Seasoned gamers would say every decade feels like a tumultuous one. This is, after all, the entertainment medium in which the major content delivery platforms — the home consoles — are reinvented every five years. And if you’re a PC owner trying to stay at the cutting edge, well, that’ll be a graphics card and processor update every 18 months, thank you.
But the noughties has been a standout period — mostly for the acceptance of video gaming as a mainstream activity. Sure, it bloomed during the 90s as the well-marketed PlayStation console courted a generation of cash-rich twenty-somethings. But this was still boys playing games together. It wasn’t until the 2000s that the industry really started to hit the family living room, rather than the teenage bedroom or shared bachelor pad.
We’re being told this is all down to Nintendo’s astonishingly successful Wii console, but the roots go much deeper. In February 2000, for example, EA launched The Sims, its agenda-setting interactive soap opera — which by 2002 was the biggest-selling PC game to date. The series has shifted well over 100 million units and importantly for the widening appeal of video games, 60 percent of players are women.
It was back in the early years of the decade, too, that Sony was experimenting with the motion capture technology that would in 2003 become its EyeToy peripheral, a camera that could track simple player movements and translate them into onscreen action. At the same time, numerous “dance mat” games such as Dance Dance Revolution encouraged a more physical approach to play, and with their licensed pop music soundtracks and social interaction again attracted female players.
LANDMARKS
In 2004, Sony launched its landmark karaoke sim Singstar and a year later Harmonix Music Systems brought us Guitar Hero. These vital innovations combined to connect gaming with other more socially acceptable pursuits, while freeing gamers from the arcane tyranny of the joypad with its myriad of buttons and fiddly analogue sticks.
The availability and explosive growth of broadband Internet has also had an incalculable influence on gaming this decade — by 2007, an estimated 300 million users worldwide were accessing the Web via fast broadband connections. This led to the massive growth of online gaming, with first-person shooters such as Half-Life evolving to court a growing community of obsessive fans. Gamers started to create their own levels, kickstarting the modern craze for user-generated content. The era also saw the rise of the massively multiplayer role-playing game (MMORPG) in which thousands of gamers simultaneously inhabit vast virtual worlds. It was Sony Online Entertainment’s 1999 release EverQuest that propelled the MMORPG into the spotlight, attracting half a million players by the middle of the 2000s and earning the nickname “EverCrack” thanks to its addictive combination of adventuring and socializing. This was also the first major online title in which players were able to sell in-game items for real-world currency, and eBay was flooded with swords and magical capes. The practice was eventually industrialized, with gold-farming sweatshops cropping up in China and India.
One MMORPG has since made an even greater impact — World of Warcraft. There are now estimated to be 11.5 million subscribers, giving it a larger population than Sweden. In the background though, casual gaming has penetrated even this hardcore compound. Launched in 2005, Club Penguin — an online virtual world aimed at children — was bought by Disney two years later for US$350 million and now has 12 million users.
Back on console, though, and the phenomenally successful PlayStation 2, later joined by Microsoft’s Xbox, used their significant processing power to usher in a new age of graphically rich narrative gaming.
Franchises such as Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy brought cinematic portent to games with their lengthy animated story scenes and convoluted plots. The sci-fi shooter Half-Life introduced the concept of seamless in-game narrative — this urgent new style would reach its commercial zenith with the rip-roaring Halo and Call of Duty combat series. At the same time, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto titles completely revolutionized video game structure, providing a series of story missions over a vast, highly explorable environment. The introduction of semi and completely open-world titles such as Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 has been one of the highlights of the past three years in gaming.
AT THE MOVIES
With the increased graphics processing power, games began to resemble animated movies, while blockbuster Hollywood films increasingly relied on computer generated effects. Directors such as John Woo and Stephen Spielberg took active roles in game development, Woo with Sega’s fast-paced shooter Stranglehold and Spielberg with the excellent, and decidedly uncinematic Wii puzzler Boom Blox. Filmmakers such as Peter Jackson and James Cameron started to view the video game adaptations of their movies as crucial elements of the “overall artistic vision” — or if you prefer, “revenue potential.”
The transition to the current generation consoles has not been seamless. Sony spent billions developing the PS3. When the machine was launched in 2006, it was estimated that Sony was losing around US$200 on every machine sold. Elsewhere, Microsoft was having its own problems with the Xbox 360.
Nintendo must have been looking on with some satisfaction. This was the decade in which the great veteran of the industry decided to drop out of the ruinously expensive technology race. In 2004 it launched the Nintendo DS, a gimmicky handheld with a touchscreen interface. Critics didn’t know what to make of it but through lovely games such as New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart DS and Nintendogs it flourished, culminating in the phenomenon that was Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training — perhaps the first major release actively marketed at an older demographic. Then in 2006 came the Nintendo Wii, boasting a motion controller resembling a TV remote and games such as Wii Sports, which could be enjoyed by the whole family. Wii Fit is the antithesis of everything gaming was in the 1990s — post-pub lad fare, the electronic equivalent of a kebab with chili sauce.
REVOLUTION
There have been many more innovations, of course. The rise of digital distribution, via PC services such as Steam as well as through Xbox Live, Wiiware and PlayStation Network, is reshaping the whole concept of retail and development — publishers can now extend the life of their products indefinitely with new levels and missions, as well as selling games direct to consumers.
The slow growth of mobile phone gaming was given a great big shot of adrenaline in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone, and its App Store, where decent, visually impressive titles were finally easily available. What publishers are now looking at is the era of total cross-platform functionality — games that run across consoles, social networks, handhelds and mobiles, games that you can play on PS3, but then tweak or chat about on iPhone, games that you can tweet from, or phone into. The noughties was all about the development of multiple new ways to play games, the next decade will be about them coming together.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
RSS