Today we’re going to talk about open world games. Open world games are different than most video games because although they often have goals and tasks, they usually encourage what is known as “emergent stories.” These are stories that weren’t planned by the game creators, but players create within the constructs of the game. And this leads to a completely different type of gameplay encouraging players to explore as well as socialize with others. Now, these types of games have been around for a while, but within the past couple decades they’ve seen incredible growth with games like Minecraft, Skyrim, and Grand Theft Auto, and this isn’t by accident - open world game also mirror the growth of the hardware that supports them.

Today, we're FINALLY going to talk about PC Gaming. So the personal computer is the precursor to the console, but it's not quite accurate to say that it just led to the console. PCs and the video games created on them have and continue to influence the rest of the video game industry. The PC was the first to bring gamers a number of experiences from adventures in Myst, to first person shooters in Wolfenstein 3D, and of course real-time strategy games with Dune II. And the PC platform continues to grow and thrive with genres that are best and sometimes only possible on this platform.

So by the mid-90s the video game industry was once again booming and this attracted the attention of the Japanese electronics giant Sony. In 1994, Sony introduced their Playstation console which successfully coupled cutting edge technologies with some great games. But Nintendo and Sega weren’t just sitting around. In the 90’s we would see the introduction of the Sega Saturn and eventually the Sega Dreamcast as well as Nintendo’s immensely popular Nintendo 64. And with this new hardware came a new era of immersive games. Games were going 3D, and with the introduction of CD’s, the size of games increased dramatically allowing for much longer and complex storytelling. Local multi-player and split screen games also became popular during this time as consoles such like Nintendo 64 were now powerful enough to support these kinds of social games. And games on the PC were becoming more immersive as first person shooters began to flourish on the platform.

But Sega saw many failed launches in the 90s due to poor marketing and some poor games. By the end of the 90’s the industry had lost confidence in Sega and even its revolutionary Dreamcast could not keep the company competitive in the hardware space, but it wouldn’t be long before a new player would take Sega’s place. Next week we’re going to talk about Microsoft’s X-Box.

Today we’re going to do something a little bit different and take everything we’ve learned so far and apply it to a case study on (arguably) the biggest game franchise in the world: Pokémon. Now Pokémon, like a select few other games we’ve discussed in this series has ingrained itself into our pop culture, but the way Pokémon has done this, and the extent of its reach into almost every genre of gaming is what makes it such a phenomenon. But interestingly, Pokémon’s success wasn’t only by chance.

So we’ve talked a lot about what makes games so great in this series, but we haven’t really addressed the big question: why do we play games anyway? And well, the answer is pretty complicated, especially when you consider that some people really like card games, others may only like playing baseball, and others may only like watching Minecraft Let’s Play videos But there are reasons behind these preferences and we’re going to talk about them, what these preferences say about ourselves, and look at how these preferences inform the games we play.

Today, we’re going to explore the world of role-playing games. Role-playing games are different than most, because they’re technically a form of interactive storytelling with one player managing the game as the game master (or dungeon master), and all of players assuming the roles of their characters. These games started within the genre of wargaming, but reached widespread popularity relatively recently in the 1970s and 80s with its incredibly popular fantasy-based entry Dungeons & Dragons. But with this rise in popularity also came controversy. The United States during this time saw RPGs as an attack on morality and religion and even claimed that these games lured its players into Satanism and black magic.

So we ended the last episode nearing the close of the 1980s and Nintendo had become the dominant player in the home console market, but Sega, originally a slot machine game company during World War 2, was looking to get its own console into players’ homes. Sega’s first console wouldn't see much success, but with the introduction of Sonic the Hedgehog on the technologically superior Sega Genesis, Sega established itself as the new best thing in video games. This would be the start of a new round of console wars and the era that brought us more mature games including fighting games, 1st person shooters, and lots of sports games. This maturation of games also led us to the software ratings system by the ESRB. But Sega and Nintendo would not be the alone in the market for long, next week we’re going to talk about the entrance of technology monolith Sony and their introduction of the Playstation.

So the 1980s was the golden age of arcade games. Games like Donkey Kong, Pac- Man, Space Invaders, and Centipede had become a cultural phenomenon. These games had expanded the gamer demographic and even encouraged the rise of competitive gaming. There were also many innovations in the home console and computer market with deeper and longer games like Pitfall and Castle Wolfenstein. Suddenly, you could play a game for much longer than your single quarter could get you on an arcade machine. So the video game industry was booming, but it had also become a sort of Wild West and everyone from Purina to Quaker wanted to get into the action. With these new creators came a glut of choices, and to remain competitive Atari began rushing games to market resulting in some truly terrible games. Gamers started to lose confidence in the industry and then in 1983 the gaming industry in the United States crashed.

Welcome to Crash Course Games! In this series our host Andre Meadows is going to discuss the history and science of games. We’re going to talk about video games of course, but also board games, role playing games, card games, even sports! But before we get ahead of ourselves we are going to look at what a game actually is, who is playing these games, and what they are doing to us. It turns out these answers aren’t as obvious as they would seem, but one thing is definitely clear: games make up a huge portion of most peoples’ lives, and we think that can be a great thing!