As Dennis Lee, the director of brand marketing at the U.S. This is something the people behind the game understood. It was this, rather than more detailed graphics or more fluid controls, that made Pac-Man feel like a character that players could identify with. The physical act of collision stands in for the physical act of consumption - of eating. In Pac-Man, collision instead expresses something metaphorical. Pong, the first video game to achieve public success, featured two paddles that each tried to collide with a ball they rallied back and forth, with players scoring points when the ball hit the other player’s side of the screen. Spacewar!, developed at MIT in the early 1960s, featured two space ships that could (fatally) collide both with a star at the center of the screen and with missiles fired by the other player. It meant “one thing bumping into another,” with resulting effects. It meant “one thing bumping into another,” with resulting effects.Ĭollision in many of the earliest video games - Asteroids and Space Invaders, for example - was entirely literal. Unlike with Pac-Man, collision in games like Pong was entirely literal. Rather, Pac-Man felt like a character because of the game’s new approach to collision. Pac-Man’s simple animated circle was no technical leap beyond the player’s ship in Space Invaders. And the key to this wasn’t technological. This was something no previous game had really achieved. People wanted to watch a Pac-Man cartoon because Pac-Man felt like a character. Space Invaders even took over the cultural position of Pong, becoming the common cultural reference for a video game - such that its descending aliens are still used as an icon for video games even among people far too young to have played it in the late 1970s.īut Pac-Man took things to a new level. These games were hugely successful, inspiring the opening of arcades across the U.S. Collision was a core element of the games that dominated arcades and home consoles before Pac-Man’s arrival, such as Asteroids and Space Invaders. It’s so familiar to every video game player that most probably don’t give it a second thought, but it’s worth unpacking the significance of this operational logic. One of these techniques, collision, is the fundamental action of one game object running into another. In my new book, “ How Pac-Man Eats ,” I explain the design innovation that made Pac-Man possible - and so impactful - and explore how game developers still apply that approach to the fundamental techniques of games today, broadening the ideas that they can express. Unlike film’s metalanguage, which we’ve been discussing for a century, we are just starting to understand the fundamental techniques of video games. But unlike film’s metalanguage, which we’ve been discussing for a century, we are just starting to understand the fundamentals of video games - how their operations create meaning and shape our playing experiences. Just like film has a set of fundamental techniques - angles, cuts, pans, and zooms - there are fundamental techniques of video games. So what explains the enduring appeal of Pac-Man? In October, Pac-Man creators Bandai Namco released Pac-Man Geo, an app that turns real city streets into Pac-Man mazes earlier this month, British developers Steamforged Games released Pac-Man: The Card Game, a family tabletop game. This week, 40 years after Pac-Man’s launch, Google’s Stadia service will release Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle, yet another addition to the franchise. Clearly, Pac-Man’s appeal goes beyond games.Īnd yet the games themselves - there have been over 200 releases to date - continue to find a receptive audience. In the decades since its release, the game inspired a Martin Amis novel and a fashion collection, not to mention a slew of merchandise, from novelty boxer shorts to a commemorative alcohol from Matsunami Sake Brewery. Noah Wardrip-Fruin is the author of “ How Pac-Man Eats.”
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