Reading 10: The Rise of eSports

Nowadays, there is a great deal of fervent support as well as total ridicule directed at competitive video gaming, or eSports. Players make hundreds of thousands and even millions in prize money, streaming ad revenue, and sponsorships for playing video games for their legions of adoring fans. These eSports have even made it onto TV channels like ESPN. In fact, I’ve probably seen eSports broadcast more commonly on channels like TBS than the MLB playoffs, which the same network hosts. Many feel that this “sport” is a farce, and that these professionals are nothing like real pro athletes from sports like football, soccer, and golf. However, there is no denying the popularity of these events, and there is also a considerable amount of skill required to become a professional gamer. After all, if anyone could simply be a pro gamer, everyone would be doing it instead of watching it, just like everyone with a passing interest in baseball would be in the MLB if they could. Furthermore, we learned in class that many NBA teams own pro gaming teams for video games like DOTA 2 and Overwatch, as does New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Personally, while I think that eSports will never reach the Olympics, per se (we’ll never see Olympic gridiron football either), I think that it deserves the same amount of recognition and respect as any other pro sport. In my eyes, if enough people enjoy watching people compete in something, then surely it deserves that status. Personally, I’m certainly no competitor, due in large part to lacking the skill to do so. I don’t really play many modern video games, so I don’t spectate in any of the titles we discussed in class, but a few of my friends watch their favorite League of Legends teams go at it regularly, and I definitely know a lot of the top level players’ names when I hear them as a result. I do sometimes spectate speedruns of older games that I like on Twitch, but this is probably outside the realm of the concept of eSports as we’ve been discussing it.

To me, these developments are an evolution of older competitive gaming, like the Virtua Fighter 2 video I linked in my previous post. While it lacked the pageantry and huge revenue of modern gaming (not to mention the fact that the VF players did it for fun and couldn’t quit their day jobs no matter how good they were), I still enjoy watching old matches and love hearing about old rivalries like that. Players of these video games can compete and grow together just like on-field rivals like Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders. I think one key difference between physical sports and eSports is that new games come out and replace older software; the sports themselves aren’t replaced with updates every few years. However, I’m still enjoying games that are older than I am so I can see eSports lasting for quite a long time. And furthermore, rules to physical sports get changed all the time, like the notorious Dez Bryant catch in the NFL just recently. Maybe someday, eSports clubs will have storied histories just like the classic soccer and hockey clubs that have been around for a century now.

Reading 09: Arcades in the Present Entertainment World

This past week, we took a very enjoyable field trip as a class to the local bowling alley, which has a section of arcade games, pertinent to our discussions in class. Nowadays, arcades are largely considered dead — after all, this one was only a small part of an establishment that had a bowling alley, mini-golf course, and go-kart race track within the same lot. The selection of games on offer did not do too much to help refute this notion, either. The closest thing to a game that we discussed in class was probably a new Space Invaders game, which had a very bright and colorful screen composed of many big lights to represent the pixels. Unlike the original’s simple button layout, this version had a pair of big plastic guns to be aimed at the screen, like the squirt guns at a carnival. However, that was it in terms of traditional arcade flair; not even a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet graced our local Strikes and Spares arcade. The majority of the machines reflected what arcades have largely become in the United States, consisting almost entirely of redemption games that give out tickets to be exchanged for prizes. There were a few crane games, and a Mario Kart game with drivers’ seats and steering wheels, but the venue was a far cry from what many would consider a “traditional” or “classic” arcade.

This seems to be the norm in Western arcades. Considering the abundance of games available on home consoles and PCs, it is understandable why few consumers would want to venture out to an arcade and pay per play, especially when console games are free to play whenever once the user owns them. Back in the 80s and 90s, arcade games had the newest and flashiest hardware, and provided incredible graphic and gameplay experiences years behind what was on offer at home. Consoles and especially PCs just couldn’t keep up. Nowadays, that food chain has reversed, and PCs dominate the performance market with consoles a step behind and arcade cabinets at the bottom. In fact, a lot of arcade hardware today is practically just a Windows PC in an arcade cabinet. So, the decline in arcade popularity is certainly understandable.

