Olivia Davy Game Art Blog: 2000! One I know most of!

So the 2000s! The actual part in which I remember about games! This is where games started to boom with the next gen of consoles! Within the 2004 Microsoft released Halo 2! BUT, the only way that they could complete Halo was with over 190 people (who are listed in the credits) and the game took nearly 3 years to complete with a game development cost of over $40m. But in all honesty it did have a huge hit of 8 million copies sold $50 each. So I guess they did get what they lost back.. but still! That's a lot!

Even with problems with the games industry and how much it costs to make a single game it is still increasing! The figures are getting higher and higher and its becoming ridiculous! But while the combined income for video games has increased since 1982, this has been largely because that there have been multiple games on the market at one time rather than a very high end game being sold at one time! However some games do not sell as much as Halo 2 did. Even now when I look on shelves I don’t even recognise some games! Some I’ve never heard of and some I have. Its just a mystery as to where these games come from!

Early on when games became about developers would make the game and fund the creation by themselves, but for it to be dispatched, packaged, delivered and stocked in shops with the finish product they would sell their games to publishers. In partnership with EA a company called Origin (which I know from playing the Sims franchise) sold themselves to obtain enough to complete a title and latest instalment for their franchise Ultima VII. But even though they gained money back from just people pre-ordering the game, its being able to keep a steady flow of money through the company and being able to stay hold of the ground while the gaming budgets spiralled in and out of control. In the end a sad story for Origin as EA swalled them up whole because they couldn't ground themselves in the market. Bye Bye Origin!

There's a fine split between developers and publishers of games. Developers (like me and many on my course and others) enjoy creating the games, becoming a part of the action in making, creating and imagining games. Whereas Publishers the big greedy bastards just want the money and are only focused on how much money they put into a game and whether they will gain it back from sales PLUS profit. The only thing is if a game is sort of successful in which the amount of money they put into the game they gain roughly around the same back from sales. Hence no profit for future big titles and no trying to gain their losses from games that lost money.

Recently series have become hugely popular. If one game has become successful such as Crysis lets say, that they are more likely to invest in publishing future Crysis games because they know that players of Crysis will play more of the Crysis franchise, and this led to the series of Crysis:

Crysis
Crysis: Warhead
Crysis 2
Crysis 3 (coming soon)

But this has happened for many series such as Final Fantasy, Halo, CoD, Crysis, Sims, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect and many many more! But not only do Publishers tackle the series etc they also look at how they can have games across all consoles. So one game can be played on PS3 and X-Box rather than just PS3 or just X-Box.

BUT THATS ALL ABOUT PUBLISHERS AND DEVELOPERS! HERE'S THE CONSOLE SIDE!

So within the 2000s consoles flew like never before! They started shit! Poor design (although good at the time back in the 70s-90s) but they were a start to what we have today! Back in the oldies there was Atari and Nintendo gamecubes and sega mega drives and more!

Here is a list of consoles in which appeared in each year:

PS1

1994

Sega Genesis 2
Sega Saturn
PS1
Bandai Playdia

Virtual Boy

1995

Apple Bandai Pippin
Nintendos Virtual Boy

1996

Nintendo 64
Sega Dreamcast

Sega Gensis 3

1998

Sega Dreamcast

2000


PS2

2001

PS2

Nintendo Gamecube
Xbox

(skip a few years)

2005

Xbox 360

2006

Xbox 360

PS3
Wii

PLUS ADD ONS

2009

Wii Motion Plus

PS3!

2010

Xbox Kinect
Playstaion Move

But from Atari Video Pinball in 1977 to a PS3 to date the style and ergonomics and aesthetics have significantly changed! Along with many games! But where is it going to go from here! Haven't we already surpassed our technology era and created things we never thought were possible? What next super fast Playstations and Xboxs? OR you are the controller, better than what Kinect and Playstation move is. That you wear a helmet and you transported into a horror game, that you physically pick things up in the environment of the game, and you have to actually aim! More realistic than what Kinetc is (which I think is still pretty bad). Or you are actually transported into a game. Where you can get hurt in real life. Which could make games more realistic! But where does this leave people like me, a game artist? What more can we possibly imagine! Different species, different types of people, different environments, different worlds?! We have these things covered from Mass Effect based on other planets to Skyrim which is based on legends with swords and manual battle, but also war based games such as Medal of Honour and CoD. OR our life is now a computer game, almost like the animus in Assassins Creed? Where's it going to go?! But I hope I am there when it all happens!

Oh and PS3 is the best, hey I don't doubt PC I enjoy PC gaming, but Xbox isn't my friend, spent too much money on Xbox (6 Xboxs I had before PS3 and never once has it failed me!) Love it!

But what about handheld consoles?! Where did they go! So Ninetendo has basically taken over the handheld market! To be fair they have produced many and they have gotten better. They may have failed a little on the Wii but they've made it up from having handheld consoles on the market!

Before Nintendo there have been many handheld consoles on the market which failed massively due to either being boring, poor gaming, and health issues! But Nintendo decided to bring out a handheld console called the Game & Watch in the early 1980s. This looks very similar to what Ninetendo have got now, such as the dual screens and flip mechanism! In 1989 Nintendo released the Gameboy console which sold massively that it was such a success they moved forward onto advance, colour and light versions in the 1990s! From then on all other companies who attempted to create handheld consoles fell to the mighty Nintendo because it has been such a huge success. In 2004 out popped the DS which did fail but has now gone on to sell millions of consoles! But Playstation and Sony had a plan and they then too brought out the PSP which has been a large competitor! It offers something different but hasn't been losing or gaining much. It's lets say it's been a so and so console.