Documentary: Rise of the Video Game

[Vectorman0]

I couldn't help myself, so I watched all four episodes. In hindsight, I must be masochistic, as I don't know how I got through them. I was making fun of them the whole time though, which was mildly entertaining.

From the standpoint of someone familiar with gaming history, this is a terrible documentary that has me wondering "why?" in regards to the whole thing. Everyone else has already covered what was wrong with the program, but I would like to emphasize that it is seriously like every 10 seconds that they either show an unrelated clip, have someone say something stupid/not true, link it back to the cold war, or randomly switch topics.

Anyone else try and count how many times they used the same Donkey Kong clips in episode 2 or Battlezone clips in episode three? I lost count, but it's probably over twenty to thirty times each. Sometimes I think they (Heather Chaplin) made the Cold War connection solely because they didn't have enough video game stock footage to use, and they had plenty of cold war clips to use. On second though, I saw the Berlin Wall come down like twenty times, so that probably isn't true either.

[BydoEmpire]

I caught part of one of them today - I started watching around Populous, and it went on to show a billion clips of Halo, then some more Halo. Usually while talking about other games, social networking, Gen X, mod communities, etc. I would liked to have seen some earlier episodes, but this one was pretty boring.

[Lemmi_Is_God]

i quit after episode 3

the first 2 were just OK and part 3 sucked
i dont care to see how this ends

i wonder how the ratings for this did as it went along ( if they do ratings for it), i watch discovery alot and ive noticed less commercials for it in the past 2 weeks
i bet it lost over half its audience from episode 3 to 4

[PingvinBlueJeans]

i wonder how the ratings for this did as it went along ( if they do ratings for it), i watch discovery alot and ive noticed less commercials for it in the past 2 weeks
i bet it lost over half its audience from episode 3 to 4

I think the series has had its own "video game crash".

[chrisbid]

valid points are made in the series, but im not sure they needed 5 hours to make them

[Kejoriv]

saw i dont know what episode tonight that aired on Discovery. I thought it was horrible. It was the one about MMOS, second life, WOW. BOORING. Somehow I watched the whole thing. Needless to say, I will not be watching the rest of the episodes

[rolenta]

saw i dont know what episode tonight that aired on Discovery. I thought it was horrible. It was the one about MMOS, second life, WOW. BOORING. Somehow I watched the whole thing. Needless to say, I will not be watching the rest of the episodes

No need - this is the last one (thank God!)

[Lemmi_Is_God]

let me guess that heather chick who made smart bomb was in this one also?

i quit watching when they started with their morals crap again, the show seems to take a turn in every episode at the half way point, i quit after the everquest segment

heh i didnt know i joined everquest 5 months after it began

[rolenta]

let me guess that heather chick who made smart bomb was in this one also?

You called it!

[guitargary75]

Some good stuff, but talk about beating a dead horse. It was five hours of war inspired and helped to create video games. Too much talk of war. There are plenty of games that aren't inspired by war. There is more to the video game world than the military did it. As Nell Carter used to say, gimmie a break!