by Hector Rasgado Jr.
for Writing and Rhetoric I
It’s been called a “video game fever.” During the early 1980s, arcade games
were immensely popular. A golden era kickstarted by Space Invaders and remained
aloft by popular titles such as Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Galaga. Due to their
compelling difficulty and “game over” frequency, players were keen paying to play those
games in repetition. As the capitalist market obliged, video games became big business.
Backed by the financial might of Warner and the talent of Activision’s hit titles
(like Pitfall, River Raidi, and Kaboom!), Atari were the first to dominate the home
console market. The VCS—later known as the 2600—was the standard that sold the
biggest games with aggressive marketing. Atari couldn’t manufacture enough products
to meet demand, so retailers committed to sales a year in advance. But to where there’s
gold, there’s a rush.
The kairotic moment of Atari’s success drew newcomers to the market, such as
Mattel’s Intellivision, Magnavox Odyssey, Vectrex, ColecoVision, Bally Astrocade, and
Fairchild Channel F. There was no control over third-party game publishing. So, a
cavalcade of games with questionable quality came to the mix. In 1982, the number of
games available in the US market doubled, and in 1983, they doubled again. Shelf
space was stretched so thin, per-game revenue dramatically lowered to the bottom.
Atari wasn’t concerned. They had properly made an image in their advertisements, and
an arrangement of all of their best titles. Consequently, they were in the lead. With
millions of dollars spent on marketing budgets, exclusive licenses, and tie-ins, they
stopped caring about the games themselves.
Pac-Man was the hottest arcade game of that era, and Atari had exclusive
console rights for it. However, with limited hardware of the 2600 and a cruel time
budget, the final product was... disappointing. It had crude graphics, grating sounds and
flickering visuals. Furthermore, Atari released two more lacklustre games for the
holidays of 1982. Raiders of the Lost Ark, an inferior version of Pitfall!, and E.T.: the
Extra Terrestrial.
ET was often cited as the reason for the video game market crash—calling it ‘the
worst game of all time’—but it was just a mediocre tie-in that was supposed to have
been an easy money maker. Instead, it was when marketing promises fails to deliver,
consumers developed a realisation that Atari lost ethos of what they once were. Richard
Lanham argued, “That we have to think about not just the stuff we produce—our
arguments, stories (and products)—but how we might bring positive attention to that
stuff.” In the end, Warner announced the earnings for the last quarter, and it wasn’t good
news. The systems weren’t selling. Unsold cartridges were returned from stores in
droves, and instead of meeting their ambitious growth predictions, their total losses for
the year stacked to half a billion dollars. Stock prices fell and panic hit Wall Street. The
upstart company originally driven by curiosity was torn apart by corporate greed and
refused to innovate. Where Atari led, their rivals followed—it was “game over” for a short
while.
The US wasn’t the only market for games—nor were video game consoles the
only option. Europe performed fine with 8-bit microcomputers such as the ZX Spectrum,
the Commodore 64, and the BBC Micro. It was like as if the crash never happened to
them. In Japan, their console market were developing. When Nintendo spotted the
kairotic moment of Atari’s failure, they decided to take control. In 1985, the Nintendo
Entertainment System arrived to the US, and redefined the next generation of console
gaming. As time moved on, cycles of successes and failures raged onward for the new
genres (not to be mistaken for the type of medium used to deliver an alphabetic text) of
gaming. Skateboarding games, 3D platformers, real-time strategy, World War 2
shooters, and motion controls until the times moved on. The same can be argued for
2011 - 2015 genres such as block-building games, open world action-adventure, and
early access survival sandboxes. What’s popular today won’t remain forever. While
those who put all of their eggs in one basket on a single success might suffer, the
industry became broader and more robust than ever.
In 2009, the game company, From Software, released a game called Demon’s
Souls. This game in particular lacked a proper affordance to the masses. It was
suppose to be recognised as an extremely difficult game reminiscent of games from the
1980s, but wasn’t thoroughly circulated to the masses until their next game launched. 2
years later, From Software released that spiritual successor named Dark Souls. With a
stronger circulation in their marketing campaign, they advertised with the game’s
slogan, “Prepare to Die.” It spawned memes throughout the social media on the game’s
well-regarded difficulty. Since 2016, From Software have been releasing sequels and
spiritual successors to the Dark Souls franchise; games like, Dark Souls II, Bloodborne,
and Dark Souls III. Due to the growing popularity for those kind of games, other game
developers begin to make their own remix of the franchise—similar to how Atari’s
followers made their own gaming consoles. But does remixing those games should be
phrased as stealing From Software’s ideas?
