The Decade in Computing, Part 3: Trends

Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo Dolphin: 1999 was the year of thrilling new announcements in the world of video games. And the '90s was the decade that games jumped out of the arcade and into the home, sparked major advances in multimedia technology, and challenged Hollywood's dominance as a major entertainment industry.


		Arsenal in the Centerfold Want proof that video games aren't just for geeks or shut-ins anymore? How's this: Lara Croft, bodacious animated heroine of the Tomb Raider series, appeared on the cover and as the centerfold of Playboy magazine's August 1999 issue!

From 2D to 3D
The gaming revolution was more of an evolution, starting in the '80s with text-only games such as Infocom's Zork, arcade-like games on the Apple IIe, and the crude graphics of Sierra On-Line's Mystery House. The real breakthrough came in 1991 with Wolfenstein 3D, the original first-person shooter that paved the way for games such as Doom and Quake. Since then, the gaming industry has moved at a lightning pace from blurry, pixilated jerkers to intricately detailed 3D graphics, and this progress has been the impetus behind countless new multimedia technologies, from controllers to 3D accelerators, sound cards, and Direct X technology. Need proof of the progress? Just check out the graphics in 1998's hottest titles: Half-Life, Unreal, and Grim Fandango.

Gaming's tentacles even reached into the development of the Web, starting with early networked games such as Falcon 3.0 and progressing to such online games as Interactive Magic's WarBirds and id Software's Quake II and III, which allow multiple people to participate in the same game at the same time, with virtually no lag time in performance. Now Sega Dreamcast, which will ship on September 9, 1999, will be the first platform system to incorporate online gaming into its infrastructure from the get-go.

Bigger Than Hollywood
And the success of gaming is about far more than just technological innovation. Gaming has become a multibillion-dollar entertainment industry to rival the movie industry. According to a study commissioned by Sony, total sales for video games (all types, including PCs and consoles) in 1998 was $6.3 billion, and total sales for movies in the same year was $6.9 billion. Movie sales are still ahead in numbers, but the growth pattern tells a different story: video games rose 14.5 percent in sales in 1998, while the movie industry saw only a 10 percent increase.

Are movie industry bigwigs feeling the threat of the game industry? Possibly, but as the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We've already seen video games based on movies such as Star Wars, James Bond, and Star Trek, and more tie-ins are sure to follow.

Windows on the world