PC game
These publications provided game code that could be typed into a computer and played, encouraging readers to submit their own software to competitions.
[16] The effects of the crash were largely limited to the console market, as established companies such as Atari posted record losses over subsequent years.
The Amiga, X68000 and FM Towns were capable of producing near arcade-quality hardware sprite graphics and sound quality when they first released in the mid-to-late 1980s.
While often purchased to do work on evenings and weekends, clones' popularity caused consumer-software companies to increase the number of IBM-compatible products, including those developed specifically for the PC as opposed to porting from other computers.
The industry hoped that the CD-ROM and other optical storage technology would increase computers' user friendliness and allow for more sophisticated games.
These cards allowed IBM PC compatible computers to produce complex sounds using FM synthesis, where they had previously been limited to simple tones and beeps.
Although both Apple and IBM tried to avoid customers associating their products with "game machines", the latter acknowledged that VGA, audio, and joystick options for its PS/1 computer were popular.
There were also several other companies that produced early first-person shooters, such as Arsys Software's Star Cruiser,[38] which featured fully 3D polygonal graphics in 1988,[39] and Accolade's Day of the Viper in 1989.
In response to a reader's challenge to find a DOS game that played better than the Amiga version the magazine cited Wing Commander and Civilization, and added that "The heavy MS-DOS emphasis in CGW merely reflects the realities of the market".
[42] A self-reported Computer Gaming World survey in April 1993 similarly found that 91% of readers primarily used IBM PCs and compatibles for gaming, compared to 6% for Amiga, 3% for Macintosh, and 1% for Atari ST,[43] while a Software Publishers Association study found that 74% of personal computers were IBMs or compatible, 10% Macintosh, 7% Apple II, and 8% other.
[44] While leading Sega and Nintendo console systems kept their CPU speed at 3–7 MHz, the 486 PC processor ran much faster, allowing it to perform many more calculations per second.
Chris Crawford warned that it was "a data-intensive technology, not a process-intensive one", tempting developers to emphasize the quantity of digital assets like art and music over the quality of gameplay; Computer Gaming World wrote in 1993 that "publishers may be losing their focus".
Many companies sold "multimedia upgrade kits" that bundled CD drives, sound cards, and software during the mid-1990s, but device drivers for the new peripherals further depleted scarce RAM.
(The game Les Manley in: Lost in L.A. satirizes this by depicting two beautiful women exhaust the hero in bed, by requesting that he again explain the difference between extended and expanded memory.)
The success of 3D console titles such as Super Mario 64 and Tomb Raider increased interest in hardware accelerated 3D graphics on PCs, and soon resulted in attempts to produce affordable products with the ATI Rage, Matrox Mystique, S3 ViRGE, and Rendition Vérité.
During this time, the improvements introduced with products such as ATI's Radeon R300 and NVidia's GeForce 6 series have allowed developers to increase the complexity of modern game engines.
Issues such as difficulty in ensuring consistent experiences for all players,[60] and the uncertain benefit of first generation PhysX cards in games such as Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and City of Villains, prompted arguments over the value of such technology.
Titles such as Half-Life 2: Episode One took advantage of the idea, with mixed results rising from concerns for the amount of content provided for the price.
[76] Mods can compete with official downloadable content however, or even outright redistribute it, and their ability to extend the lifespan of a game can work against its developers' plans for regular sequels.
As publicly released development tools are rare, console mods usually refer to hardware alterations designed to remove restrictions.
[83][84] Origin, a new version of the Electronic Arts online store, was released in 2011 in order to compete with Steam and other digital distribution platforms on the PC.
This raises the prospect of purchases being lost if the distributor goes out of business or chooses to lock the buyer's account, and prevents resale (the ethics of which are a matter of debate).
[89][90] However, Stardock, the previous owner of competing platform Impulse, estimated that, as of 2009, Steam had a 70% share of the digital distribution market for video games.
CPU manufacturers historically relied mainly on increasing clock rates to improve the performance of their processors, but had begun to move steadily towards multi-core CPUs by 2005.
Multiplayer gaming was largely limited to local area networks (LANs) before cost-effective broadband Internet access became available, due to their typically higher bandwidth and lower latency than the dial-up services of the time.
Although it is possible to participate in online computer games using dial-up modems, broadband Internet connections are generally considered necessary in order to reduce the latency or "lag" between players.
This is particularly the case with classic home computers such as the Commodore 64, whose software often depends on highly sophisticated low-level programming tricks invented by game programmers and the demoscene.
The debate surrounds the influence of objectionable content on the social development of minors, with organizations such as the American Psychological Association concluding that video game violence increases children's aggression,[99] a concern that prompted a further investigation by the Centers for Disease Control in September 2006.
[100] Industry groups have responded by noting the responsibility of parents in governing their children's activities, while attempts in the United States to control the sale of objectionable games have generally been found unconstitutional.
The problem of addiction and its health risks seems to have grown with the rise of massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs).