However, the question of whether I personally think there is charm in arcades is a completely different matter. I love many classic arcade games, and think that the environment is very conducive to a lot of fun experiences that can’t be had at home. Meeting at a social place to play games with others who enjoy the same titles is one such draw to arcades. In the 90s, fighting games were very popular, and passionate players crowded into tiny rooms in arcade for tournaments. This video (which is in Russian but has English subtitles) documents a really cool rivalry between two top Virtua Fighter 2 players of the day, and it is easy to see how arcades were a bit of a precursor to the modern “e-sports” of today. In fact, I personally find the arcade scene of the 90s more appealing that e-sports of the modern era. Many players today simply play online, whereas arcadegoers had local scenes and made local teams that would compete in nationwide tournaments. For example, Virtua Fighter had the “Beat-Tribe Cup” (and still does today), which had teams from all around different regions competing in 5 on 5 action.

Arcades are a bit more popular in other parts of the world as well. One great website that documents the more lively arcade scene is Arcade Tokyo, detailing the good and the bad of venues not only in Tokyo but all over Japan. There are redemption games, although they are usually crane games that dangle a prize directly in front of the player instead of offering tickets. There are also a lot of older games still available for play, which is a bit different from what we see in many local arcades. The site is a fun glimpse into arcades a hemisphere away and shows a lot of the charm that they inherently have. I would certainly like to visit many of the places shown — while American arcades are certainly fun, especially for kids, I think that these livelier arcades offer more fun, and for all age demographics.

 

Reading 08: The Play and Peril of Mobile Games

With the rise of smartphones, the world of gaming changed not only in terms of the content being delivered, but also the means by which players access the games and by which developers sell them. Previously, sales for handhelds like the Game Boy and Game Gear worked just like those of console games — players would purchase the physical game media at the store, at which point they would have the full game experience at their hands when they brought the cartridge home. While handheld game consoles still enjoy a lot of popularity, the vast majority of revenue comes from games for smartphones. Sometimes, they are sold in the same manner, albeit in a digital form, as players can purchase entire games through their phones “app store” or marketplace. Most of the big-name mobile games are “free-to-play,” however, in that the player can download the game free of charge, but must deal with ads as a result. In fact, the biggest source of money for developers is “micro-transactions,” where players can use real money to get in game upgrades and hit goals faster than players without them would.

After playing Candy Crush Saga, I can’t say that I’m personally a fan of this model. After losing all tries, players have to wait several hours before giving the game another go to get to the next stage. However, players can buy more lives. I feel that this mode aims frustrate players and then try to coerce them into wasting money on lives. This is bad enough, but even worse is that players aren’t even guaranteed to get to the next stage, and might end up stuck with the same content despite the money they just spent. Furthermore, I feel that this targets kids, urging them to spend tons of money by dangling these virtual rewards in front of them. While kids (myself included) have been wasting their parents’ money on video games for decades now, at least one game used to just have one price tag and that was it. With these games constantly being updated and the limitless nature of these upgrades and virtual items, players can spend hundreds of dollars on one game. The games are purposely made very addictive, which does not really help matters.

One mobile game that I enjoy playing is called Pinball Arcade, and as its name suggests, it is a pinball simulator. What I enjoy about it is that the tables are all accurate recreations of real tables, some even dating back to electromechanical machines of the ’70s. The game is free to download, but the tables must be purchased individually for full play. However, every table in the library offers a free trial, where the players can enjoy the machine up to a certain high score before being booted back to the menu. Every month, however, four tables are temporarily available for free, called the “tables of the month.” Upon each new rotation, the previous tables are made unavailable again and replaced with four more. When I play the game, I usually play in this mode. Table sales aren’t the only source of cash for the game though, as there are also ads when playing the trials and tables of the month. I think that this business model is very fair, as players are never forced to buy anything unless they want that content, and have full access to it once its purchased, only spending more money if they want an entirely different table to add to their collection. I haven’t personally spent any money on the game, and the ads don’t bother me, so I have no complaints on this particular mobile game.

While I’m not the biggest fan of the “freemium” model, I can’t really blame these companies because making money is the primary goal of this software industry in the first place. However, I think the dangers of these seemingly free games can be expensive for players, and that the addictive nature of them must be duly noted before the bills rack up.

