LudoScience

History of videogames (focused book)

Author(s) : Brad King, John Borland
Editor : Osborne / McGraw-Hill
Publication date : 09-01-2003
Language : english

This book focuses on the history of role-playing and adventure games made in the USA. The central theme of the book is the truly captivating story of Richard Garriott, the creator of famous rpg saga Ultima (1981-1999). The book details his path starting with his teenage years, when he discovered Dungeons & Dragons, a game that will greatly influence his first amateurs creations on the Apple II. After two years of work, he attempts to sell his first "real" game, Akalabehth (1980), by putting a copy of the game disk inside zip-lock bags, and gives them to the nearby computer store. Despite a very limited distribution, this game caught the attention of an editor, California Pacific, who will launch Garriott's career by editing his second game, Ultima I (1981). After a brief collaboration with Sierra On-line for Ultima II (1982), he founds his own company: Origin Systems. The book then details the creation of the other Ultima episodes, including the birth of Ultima Online (1997), that popularized the MMORPG game genre. Besides Garriott's story, the books also deals heavily with the story of id Software, the company behind Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. In addition to these games, the book explains the culture that surrounds them: LAN parties, online gaming, modding, etc. Beyond these two main topics, the book also goes briefly over other stories, such as the ones of Adventure, Zork, Sim City and violence in video games. In the end, the 250 pages of this book are an excellent report of the history of video games viewed from the city of Austin, Texas (USA), where both Origin Systems and id Software are born. The passionating story of Richard Garriott, full of unique information, is clearly the main feature of this really excellent book.