Silly title aside, if one were to spend way too much time thinking about it, the video game industry and the rock music industry have developed along similar parallels, right down to the vocal and possibly crazy denouncements of both industries as either being the work of Satan or inspiring a generation of killers. In the early days you had people just experimenting with what they could get their hands on (Bushnell in video games, Clapton and Hendrix among others in music). Eventually as the respective industries expanded you had more companies branching out in the medium, even going as far to do extravagant “album-cover” style game boxes (pre-Dark Times Electronic Arts), in a reflection of the Progressive Rock movement. And in time you got legendary figures in the industry like John Carmack, John Romero, Peter Molyneux, Warren Spector, Richard Garriot, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, and others. Some of whom burned out, faded away, or are still making games now and expanding their horizons within the industry.
One of the few movements in both industries that have run almost concurrently is the resurgence of “indie” movement. Just as a lot of independent groups and labels have made strides in the music industry, the independent games market has really taken off in the past few years, especially thanks to digital distribution via places like Steam and X-Box Live Arcade.
Well anyway I know this wasn’t a lot to talk about but it was more of a random musing rather than a fully-thought-out essay.
(h)EAD Games 