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A United States Senate subcommittee took testimony on violent content in games, with legislators warning that federal regulation would follow if the industry did not act. Executives from competing companies traded blame, and a ratings body was promised.
These hearings are the origin point of content regulation in American games. A credible legislative threat, rather than any law, produced the rating system still in use, and the episode established self-regulation as the industry's standard answer to political pressure for the next two decades.
id Software's shooter combined varied level geometry, networked play against other people, and data files players could replace. Shareware distribution put it on office and campus computers everywhere, and its editable resources created modern modding culture.
One shareware release from a small studio established three durable practices at once: the first-person shooter as a mass genre, networked competitive play as a reason to own a computer, and player-made content as a legitimate part of a game's life. Few single releases have influenced as much of what followed.
Facing the prospect of federal legislation, American publishers organized a single body to assign age and content ratings to games. Retailers adopted it quickly, and industry self-regulation became the standing answer to political pressure.
Self-regulation, adopted under pressure, kept content decisions inside the industry rather than in statute. The labels changed how games are marketed and sold across North America, gave parents a reference point they had never had, and became the industry's principal argument whenever legislators returned to the subject.
Sega's new console reached Japan with two main processors and hardware exceptionally strong at two-dimensional work but awkward for polygons. Its complexity discouraged outside developers, and a rushed American release made the position worse.
This console is the standard illustration of hardware complexity as a commercial liability. Its capabilities were real, but a machine only its maker can program well cannot attract the outside publishers a platform depends on, a lesson later hardware designers cited explicitly when choosing conventional architectures.
Sony entered the console business after a disc partnership with Nintendo collapsed, bringing straightforward three-dimensional hardware, inexpensive disc manufacturing and tools developers liked. The machine reached North America and Europe the following September.
A consumer electronics company with no history in games reorganized the industry within a single generation. Cheap discs, approachable development and marketing aimed at adults moved games decisively out of the toy aisle, and the platform economics established here shaped every console business that came afterward.
The first Electronic Entertainment Expo opened in Los Angeles, giving games a professional trade show instead of a corner of a consumer electronics event. It became the industry's fixed announcement date for more than twenty years.
Games acquired the institutional apparatus of a mature industry: a trade show of their own, a fixed annual news cycle and a venue where retailers, press and developers met face to face. For more than twenty years the event set the rhythm of announcements, launches and coverage across the whole business.
Microsoft released the first version of DirectX, letting Windows programs reach graphics, sound and input hardware almost directly. It ended the game industry's dependence on MS-DOS and made Windows a coherent target for commercial development.
A software layer decided which platform the computer game industry would live on. By giving Windows the low-level access games required, Microsoft consolidated a fragmented field around one operating system and one hardware interface, a position it has held for roughly three decades.
Boards built on the Voodoo chipset from 3dfx Interactive reached buyers during 1996, moving texture drawing off the main processor and onto dedicated hardware. An accelerated computer suddenly outclassed the new consoles.
Consumer hardware acceleration reset the argument between computers and consoles. Instead of being a compromise platform, a personal computer with the right card became the place where games looked best, at the cost of a purchase console owners never had to make. That trade-off has defined the market ever since.
Game Freak's Pokemon Red and Green reached Japanese stores on February 27, 1996, roughly seven years into the Game Boy's run. Collecting creatures and trading them over a link cable turned an aging handheld into a phenomenon.
A hardware generation that looked finished was extended by several years on the strength of one design, and that design worked by making other players necessary rather than optional. It also showed that a game could seed a franchise across television, print and merchandise rather than the other way around.
id Software released Quake as shareware on June 22, 1996. Its engine rendered genuinely three-dimensional spaces, and multiplayer over the internet shipped with the game rather than arriving later as an add-on.
Three things that now define online shooters arrived together here: true three-dimensional geometry, mouse aiming as the assumed default, and internet play as a shipped feature rather than a local network trick. The volunteer infrastructure that formed around it became the template for how multiplayer scenes organize themselves.