Reading 06: The Rapid Advancement of Computer Graphics

Starting in the fourth quarter of the 20th century, computer graphics became an increasingly integral part of media, especially film and video games. The growth of this technology was certainly exponential; early short films from studios such as Pixar took days and weeks to render in the 1980s, meanwhile today we have video game systems that can push out millions upon millions of polygons in the blink of an eye. In the early days, computer graphics were used sparingly in film, as they were easily discernible from live action objects that were actually in front of the camera. Tron, for example, used computer graphics very artistically to create a unique style. A decade later, Toy Story changed the game entirely as the first popular full-length feature film to be made entirely with computer animation, just as Snow White had done for cartoons decades prior. Nowadays, computer graphics are used constantly in action movies, and are often so advanced that they can be a bit difficult to discern from actual live action. In some ways, this has detracted from the art of cinema. Practical effects like those seen in 1977’s Star Wars are rarely seen in modern movies, and anyone who has seen documentaries or behind-the-scenes info on how those films were made would surely appreciate the craftsmanship that went into those special effects. Even today, many of those effects look better than their CG analogs in new movies.Computer animation has also improved to the point where it can almost match the expression of classic hand-drawn animation. However, even 2D animation is now done in computers with programs like Flash, and rarely matches the look of older cel-drawn animation.

Times have changed in regard to the use of 3D computer graphics in video games, as well. Virtua Fighter is one of Sega’s many influential arcade games, and the series is a great example of how polygonal graphics have benefited the medium of video games and especially the fighting game genre. The original Virtua Fighter uses flat-shaded polygons and runs at 30 frames per second, and its sequel upped the ante one year later in 1994 with texture mapped visuals and a very impressive framerate of 60fps. Even today, the game still looks very good. However, the smooth framerate is very beneficial because of the speed and precision required in the intense head-to-head matches. Sprite based graphics only had so many frames to work with per character, and the sprite animations couldn’t really match the speed of the much smoother polygonal animation. Today, even 2D fighters like Street Fighter use polygonal graphics, and the gameplay benefits greatly from the smoother and more precise animations.

Crash Bandicoot was one of my favorite games as a kid, and remains so today. The original was released in 1996, and is still one of the most graphically impressive games that I’ve ever seen. Naughty Dog used clever fixed camera movement and very skilled programming to load certain parts of the level as the player went, and the game pushed a huge amount of polygons for an early PS1 game, and had very colorful and detailed visuals. Back then, only the most skilled developers could get the most out of a console, and seeing how favorite games would work around hardware limitations was very exciting for me as a player. Nowadays, consoles and PCs are so powerful that this challenge doesn’t really exist anymore. The advancement of these graphics happened rapidly and is interesting to look at today, but it does not seem like there is much further for them to go, and that the days of challenging hardware limits are behind us.

Reading 05: Video Games in the Physical and Virtual Worlds

Starting in the mid-2000s, games with more involved input than a simple controller started to become very popular. The trend did not start in that era, as we learned in Mara’s presentation in class — many video game peripherals existed in the 80s like the Konami Laser Scope, and served to get the player more immersed in the onscreen action. In the 90s, music games like Dance Dance Revolution and Samba De Amigo allowed players to have fun and also get a pretty mean workout in at the same time. The mid-2000s, however, are when these games really broke into the mainstream. For example, it was impossible to escape the allure of Guitar Hero at the time, practically every kid at the time had a plastic guitar or two sitting in their basement, before the band peripherals evolved to the drum set and microphone down the line. Even more apparent, the Wii’s controller itself was a motion gimmick, tying the entire console and hardware to this new wave of games.

I’m a fan of these games, to an extent. I think that the best ones have their own dedicated peripherals. My personal favorite of the bunch, Samba De Amigo, uses plastic maracas that sense height from the ground using sonar sensors. The maracas obviously don’t have many uses outside of that target software, but when the game itself is so much fun then I have no qualms about spending the money for two sets. Samba and DDR both started in the arcades, however, so Sega and Konami had a chance to test the waters and make sure that people enjoyed the concept before bringing it to the home.

Meanwhile, I think that trying to implement these controls into more traditional games is not a fruitful endeavor. I never personally enjoyed using the Wii Remote’s motion controls; it rarely amounted to anything more than pointing a cursor on the screen to do something that would be far easier with the analog stick or shaking the thing to accomplish something that could’ve just been done by pressing a button. In Super Mario Galaxy, for example, the player could point the Wii Remote at the screen to pick up little jewels. However, I honestly felt that this broke the immersion and I would just walk over to the jewels and pick them up instead because I didn’t feel like picking up the Wii remote and waving it around at the screen. In fact, nearly every game that I enjoyed on the Wii could have been played with the GameCube controller, which was immensely preferable. One title that I did enjoy with the motion controls was the second Rayman Raving Rabbids game, which was released shortly after the console’s launch and featured some 4-player minigames. In one, the characters were in a movie theater and you had to hold the controller up to your head like a cell phone and then put it down when the usher came in, or else face a point deduction.

