History repeating it self

We have known for years that history is repeating itself over and over again. We see it in many parts of our society. Lately I have started to notice another iteration, this time from within the computer gaming society.

Serials

No not in the modern sense of the word. Today the market is flooded with sequels, a safe bet for the starving gaming houses. Can’t blame them thou, fresh ideas doesn’t pay the rent (less a three year development cycle).

Back in the days (read 100 years ago) the cinema was somewhat different from what we experience today. Back then movies came on smaller reels and in the transition between shorter films and the feature films a genre called serials became very popular. One of the earliest and more popular was the adventures of Kathryn (1913). A side note to that particular serial is that it introduced the term ‘cliffhanger’ for the first time. It was called a serials because they required you to comeback at a later date to see the next installment. The show often carried a story line that spanned over all its episodes much like tv-shows today.

If you are at least a little bit interested in what is happening in the computer gaming scene you can see where this is going. For all you others I’ll try to explain what I mean.

Today more than ever game developers have realized the full distribution potential of the internet. In the fore front of this is Valve, a company that has given us titles such as Half life, Half life 2 and Counter strike. With their distribution system, steam, they deliver games for download. Here they not only promote their own episodic saga of the physicist Gordon Freeman but other games as well. There is a new game called SiN that copies the serials concept from the early twentieth century to the letter. They release an episode that ends in a cliffhanger and then put out another episode continuing the story line.

This of course is just as a brilliant market strategy just as it was back then. By creating parts of the game one episode at the time they can, both ensure that the gamers will come back for more and can adjust the future product to accommodate the market demands.

This further strengthens my theory that the gaming industry is the movie industry’s kid brother. Just as computer games have borrowed narrative inspiration from their silver screen elders they have now borrowed the market thinking as well. It is indeed interesting times.