New Book: Get In The Game! Careers In The Game Industry

[rolenta]

I just picked up Get In The Game! Careers In The Game Industry by Marc Mencher. Unfortunately, if Marc's knowedge of the game industry is the same as his knowledge of gaming history, I'd be wary of this one.

The book begins with a short history of videogames. Here are some choice lines from the book:

* During this same time (early '60's), an industry founding father, Nolan Bushnell, designed an arcade version of Asteroids to play on his newly developed dedicated game machine. Thus was born the first cartridge-based game system, introduced to the market as VCS, and later known as the Atari 2600.

* Although the TurboGrafx-16, SEGA Genesis, and Atari Lynx machines tried to compete, Nintendo ultimately stole the bulk of the market share. Thanks to its portability and associated free games Tetris and Super Mario, Game Boy sales were significant.

* By the late 90's, the market was totally confused as evidenced by alarmingly sluggish sales. SEGA 32X and Saturn came and went, and Nintendo bombed with a few platform releases as well.

* SEGA is still creating games but has chosen to halt production of hardware. Atari chose this same path years ago when they stopped making hardware.

The sad thing, Mencher uses Gamepot's History of Videogames as one of his sources; an article that I co-wrote!

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hov/

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

That first one about Bushnell was a howler. Yikes! Why didn't he just go the whole hog and say Bushnell founded Infogrames/Atari?

[rolenta]

There is a videogame timeline in this book which has the following interesting facts:

1979 - Namco's Galaxian, which gave way in 1981 to its sequel, Galaga
1981 - Galaxian gives way to its sequel, Galaga.
(A bit redundant)

1982 - Namco's Pole Pposition (adrcade) (point of view), which inspired Midway's Rush and Namco's Ridge Racer series.
(Was Pole Position the inspiration for the later games? What about Night Driver and Turbo?)

1985 - Super Mario Bros. (NES), which inspired Donkey Kong
(My favorite!!!!!)

And, the timeline doesn't mention the Fairchild Channel F but it does mention the groundbreaking Emerson Arcadia 2001. Go figure.

[Tempest]

And, the timeline doesn't mention the Fairchild Channel F but it does mention the groundbreaking Emerson Arcadia 2001

Yes! Finally we Arcadia fanatics have our day... :D


That's amazing. Did this guy do any research on the history of video games or did he just ask some wino on a street corner? Even a causual gamer from the 80's would know that Nolan didn't create Asteroids in the 60's. I shudder to think what kind of advice this guy gives on getting into the game industry:

Step 1: Go up to a big video game company.
Step 2: Whine cry and scream until they give you a job.
Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 until sucessful

Yikes! :o

Tempest

[nesman85]

1985 - Super Mario Bros. (NES), which inspired Donkey Kong.

:lol: now THAT is funny!

[Lady Jaye]

Whoa, gotta wonder why he even bothered to make a quick videogame history section!!! :?

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Super Mario inspired Donkey Kong? Was Marty McFly or Doc Brown involved? Did this guy have an editor?

[hades]

Well, putting aside the horrible job the author did of the history of video games ... how was the presentation and content of the rest of the book? Worth picking up for those interested in video gaming careers, or is it just a collection of garbage? :-)