I’ve never tried a virtual reality or augmented reality game, but they seem like very cool concepts. Horror games, for example, would be lot scarier if they surrounded the player with this technology rather than being confined to a TV screen. The accuracy and accessibility of the hardware will be key to determining how fun the games will actually be, however. Based on what I’ve heard in class, some of the new technology like the shifting mats that emulate terrain for players sound like really cool ways to play. I think that things like these could help to bring arcades back to the mainstream, as most people probably don’t have the space or money for such a device in the house. In the end, only time will tell how these new titles stand aside traditional TV video games.

Reading 04: Gaming in the 90s

I had a lot of fun playing some Sega Genesis games on the Archive.org library, especially considering that I am a big fan of the machine in general. This is a fun time to talk about the reasons to buy one console vs. another, especially considering that this generation of video game systems is the only one where there was no clear winner; worldwide sales between the SNES and Genesis were nearly identical, whereas in every other generation one console dominates — NES, PS1, PS2, etc. I think that back in those days, the games were the distinguishing features of the console. Nearly every good game of the era was exclusive to its respective console; the only big-name multiplatform games I can think of off the top of my head are Street Fighter II, NBA Jam, and some of the later EA Sports games like NHL 94. Back then, if you liked slower one-time experiences like role-playing games and adventure titles like Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda, you got a Super Nintendo. If you were big on action games and replayable arcade-style titles like Sonic and the Shinobi series, you went with the Genesis. Developers also tailored third-party titles to each console’s respective strengths, adding to this dual nature. Nowadays, I feel that this is no longer what sets game consoles apart from one another. Almost every big name game is mutliplatform these days, either appearing on all 3 platforms or skipping the Nintendo one. I would say this started after the Dreamcast was discontinued; since then, games like Grand Theft Auto, the NBA 2K series, Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, Fortnite, and many more have appeared on PlayStation and Xbox and often PC as well. The hardware specs between the PlayStation and Xbox machines are nearly the same as well — the naked eye can’t tell the difference on sight between the two like back in the PS1/N64/Saturn days. I don’t play very many modern games and don’t own a current system, but if I had to pick the most important considerations when choosing a format in the modern era, I’d probably go with price and brand loyalty.

In terms of actually playing the games, I started off with one of my favorites, the original Sonic game. I think the game plays just as well today as it did back then, with wonderful graphics and sound and phenomenal level design that makes the game a blast to play even though I’ve completed it dozens of times.

I played a bit of Shinobi III as well, but the game is a bit hard to play on a keyboard. It is, however, a very fun action game that always keeps the player engaged with the protagonist’s limited ammo and the high difficulty. One Genesis game that I really like that was not found in the archive selection is ToeJam and Earl, which is a two-player game featuring randomly generated levels like we discussed in class. The screen splits when the players move apart, and the two players work together to find all of the ship pieces and get the alien protagonists back to their home planet of Funkotron. My friends and I play this game here at school regularly, and always enjoy it due to the gameplay, humor, and music.

I tried some PC DOS games, as well. I enjoyed Wolfenstein 3D and thought it was cool to play a first-person shooter with just the arrow keys and mouse buttons, aiming on a flat plane. I’m not the biggest fan of having dogs as enemies, though the game’s fast-paced action is certainly enjoyable.

Overall, I’m a big fan of games from this era and really enjoyed playing some of these titles.

Reading 03: Consoles and Computers

This week, we learned a good amount about playing video games on personal computers as well as on the first wave of dedicated video game consoles. Even in the early days of the gaming hobby, there were a number of differences between the two. One advantage of gaming on a PC is the ability to modify the games. For example, many players modded Doom not long after the game came out, as we learned in several classmates’ presentations. This is easier to do on PC, because tools can be downloaded and created as well as shared easily over the internet and with browsers. PCs also have keyboards built in nearly 100% of the time, whereas consoles rarely have them as a peripheral. PCs also have IDEs for coding, making hacking easy. Hacking for video games came much later down the line, and PCs were involved in this as well. Like we learned in Jeffrey’s presentation, hacking for older systems like the Super NES is done on a computer with emulators.

