Technological Darwinism
May 14, 2008 4:15 AM   Subscribe

 
"Evolution of Video Games"...? A great idea but a really lame attempt. He features about 10 games, "Get the hell off of our Internet!"
posted by Arnolfini at 4:23 AM on May 14, 2008 [2 favorites]


The video games one was horribly executed - all he did was show a few games from random years and random genres. He completely skipped eras, genres, and groundbreaking games, all of which should at least have been touched on if you're trying to chart the evolution of something. And he didn't even try to explain why the games he chose were significant.

The evolution of mobile phones was rather better - interesting factoids, landmark firsts (e.g. first clamshell, first camera phone, etc.) and a fairly steady progression from the past to the present.
posted by WalterMitty at 4:33 AM on May 14, 2008


Wow, so Google Video isn't even trying anymore? It's just a sidebar and a frame that links to YouTube?

It took 7 years to get from Pong to PacMan.
posted by DU at 4:35 AM on May 14, 2008


So first, the mistakes -

Pong - The pong he showed was in colour. The original pong was black and white. There wasn't an atari 2500, save for a prototype in 1981. I think that's a 2600 version of pong though.

Pac Man - was not the 2600 version. It looked like an arcade version played in Mame.


Other than that, it's a shitty history. Myopic, shortsighted and poorly thought out. It's a fanboy listing of some games he had lying around.

F++ Would not watch again.

(Negativity about the video does not mean I'm negative about the post. I like the fact that it was posted, but the game video was utter crap, but at least I got to talk about it in public. )
posted by Lord_Pall at 4:48 AM on May 14, 2008 [2 favorites]


Yeah, the first one is more like 'evolution of some the games I used to play'. Nice post though overall.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:48 AM on May 14, 2008


Yeah, definately a crappy video for the evolution of games. Some of his jumps made no sense at all. He went directly from older generation RTS games to newer generation fighting games? WTF?

The other videos were nifty however. I was especially interested in the computer ads. I'd heard that the Apple 1984 ad was supposed to have been groundbreaking, for example, but I really found it to be pretty bleh.

It was also pretty amazing how quickly computer ads moved from trying to sell on the merits of the system (available software, price, memory, etc) to trying to sell a brand identity based on cool; same as cars and all the other stuff advertised. Shows what works I suppose.

Also its kind of amazing how quickly we've gone from a varied computing environment to a near monoculture, especially when it comes to hardware. Mac, Linux, and Windows all run on the same hardware these days, Motorola apparently lost out completely, and the oddball hardware configurations (TI, fer example) didn't even make it into the early 90's.
posted by sotonohito at 5:13 AM on May 14, 2008


I did not RTFA (or in this case, WTFV) but this reminds me of when I was working for an insurance company in Melbourne. They were a nice bunch, very religious (Anglican, I think, as a rule), and made their crust insuring places of worship. Anyway, the Human Development Coordinator or whatever was putting together a presentation and as filler had a little bit on the growth of the company, so he put in images of all the organisaton's logos from Inception to Present Day. "See, this shows the evolution of the logo," he muttered in an off-handed fashion.

"BUT I DON'T BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION!" shrieked the CFO.

But anyway, yeah, um, computer games and mobile phones sure have come a long way, huh? Sure makes you think etc.
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:23 AM on May 14, 2008


Sorry but this is lamer than shit.
posted by autodidact at 7:10 AM on May 14, 2008


The video with Steve Ballmer channeling a used car salesman made my day.
posted by noble_rot at 9:05 AM on May 14, 2008


"So first, the mistakes - "

Were there more mistakes after that? Since the first two things shown were utterly wrong I just smacked the back button. Does it get stupider and wronger? Or is this some kind of irony that I'm just lacking appreciation for?
posted by majick at 8:04 PM on May 14, 2008


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