Joystick Generation

Part 3 of the series Games Britannia, presented by Benjamin Woolley, is called "Joystick Generation" and follows on through the series' journey through British gaming history by moving into a time of great cultural upheaval: the 70's.

In this post I'm creating for the final episode in the series, I shall not go into specific details of each of the games featured in the show as I don't feel there is enough information on each that I find particularly interesting or new.

Starting from a basis of Dungeons & Dragons which, Woolley says, laid the foundation for British gaming going into the future; the program moves on to talk about the arrival of the ZX Spectrum. A revolutionary machine that could be owned by individuals and was loved for the ability to play video games such as the important Elite.

The next important milestone game shown on the program is actually Black & White. This game, along with its predecessor Populous, was one of the first "god games" released; wherein players could exist in a realistic world as a deity. As a speaker on the show, Margaret Robertson makes a very interesting point that although a god game should theoretically make a player feel in complete control; instead they tend to have the player ironically "operate as a slave", in that the people in the world have needs that need to be filled and are incapable of taking care of themselves.

As the program shows, when the technology of computers truly explode and gaming becomes far more mainstream than ever before, the famous Lara Croft was invented. The main difference between this game and its predecessor was the main character herself, bringing personality into video gaming. This section was continued by moving into Heavenly Sword, a game that focussed in particular on immersive visuals and character storytelling.

Carmageddon was a game that began to test the political limits of video gaming, earning controversy and a lot of attention. Continuing this trend is Grand Theft Auto, a game that is very well known - and incredibly successful. The episode moves towards another end of gaming where games empower people to create their own content, specifically with Little Big Planet. This particular section is quite interesting to me, as a Designer of games, since any interesting tools and environments that can be used to create a gaming experience are important to me.

I think in this episode, the main thing I took away is that most of the milestone games that were brought up and commented on as being particularly successful in this abstract concept of 'Games Britannia', were the more original and revolutionary titles that were well produced and executed.