Another key difference between the two is the variance between different personal computers. Every console is the same (until now with consoles like the Xbox One X that promise higher framerates), so every player gets the same experience when they are playing the same game. As we learned in class, different computer users get different experiences with performance. For example, some games wouldn’t even have working sound because the companies had to program sound drivers to work for each possible computer. Even now, PC games have different performance settings that can be adjusted based on the computer the gamer is using. My roommates play a lot of the PC game “League of Legends,” and they all use different performance settings based on the strengths of their respective machines. This would, however, make programming for a PC game much more difficult because of the multitude of different machines and users that must be taken into account. We also learned that there are gaming-specific PCs for serious players, like the Alienware products that Jess showed us in her presentation.\

I think that many of the popular PC-exclusive online multiplayer games like Starcraft are better suited to the PC because of the keyboard and mouse interface as well as the easy accessibility of internet access. Consoles, meanwhile, are better suited to action games that require a controller or arcade stick, because those types of controllers come standard for the platform. Games that require wacky peripherals, like the Guitar Hero guitars, are also better suited to consoles, because the developers would only need to program the controller once for each console rather than making drivers for each different type of PC. I haven’t played many games on PC, but I definitely see the advantages of both types of hardware for players of all types.

Reading 02: The Deceptively Simple Joys of the Golden Age

In my opinion, the titles presented in the “Golden Age” of arcade video games are still incredibly accessible and fun in the current, “modern” age, and have lost little if any of the charm, excitement, and entertainment that they provided upon their original releases. The games seem, on a surface level, to be very simple. Yet, in many cases, this initial appearance belies gameplay that offers greater complexity and engagement than many modern titles.

As we saw in class in one of the videos, many of these games were designed to take a quarter from the player and then ensure a “game over” as soon as possible to keep shuffling arcade-goers in line to play and ensuring maximum profits for arcade operators. This “arcade-style” design is often as cheap or unfair to players, especially by those who prefer the easier and more predictable style of later console games like Super Mario World. However, in my opinion, this is actually a huge plus for the Golden Age games. For example, many players can be daunted at first, upset that they don’t complete levels on the first try like in console games. However, the experience of retrying and improving one’s skillset is incredibly enjoyable, especially today when the games can often be played for free on the internet. A player can play for quite a while on a single credit once he or she has practiced enough. Furthermore, these arcade games remain fun to replay for practically an eternity, as one can always improve on a high score and try to top the scores of friends. Console games like The Legend of Zelda series do not offer this same replayability, and offer little to the player after the first playthrough — I think that this deficiency is what led to practices like the speedrunning that we discussed in class, as players made up for the games’ intrinsic lack of the replayability offered via the “arcade-style” philosophy. To sum it up, I’ve never once felt a desire to replay Zelda: The Wind Waker, but I will always pay to play one of my favorite old arcade games if I see a cabinet, eager to see how my performance will stack up to the high score emblazoned of the screen.

Another great feature of these older arcade games is the tension that they provide. Space Invaders is often cited as one of the first and one of the greatest games of this era, and it is still a great experience to play it today — the feeling of excitement when dodging enemy fire and trying to return precise shots is increased exponentially because the player only has a few lives and just gets one attempt at that high score before having to start over. The disappointment of coming within a few points of the high score only to lose and have to start over from 0 in your next attempt to be immortalized on the high score screen is a tough pill to swallow. Meanwhile, if a player somehow manages to get a Game Over in Super Mario World despite all the extra lives thrown at them, the player simply starts over on the level with no real penalty toward the main goal of reaching the end.

Another great example of the high quality of these older games comes from what is undoubtedly the most famous title of the era, Pac-Man. The ghosts each have their own “personalities” based on how they move and attack the player. The red one chases the player, the pink one tries to ambush by getting in front, etc. The player is defenseless against them except in the few moments when the tables are turned and Pac-Man can eat the ghosts. This near-constant state of vulnerability means that with repeated playthroughs, one becomes accustomed to reading how the ghosts will move and plans a strategy accordingly. This gives the iconic enemies of Pac-Man quite a bit of personality, and keeps the game fresh to play. The enemies of modern games usually have simple attack patterns and are often just fodder for the player to shoot or smack with a sword. Most boss fights in modern games do not even exude an iota of the personality or depth of the ghosts from Pac-Man. Newer games promise a “800-hour campaign” that very few people would be inclined to play through twice. Meanwhile, Pac-Man, a game that’s often over in a few minutes, is still being played today, nearly 40 years after its initial release.

