The History of Graphics and Video Games: Why We Are Where We Are Today

Introduction

Ah Video Games, whether you are the type with nostalgia ridden memories of older arcade-fighters or bullet hells, or you’re something of a modern day gamer, enjoying the fruits of your Season Passes from your most recent online battle zone, chances are almost everyone reading this has been involved with video games in some form.

Today, hundreds of video games come out almost every day, ranging from Triple-A masterworks, to labors of love stitched together by Indie studios. It wasn’t always like this though, the history of video games is much more tumultuous and its journey to modern day games was much more arduous than you might think. And it’s all because of Graphics.

What does that mean?

Well, first of all, computers had a hard slog to even get to the point of generating still-images on their screens, let alone running the kind of photo-realistic graphics that are commonplace in games today. When they did finally manage to put together some facsimile of images, we got the first ever video games; Space Wars and Pong. 

Due to the rudimentary technology of the time these games were mostly amalgamations of simple shapes that either moved independently, or their movement was controlled by the player, and it was some time before Video Games became a household staple. Though when they did a completely new market and industry burst forth, major companies found themselves fighting for rights over IPs and early game-consoles. There is no better way to illustrate this though, that the story of Tetris.

Tetris: The First Step to Graphical Greatness

Yes, you read that right, Tetris. Developed by Alexey Pajitnov in the 1980s, Tetris was born in Russia, under the company Elorg, a state-funded developer. This issue was, the game was too good compared to other games available at the time. It was simple, it was compact, and because of its bouncy graphics and concept-design (both of which seem lackluster now almost 40 years later), it was perfect for the new, high-end, hand-held console that was coming out. The Game Boy.

For its time, the Game Boy was ground-breaking. While not in color, games finally had imagery that were not just simple shapes, as well as real protagonists with stories and motivations, consider Super Mario Land.

 The early reception to Tetris was so overwhelmingly positive that obtaining the rights to it became the sole goal of multiple international companies, like Mirrorsoft and Spectrum HoloByte, who gained the rights to it as a computer game, but not the rights for hand-held devices or coin-operated arcade machines. Mirrorsoft’s middle-man, Robert Stein, owner of Andromeda Software Ltd, comforted his colleagues that these rights were as good as theirs.

This overconfidence did cost him and Mirrorsoft though, as Nintendo’s representative Henk Rogers was interested in obtaining similar rights to Tetris for the Japanese market, and secured rights for "Tetris" distribution on computers and consoles for Nintendo, through the U.S. distributor, Spectrum HoloByte.

Elorg, the company Pajitnov worked in, was furious when they learned this as they had no knowledge of these further licensing deals, and before Stein could appear to placate them and work out a deal for further rights, Henk Rogers beat him to the punch, offering them a deal they couldn’t refuse. Through him, Nintendo acquired the only rights to Tetris on coin-operated arcade machines and handheld devices.

Many claim that it was this deal that shot Nintendo into the limelight, at least in the United States, and paved the way for them to become one of the giants of game development in the world to this day.

Super Mario 64: The Next Dimension for Graphics

The story of Nintendo, and its path-beating, does not end here though. After the Gameboy came the Gameboy Color introducing some of the first “colored” games in the world, with one of their flagship games of course being Tetris. They weren’t satisfied though, and Nintendo continued to push innovation forward.

In 1996 they succeeded in their machinations and released the Nintendo 64 in Japan and North America, alongside a flagship game Super Mario 64. Now, for all of you older gamers that name may ring a nostalgic bell. While not being the first game released that experimented with 3D graphics, many agree that it was that piece of media that popularized 3D media.

What Nintendo likely didn’t see coming though was the domino effect after their release of Super Mario 64. 3D games became the customary design style of most Triple-A games moving forward, and over the years, this style of graphical design was polished further.

“Great Graphics” Aren’t Enough Anymore

Do graphical advancements like these still elicit the same kind of reaction from companies and audiences world-wide? Well the short answer is no. The longer answer is, this comes down to the law of diminishing returns. Most games and media today, if they are aiming for graphical greatness, find it using the newest game-engines or modelling softwares. Photorealism has become the name of the game, and sadly there just may not be much farther up left to go.

Studios have begun to understand this though, and have finally begun taking the fight away from graphical greatness, towards more complex and detailed factors, such as game mechanics, plot depth, and more. The very concept of what makes their products “great” has changed, and so they have had to adapt along with them. 

Conclusion

So ultimately, what can we learn from this phenomenon that relates to us outside the gaming industry? Well, the graphical improvement race is something we see even beyond the confines of the gaming industry, consider websites for example. 

Since the advent of browsing on the internet websites have tried to look better and better, whether that means cleaning up their content, standardizing color pallets and fonts, down the very animation their menus may play when you hover over them.

Alas, it was not to last either. Today, almost every website is designed according to the ins and outs of graphical rules laid out by their predecessors, and audiences have instead begun focusing on different factors. When we work with our clients, designing their website, we have to ensure they have all the tools to attract foot-traffic on the web. This includes Web Design, but also security solutions for those sites, the integration of helpful AI bots, polishing its SEO and page speeds. 

These are all factors in audience retention, and the race has gone much further than simply being easy on the eyes, for the same reason as video games, diminishing returns. Other factors surrounding web development have skyrocketed to the point where they could even make-up for bad “design” as long as the skeleton and ideas behind a website are solid.

Regardless, it is important to analyze such introspective about the evolution of industries, as you may find that your industry is not so different from the others after all, and there may be something valuable to learn from it. 

We hope you enjoyed learning a bit about the history of graphical evolution, and if you have any questions, or wish to discuss any propositions regarding something you learned from this read, feel free to contact us and find a team of professional graphic designers more than happy to discuss the topic at hand.