CHAPTER ONE:
"The Concept"

Games are designed with a few purposes in mind, the most general one being 'entertainment'. All games are supposed to keep the player occupied; Presenting them with an objective that requires the player to interact, and thus keeping them entertained. This can be seen in every game from simple playing card games, to board games, to Pong, to those of modern videogames and those that will come afterward. Objective, interaction, entertainment - it's the theme of all virtually all games, whether digital or not.

People's desire to be entertained is simple and understandable. It's giving your mind some light exercise when you have nothing better to do, isn't it? And that's something everybody can agree is justified, unless you want to argue that there's always something better to do... which may be true, but certainly isn't a popular position today. Today the motto is something along the lines of 'loyalty to the highest bidder', which really isn't loyalty at all, but passes for a noble attitude nonetheless. In any case, most people don't mind some entertainment. In fact, I'd be willing to say that most people desire entertainment more than they should, which is fine by the companies, who have the uncanny ability to appetize your desires, and keep you wanting more.

So the question becomes: how do you keep people entertained with games? Or, in other words, how do you generate the most game sales? That guestion is steadily being more satisfactorily answered day after day, even as you are reading this. But it's also important to keep in mind that the answer changes with people's desires and contentment. Plus, people don't know what they want - they just know it needs to be better. This is a struggle that drives all new games that come out, especially videogames.

With videogames, the horizon is endless; Direct interaction with a fictional world, presented to you in the latest audio and video. And even in the earliest videogames, we can see some of the most genius innovations. PacMan, for example, presented players with this objective: eat all of the dots. But, of course, there were some things getting in the way of you and your objective... a challenge called "ghosts". Stupid little things that would try to find you and end your dot-eating days. How rudimentary this concept is, but how perfect at the same time. As you get to higher levels, the stakes get higher, and the challenges get harder, and the sense of accomplishment (or failure) gets more intense.

This cycle of increasing challenges and rewards will always be a crucial part of videogames. The satisfaction of screaming "I WIN!" to that little plastic box has always been an underlying motivation of videogames, it seems. There is something about rising to the challenge - no matter how trivial - that's in our human nature. People want to overcome stuff. But this is where the game factors become very important; Here are a couple of key factors to videogames:

Gameplay - how logical and balanced the physical interactions (i.e. the controller commands) are with the virtual responses to them.
Visual Appeal - how impressive/fitting the look of the game is.
Audible Appeal - how impressive/fitting the sound of the game is.
Initial Value - how value of the experience first time the game is completed. This is usually determined by the length of the game, the story, or things that are supposed to motivate you to complete the game, but don't change each time it is completed.
Replay Value - how limited (or unlimited) the potential for new experiences are when re-playing the game.

Those are the basic elements I would judge games by, not including things like "originality" or other significant but hard-to-evaluate quirks. But overall, these things affect how "good" a game is.

Again, we can look back to the early days of videogames to see developer's genius: Pong. This game is so deceptively simple, that it perhaps the most addictive and revolutionary game of all time. Two human beings face off to see who is more skilled, intelligent, strategic, quick, or perhaps lucky... what a concept! The amount that the paddle moves on the screen is directly relative to where you have the dial turned on your controller. Pure competition, with two absolutely equally capable opponenets. No favoritism, no gameplay obstacles, no messing around - just you and him. It's called multiplayer, and it's what can make a game immortal. And although plain console multiplayer games have come and gone every year, the internet opens the door to a whole nother level of multiplayer potential.

Which brings us all the way to the online gaming, doesn't it?

Online gaming's origins are complicated and not terribly important to me, so I won't pretend that I need to go over it. But, the concept is very important, since it takes the beauty of multiplayer, and opens it wide. No longer are you forced to compete against people you can actually tolerate in real life, convince to play with you, and bring to your console/computer. No longer will your matches be so agonizingly predictable, when that same person you always play against has had so much more experience than you. It sounds great, and it is a great concept... but I wouldn't be writing a book about it if there wasn't more to it than that!

I shall use Counter-Strike as the main example of how important the internet can be to gaming. The game was released in 2000, with this in mind: "people like Half-life, so let's make a realistic version of it - using terrorists and counter-terrorists - and let people play against each other on the opposite teams. Let's also make it available to virtually anybody with the internet and a PC." And sure enough, four long years later, it is still the number one online game there is. Basically, its the same weapons, the same levels, the same controls, and the same routine as it was four years ago... but why hasn't it become boring? Any single-player counter-terrorist game would have needed many new sequels in order to keep people's attention (see: "Rainbow Six",) but this simple online game is still the rage! Recently there has been a few things added to the game, like tactical shields and a new machine gun... but even before that the game was roaring steadily, with no sign of stopping in sight. The reason why: the human mind.

The human mind is infinitely more versatile than artificial intelligence, even if it isn't as precise or quick. I still run through the same map I was running through four years ago, with the same gun I had four years ago, fighting the same-looking-guy I was four years ago, and I'm still having a ton of fun. That's because I know that I'm looking at a real person, who will have a real reaction when I put a bullet into his forehead. It's about satisfaction. When you scream "I WIN!" at that little plastic box, you're done. The box doesn't say, "I'm just gettin' warmed up, baby!" in return. It doesn't learn, and even if it does, it's only learning what it's been programmed to be able to learn. But a person is always learning.

Imagine you are running with the standard M16 down an city street, and then you are shot in the head. Just like that. You look around, and see that there was a guy hiding behind a dumpster who shot you in the head. Hmmm. Next time (since thankfully there is a next time,) you run down that same street, with that same gun, and you specifically blast through the dumpster with your M16, killing whoever is behind it. You have learnt something, and are taking it into account as you play. This is called creating a new "level" to the gameplay, or it could also be called adding strategy. People will automatically take countless factors into calculation as they're playing, creating infinite layers to the strategy. And when there are multiple people all creating infinite layers of strategy, you get more replay value than you can handle. It's no surprise, then, that Massively Multiplayer Online games are becoming more popular. People can't get enough of each other, it seems.

The concept of Counter-Strike, like many other online games that now exist, is to let players challenge each other, while providing them with basic (or perhaps not-so-basic) tools. It makes the limited unlimited - limited weapons, limited moving space, limited interaction, unlimited possibilities. Just like all great game ideas, it's deceptively simple.

Chapter 2: "Join the Party"! < unfinished.

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