Bite me.. Come on, I dare you!
And now, for Pick of the Week, Oprah Winfrey gives us her book selection... Seriously, however, I would recommend that everyone get their hands on and read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It is a fantastic novel, and deals with some very interesting computer-based ideas, but the bit which grabbed my attention was a paragraph where he stated that 'the only way a species can survive is by being more of an insufferable badass than the one which came before it'. I agree totally with this (after all, think of the Dinosaurs. Did they have funny bumper stickers?) and started thinking with regards to whether this theory could apply to the corporate world, and especially to computer game companies.
It does. At every level. Darwin (I thunk?) said 'Only the strongest will survive'. I just want to update his wording for the new millennium. 'Only the mouthiest, bitchin'est, flyest, freshest badassest will survive'. Snappy, huh? Think about computer gaming history. We start back in the primordial soup: supposedly bearded (ahem) guys spending their free time geeking around on University mainframes, eventually creating an 'interactive, realistic and only slightly enjoyable physics simulator'. You've come a long way, baby. These guys were the FuBu of gaming. Imagine marketing people trying to sell that. 'It does take Boyle's law into account, Sir. We will give you ten bucks off as our pi calcuator is inaccurate'. They then got ripped off by a bunch of, amongst others, pinball game manufacturers, other geeks (and I use that in the nicest possible term. I even class myself as a Geek!), card game manufacturers (Nintendo) and even a shoe salesman from Oregon (anyone remember the Dendragon? Thought not).
This second gen. were all united in one thing: being badasser (Jesus, talk about murdering the language), meaner, and all together more Hilfiger than gen one. They were still not very pro, though. Games provided a neat little sideline from their regular gigs. Then people actually played the games. Suddenly, there was a bandwagon in prospect, and people were only too keen to start jumping. Some went too early and missed altogether (spawning the memorable, but not at all computerey 'Bash the Crocodile'). The guys who got stuck in here (Atari, Namco) are the founding fathers, the first pro bowlers of the gaming league: yet again, they had longer teeth, more evolved digestive systems, way bigger egos and vastly superior one-liners than their predecessors.
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