Reading 01: The Early Days

The very early days of video games are very interesting from a programming perspective as well as from a design viewpoint. The Magnavox Odyssey that we looked at in class provided a lot of revolutionary features right out of the gate, like having interchangeable game cards rather than being hard-coded to play one game like the Pong machines that followed it. It was also really interesting to hear how the designers at Atari saw the Odyssey and then adapted the idea into an arcade game, which inspired many imitators in the home market that were in many ways less advanced than the Odyssey was.

I’ve always thought that it was incredibly cool how games were made with discrete logic and not processors in the early days, but was very interested to learn about some of the games we saw in class, such as the tic tac toe game, that were made entirely by hooking up wires. One famous game that was made with discrete logic was Sega’s Monaco GP, released in 1979. The game is incredibly fast for a game of its era, and featured a smoothly scrolling screen that followed the car vertically from a bird’s eye view. The game was also extremely colorful for its time. It was made with discrete logic chips, and its high score board was a set of seven segment LED numbers on the side of the cabinet, rather than something on the in-game display. One disadvantage of this approach, although clearly not known at the time, is that Monaco GP can’t be emulated due to its lack of a processor. However, the impressive gameplay action shows some of the upsides of the discrete approach with the fantastic colors and speed. For example, Space Invaders is a famous game that came out one year prior in 1978, and its black and white graphics and stationary screen are less visually impressive. That game used a processor; Monaco GP, meanwhile, was one of the last discrete logic arcade games. Technologically, this is a very interesting aspect of early video games.

From a gameplay perspective, I think that these early games collectively presented some very great opportunities and fun qualities. I think that the simplicity of these games was a very big plus, and still is today. There is often a social aspect, as many early games like Pong were for two players. There was always a competitive aspect, as two-player games offered direct head-to-head play, while one-player games often had the incentive of high scores. Players could try to best their own scores or attempt to get a higher score than their friends; playing 2-player alternating games like Ms. Pac-Man with a friend to see who can get the higher score in one playthrough is still very fun. Modern games are often a much more solitary experience — adventure games, for example, offer practically no interaction between players, as the competition is just between the player ajd the game world. I think that the simplicity of these games gives them a certain charm, and the way that they engage friends in direct friendly competition makes them a ton of fun to play even today.

 

Reading 00: Board Games to Video Games

I think that video games and board games are correlated in many ways, and that the former did not necessarily replace the latter. I think that the aspect of social interaction is a key factor that they both share. It is true that many video games are now played online, so there is little face to face contact. However, many of my favorite video games are played by a group of people in a single room, and I personally play far more local multiplayer games than online ones at the current moment; my friends and I play local multiplayer games all the time at my place on the Dreamcast, and we also regularly play splitscreen modern games like Halo in a friend’s room. I think that one of the most fun experiences can be playing fighting games like Street Fighter or Virtua Fighter as a team affair. The games are one-on-one fighting games, but teams consist of a number of players in a specific who are eliminated when they lose. So, the best player should be the last one up, just like in a track and field relay race. I’ve watched many videos of hundreds of people crammed into a small room in an arcade watching various small teams compete on just one pair of arcade machines. One thing that differentiates them is a sort of physical aspects. For example, everyone can enjoy a drink or a snack while hanging out and playing a board game, simply doing so while waiting for their turn to roll the dice or draw a card, etc. This is tough to do when all players are holding a game controller and firing away on the buttons. However, playing the fighting games mentioned above is a good way to circumvent this, as only two players will have their hands occupied at once, while everyone else cheers on their teammates. The ability to take a board game and play it anywhere, without electricity or expensive accessories like controllers, is a big plus of that type of game.

I think that the element of chance is one more thing that links the two types of games. Board games almost always involve rolling dice and drawing cards, which randomizes the process and adds some unpredictability to the game. A notable example of a game that doesn’t do this is chess, but most games fall into the prior category. Most video games also have a similar type of randomization. I’ve heard many people talk about RNG, or random number generation, all the time when talking about video games, which would do the same thing as rolling a dice. In a broader sense, however, the element of chance is always present in any game, be it a board game, sport, or video game, as any player can have a lucky run and take an unlikely victory, which adds to the fun.

Lastly, I think that the element of competition might be the biggest aspect of the relationship between board games and video games. Players always want to win and one-up their friends, ganging up on each other and trying to take the victory. Both types of games work hand-in-hand in this regard, so players can alternate between the two to take out their friendly vendettas on one another. Playing one category of game does not in any way mean that the other can’t be played later. So, I think that the two are just slight variations on one fun and competitive activity, and will always be closely related.