Victorian era machinery, in an abandoned lab. As player investigated, he accidently teleported to another dimension because of the malfunction in the machine. The energy emitted from the Eidolon awoke the creature...
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An examination of videogames in popular culture is a complicated one. There is a large debate as to what is the very first video game. The supposed earliest known video game was created by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann on a cathode ray tube in 1947. The game was a missile simulator similar to radar displays from World War II, and overlaid sheets of paper were used for targets since graphics were unknown at this time. On May 5, 1951, the NIMROD computer was presented in Britain. It used a panel of lights for its display and was used to play a game called “NIM”. Later, in 1952, Alexander S. Douglas made the first compu...
Quittner, Joshua, and Maryanne Murray Buechner, et al. ?Are Video Games Really so Bad?? Time South Pacific 19 (10 May 1999): 50-55
At this time, video games have made their way into the homes and hearts of many people since their meager beginnings as television novelties and arcade hits. But what goes into the process of creating a video game? Games, especially board games, don’t just happen. Their digital counterparts are not part of the exception either. There are painstaking processes and stages involved in creating and developing a game so that it is ready to be marketed to the public and so it also appeals to a certain fanbase or so it appeals to the masses. There is also the level of immersion and engagement that has to take priority within a game so that the player feels invested enough within the game to continue playing it after a certain period of time. The stages that take place within the creation cycle of a game can vary, but they usually follow three main phases. These phases are the Pre-production, production, then testing phases.
The documentary that I watched is named Mind Games: The Power of Video Gaming by filmmaker Ron Thomas featuring Brad Bushman, James Paul Gee, and Martin Burnbaum. Ron Thomas uses pathos, ethos and logos to explore the advantages and disadvantages of video gaming. I think the filmmaker succeeded in building a strong argument through his appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos. Ron conducts interviews with retro gamers and experts in psychology, linguistics and education.
Cyberpunk is, as its authors would have it, a revolutionary new genre. The Movement is made up of radical new authors breaking from traditional SF ideology and prose. The style evokes a sense of fear and paranoia while overloading the reader with information. Aside from these indefinable feelings evoked by the genre, cyberpunk contains several concrete, identifiable themes in every story. The central theme is about fringe characters -- outsiders -- living in a grimy, seedy world ruled over by huge, all-encompassing megacorporations. The megacorps permeate the world of these characters with an impersonal, hopeless aura. One can either work for them as a wage-drone in mediocrity, or against them as against gods in a pitiful fight to outwit them. The cyberpunk world is completely overwhelmed, infused, and inundated by corporate technology such as decks, the Matrix, "prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery, genetic alteration" (Sterling xiii), and artificial intelligences. The megacorporate philosophy that everything can be bought and sold, like the technology that is bought and sold, makes human life cheap and worthless. Technology has replaced humans, much like machines today have already replaced workers on the assembly line.
Instead of the franchises popularity having a positive impact, overtime, it infected the gaming market along with it’s consumers and developers such as Microsoft Game Studios and EA. It has become an aggrandized cancer on the face of video games everywhere, destroying franchises a...
So, what’s the history behind the video gaming phenomenon? Video games were first presented as a patent in 1948, starting with the Cathode- Ray tube amusement device. This sparked interest among inventors of the time, even though it was not a very successful innovation (“History of Video Games”). Through the next few years, many creations came out, but none were ever really popular. In 1961, MIT students created Spacewar!. It is considered the first widely available and influential computer game. Then, in 1972, Atari was founded. They had their first widespread success with Pong the same year. This success snowballed into the arcade age, where many arcade games such as Pac-Man, Asteroids, and Space Invaders were seen in malls, movie theaters, and even grocery stores (“History of Video Games”). In 1980, Mattel created the Intellivision system. It was not very popular (Herz 16). Then, in 1982, the Colecovision debuted but still wasn’t very popular (Herz 18). Many more consoles were produced, but none were very well known, and most people preferred to just play the arcade games as opposed to buying a home console anyway. This persisted until the third generation of video game consoles. In 1985, Nintendo came out with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was bundled with Super Mario Bros and quickly became a huge success(Herz 20). During the 1980's, the video-game market became more and more popular, and the budget for the creation of video games increased as well, as more and more publishers and fans bought into the craze. Then in 1989, Sega came out with the Sega Genesis, and Nintendo responded with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Next came the Sega Saturn, and the Sony PlayStation in 1994 and 1995. Then came the Nintendo 64, in 1996 selling more than 1.
Vol. 20 no. 4). Steampunk in today's more similar to a set of world view. In the steampunk world, people assume that in a specific world, the steam engine did not be replaced by the internal-combustion engine, so the steam technology has been greatly developed. As a result of this, the historical backgrounds of the works of steampunk are always be the Victoria era and the period that the American West pioneer movement was occurred (Patric 47). Another significant element of the concept steampunk is the coexistence of advanced and backward. Some people are riding cars while others are in carriages. In the steampunk world, magic and science exist simultaneously. On the one hand, in steampunk, technology becomes magic; on the other hand, the magic seems to be a high-tech. Steampunk even exists only as an independent aesthetic style.
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During these past few decades, technology has advanced drastically, especially in the aspects of gaming. At one point in history video games could only be playable at home, but now with all these improvements in technology, games can be easily played on our mobile devices. Likewise, these advancements in gaming have created endless possibilities for people of all ages to participate in this activity. Consequently, video games have influenced society and have impacted us in various ways.
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