“Good artists copy, great artists steal,” was a phrase attributed to Steve Jobs
attributed to Pablo Picasso that has no evidence of ever being said by Pablo Picasso.
The quote began in 1892 by an author named W.H. Davenport Adams in a magazine
article praising the poet Alfred Tennyson whom he admitted, “adopts an image or a
suggestion from a predecessor, and works it up into his own glittering fabric...” Later, he
coined the canon, “that great poets imitate and improve, where as small ones steal and
spoil.” So, after one century of writers and artists remixing that quote and citing others
who remixed that quote such as T.S. Eliot (1920), Marvin Magalaner (1920), Esquire
Magazine that supposedly cited Lionel Trilling (1962), and Leslie Lamppost whom
supposedly cited Igor Stravinsky (1986), it became the version known today. Which
brings back to video games that shamelessly flaunts just as much stealing / remixing it
does.
Dark Maus, Salt & Sanctuary, and Eitr are 2D role-playing games whose
inspiration can be spotted in seconds. A remix is when materials, modes, genres, or
stories are manipulated and rearranged into something new. For these three games,
their developers caught the kairotic moment of the Dark Souls franchise becoming very
popular and were inspired by those games. These developers are a part of the video
game development field, but not necessarily triple-A (games with the highest
development budget), unlike From Software. Instead, they’re part of a small group from
that field known as indie game developers—they don’t have publisher financial support.
Their own glittering fabric is this gothic art style and 2D combat system that clearly were
inspired by Dark Souls and, by proxy, the lineage of predecessors that influence Dark
Souls itself. After all, there’s nothing truly original in media. Select any favourite among
any medium, start digging and there’s likely to be countless stolen elements from other
mediums. What some may consider a tragic fact of reality is that all that really matters is
whether or not what we consume was found compelling. Fortunately, these three indie
games are compelling (based on personal play-testing) since Dark Souls is the primary
focus to the point of settling a new standard to the genre. A lot of these games bear a
resemblance more than striking, it’s uncanny, barely enough to avoid a lawsuit and
perhaps more than enough to remain endearing. The irony of all of this is that these
games delivered what they set out to do: difficult games of the 1980s.
As for myself, I have taken liberty in the kairotic moment of the release of Dark
Souls III (March 24, 2016) to produce a parody—a meme. Utilising a different genre of
digital imagery and the arrangement of alphabetic text similar to the original Dark Souls
game, my remix is about taking the theme of Dark Souls’ brutal atmosphere and
transform it into an inviting, happy-go-lucky world where violence and massacre isn’t
tolerated. Instead, it’s about a world expressed through my drawing in finding the love
and compassion for one another. Familiar characters from the franchise cooking
marshmallows over a campfire. Engulfed in a meadow full of life and colour with a sun
looming over their heads smiling (literally). Especially staying true to the typography of
the game title and replacing the slogan, “Prepare to Die” with “Prepare to Love and
Tolerate One Another.” Despite my ethos not synergising with what people of the Dark
Souls fandom would expect, I hope for them to see the humour in this satire.
Citations
Breit, H. (1949, October). Reader's Choice. The Atlantic Monthly, 184(4), 76-78.
Davenport, W. H. Adams. (1892, June). Imitators and Plagiarists (Part 2 of 2). The Gentleman’s Magazine, 272, pp. 613-627.
Donovan, T. (2010). Replay: The history of video games. East Sussex, England: Yellow Ant
Grubb, B. (1988, April 11). Computers Keep the Courts Active. Sydney Morning Herald, pp. 20.
Harper, T. (2015, September 25). Eitr. Retrieved April 19, 2016, from http://eitrthegame.com
Miyazaki, H. (Director), & Uchiyama, D., & Hirono, K. (Producers). (2011, October 4). From
Software's Dark Souls: Behind-the-scenes [Video file]. Retrieved April 10, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAGRGMbl4HQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3alqNAIKVFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI_TkexroLE
Payne, D. R. (1974). Design for the Stage: First Steps. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Silva, James (August 28, 2014). "Salt and Sanctuary Coming Exclusively to PS4, Vita Next
Year". PlayStation Blog. Retrieved April 18, 2016. http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/08/28/salt-and-sanctuary-coming-exclusively-to-ps4- vita-next-year/
Wright, D. (2016, January 26). DarkMaus. Retrieved April 25, 2016, from http://www.darkmaus.com/about/
Yates, P. (1967). Twentieth Century Music: Its Evolution from the End of the Harmonic Era into the Present Era of Sound. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.