You’ve come a looooong way, Pacman

Amidst the hoopla of the approaching NBA finals (and the apparent non-hoopla of the Stanley Cup finals) another championship, bringing together the greatest competitors in the world was played out this week – the XBox Pacman World Championship. As I watched Pacman afficianados who had been perfecting their craft since the mid-eighties, it occurred to me that as much as these ghost-fearing warriors had come a long way since then, so had the video game industry itself.

Back when Pacman was first introduced, it was one of the first video games to really begin to push its way into the mainstream.  A departure from primitive titles like Pong and Space Invaders, Pacman lacked some of that crudeness and actually had a mildly attractive look to it – in addition to the mind-bogglingly simple but wildly addictive gameplay that typified the games of the day.  This was before the average working class person spent 8 hours a day attached to a keyboard and mouse, and before the average teenage girl would ever think to complain to her friends about the need for a broadband connection.  Quite simply, technology, and gaming in particular, was for little boys and big geeks – and nobody else really wanted much to do with it.

Perhaps luckily for all of us, little boys and big geeks seemed to be sufficiently interested to justify Atari and Coleco giving away to Nintendo – and the revolution that became Super Mario Bros.  On the back of one of the first truly popular video games, things evolved again and soon Sega appeared on the scene, giving way to an actual console war between Nintendo’s then-aptly-named, Super Nintendo, the Sega Genesis and the flash-in-the-pan Turbo Grafx 16 – and we were just getting out of the eighties.

While I won’t continue this historical timeline any further (I really just wanted to mention the Turbo GrafX and perhaps find a way to squeeze Bonk’s Revenge in there – good.  I can digress now) the point is to illustrate that healthy competition has been a big part of the industry long before Bill Gates played his hand.  What this has meant is consistent and, at times, staggering innovations and leaps forward in gameplay, graphics and the overall quality of games from a conceptual and storytelling standpoint.

Now, with essentially three decades of evolution under its belt, the gaming industry is by no means a niche any longer.  Halo 3 will be released later this year and will likely puill in “opening weekend” numbers that will rival a Hollywood blockbuster, but again, that’s a game that will be targeted the original core audience of big geeks and little boys (with “little boys” really now describing any male between the ages of 14 and 45).  So clearly that core remains intact, but what all this competition and all these evolutions have really meant is that gaming is now for almost everyone – jocks have their sports games (kudos, NHL 93), women love puzzle games (where Tetris was unquestionable a huge early innovator), younger kids are now innundated with Mario titles, even those once thought to active for gaming have never been known to shy away from a round of Dance, Dance Revolution.

The reality is that gaming has become such an expansive industry that there’s now multiple titles for every niche imaginable across console, online, PC, mobile and handheld gaming platforms.  What was once something for only a select (and sometimes ostricized) niche, has grown exponentially and allowed that growth to help break down barriers to all ages, sexes and groups.  Late last year, the Nintendo Wii took yet another step in this ongoing evolution in creating a system which has set new standards in intuititve gameplay, welcoming audiences long-frustrated by controllers and joysticks to join in on the fun.

The industry has now officially become a titan, with the world’s richest companies vying for a share and to be seen as the next innovator – and they will succeed, time and again, be sure.  I just found it nice to see that as far as the gaming industry has come due to factors of advancing technology and cutting-edge innovation, the XBox Pacman contest reminded us that the evolution came the same way that any other niche succeeds – in connecting with the audience on a personal level.  In this instance, through characters, and through fun – and there’s perhaps no better example of this than Pacman himself.  May you continue eating power pellets for years to come, my friend.