So,
I came across this article the other day. I’ve been playing desktop computer games since I was around 6 or 7 years old.
Jeff Vogel
Of course, back then they weren’t really home computer games, my Dad would let me play the games they had on the mainframes in his office. Funny part was, back then most people hadn’t really even played many stand up video games, but here I was playing these little shoot’em games on a green screen monitor, with only arrow keys and the space bar for a trigger. Best part was, since it was all mainframe stuff, it was networked across the country to other offices, and it was multi-player!
I’d sit there for hours playing these couple games he had access to, one was ‘Rats’ the other was a vampire type game.
So, I’ve seen computer gaming from its wee, baby beginnings. And, what confuses me a bit about the rant that Jeff Vogel is making is that… I thought almost any reasonably successful video game studio usually had the practice of re-using their engine code. Heck, I know that they were doing it back when I would purchase games on cassette tape for my Vic-20. Sure those games were no where near as intense on the programming side as even the most inane shovel-ware that you can find for $5 in Best Buy these days. But, still, I know the industry has been using a code re-use model for a very long time.
I would have to sit and think real hard to days when it wasn’t common for major games not to tout the engine that they were using as part of the marketing.
Maybe I am missing Jeff’s point here, but it seems that there is some other point that he wants us to gain from his writings. Since, from my perspective, it looks as if he is just looking for someone to pat him on the back for doing what I know people have been doing in the game industry since 1988.
I’ve been wrong in the past, but… this one just made my brain go into an odd spin.
What are some of your first video gaming memories? Do you ever get hung up on what specific video engine that a particular game uses?