Nintendo's 64-bit console reached Japan on June 23, 1996 alongside Super Mario 64. An analog stick and a camera the player could swing solved problems that had defeated earlier attempts at three-dimensional play.
The control scheme worked out here, an analog stick for movement paired with a separately controlled camera, is still how nearly every three-dimensional game is played. That is an unusual degree of persistence for an interface decision, and it settled a question that had been holding back the industry's move into 3D.
Meridian 59 opened commercially in September 1996, offering a first-person persistent world shared by many players for a fixed monthly charge. It is frequently cited as the first commercial 3D massively multiplayer role-playing game.
The subscription model that funded online worlds for the next two decades was proven here, along with the basic proposition that a game could be a place people pay to visit rather than an object they buy once. Both ideas outlived the game itself by a very wide margin.
Core Design's Tomb Raider appeared in the autumn of 1996, pairing third-person exploration of three-dimensional ruins with Lara Croft. The character escaped the game almost immediately, turning up in advertising, music press and mainstream magazines.
A single character carried a franchise into mainstream media without a film or television series to introduce her, reversing the usual direction of licensing. The game also established third-person navigation of three-dimensional environments as a form distinct from the shooter, and showed that a British studio could produce a global property.
Square released Final Fantasy VII in Japan on January 31, 1997. Spread across three discs, with pre-rendered backgrounds and long cinematic sequences, it became the game that sold the genre to Western audiences.
A genre that had been commercially marginal outside Japan became a mass-market category in North America and Europe on the strength of one release. It also demonstrated what optical storage was actually for, and turned cinematic presentation into an expectation rather than a novelty.
Rare's adaptation of a James Bond film reached North America on August 25, 1997. Objective-based missions and four-player split-screen deathmatch showed that a shooter could work on a console with a gamepad.
Console shooters had been ports or curiosities before this. Afterward they were a central commercial category, and split-screen competitive play became something console owners simply expected. The design also showed that a licensed film property could support serious original work rather than a rushed adaptation.
Origin Systems opened Ultima Online on September 24, 1997. Tens of thousands of subscribers shared a fantasy world with housing, crafting, a player-driven economy and few restrictions on attacking one another.
Persistent online worlds became a commercial industry rather than a research topic. The subscription business proved sustainable at a scale large publishers could not ignore, and the social problems the game exposed set the design agenda for the entire genre that followed it.
Blizzard released StarCraft on March 31, 1998, with three factions that played nothing alike and matchmaking built into the game. In South Korea it became the foundation of the first large professional gaming scene.
Competitive gaming as a paid profession, with leagues, sponsors, broadcasts and a governing body, was worked out here first. It also showed that a game's competitive life can be measured in decades if the underlying design is deep enough, which changed how publishers think about supporting a title after release.
Pokemon Red and Blue went on sale in North America on September 28, 1998, with the Game Boy Color arriving weeks afterward. A nine-year-old handheld line became a mass-market product all over again.
The Western launch turned a Japanese success into a global franchise and bought Nintendo's handheld business a second decade. It also provided the clearest demonstration yet that designing for exchange between players, rather than for solitary completion, can sell hardware on its own.
Valve's first game shipped on November 19, 1998. Rather than cutting to separate scenes, it staged its events in front of a player who never left the character's viewpoint, and its released tools produced a generation of modifications.
Narrative in games stopped being something that happened between the playable parts. The technique of staging events inside continuous play was adopted so widely that it is now essentially invisible. The modification community the game supported also produced both a lasting competitive title and the commercial logic behind digital distribution.
Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in Japan on November 21, 1998. A targeting system that locked the camera onto an enemy made close combat in three dimensions readable for the first time.
One control mechanism solved a problem that had made three-dimensional melee combat unworkable, and it was adopted so completely that its origin is now easy to forget. The game also established a structure for large-scale adventure design that shaped the genre well into the following century.
