We’ve already talked about how the gaming industry has changed over the years, but let’s delve into why the 70s and 80s are still talked about so highly
Using the method exposed by the music critic and sociologist Simon Reynolds in his famous essay entitled RETROROMANIA: music, pop culture and our obsession with the past, we try to trace a brief history and a necessary comparison between two different but at the same time stimulating eras regarding the context of video games.
We are therefore comparing two proclaimed times to see if we have missed out or are currently living in the golden age of modern gaming.
Now if we search for this term, we will find this result: “The Golden Age of Arcade Video Games was the period of rapid growth, technological development, and cultural influence of arcade video games, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. . Notice how the result focuses on arcade games? Yes. We’ve noticed that too. Now we don’t have a problem with arcade games (it’s kind of our thing, anyway) but when the golden age of gaming is mentioned, people tend to only talk about arcade games. What about modern games?
Take for example Minecraft. It is literally the best selling video game of all time with 238,000,000 in sales and is not from the golden age of gaming (aka the 70’s and 80’s). It’s twenty years old – released in 2011, to be exact. So, what are we getting at? The golden age of video games may not only be tied to the arcade games of the 70s/80s. In fact, some say we may be living in the second wave, the modern golden age of gaming.
Let’s compare the two different periods for the video game sector
We’ve already talked about how the gaming industry has changed over the years, but let’s delve into why the 70s and 80s are still talked about so highly when discussing the world of gaming and its relationship with modern games.
The golden age of gaming in the seventies
While the exact years differ, most sources agree that the golden age for gaming was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Technology journalist Jason Whittaker, in The Cyberspace Handbook, places the beginning of the Golden Age in 1978, with the release of Space Invaders. During the late 1970s, arcade game technology had become sophisticated enough to offer good quality graphics and sound, but it was still quite simple (realistic visuals and full motion video weren’t yet available, and only a few games used voice spoken). Therefore, the success of a game had to be based on simple and fun gameplay. This emphasis on gameplay is why many of these games continue to be enjoyed today despite having been largely superseded by modern computer technology. If people have a pleasant experience, it could be talked about for years. Which is what we see happening to this day.
The Golden Age of the 70s and 80s
The “Golden Age” of the 1970s and 1980s was a time of great technical and design creativity in arcade games. Games were designed in a wide variety of genres while developers had to work within strict limits of available processor power and memory. The era also saw the rapid spread of arcades to North America and Japan. The period from the appearance of Space Invaders in 1978 (as mentioned above) until The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 is often referred to as the golden age of arcade games. It was then that 8-bit arcade video games emerged to dominate popular culture, coin-operated video games appeared in every mall, and soon the Atari 2600 and its competitors popularized home video games by taking advantage of arcade ports. We could say that it’s about being able to produce fun games that have never been made this way. It was exciting and competitive with advancements like new hardware, laserdisc players, and new controls like trackballs, realistic steering wheels, light guns, and other special controls like pedals for racing games. Basically, it seems that the 70s and 80s are held in such esteem in the gaming world because so much was made with limited resources compared to what we have on the market today.
The second golden age: the years between 2010 and 2019
For many, we’ve just lived in the golden age of gaming. Advances in technology, fast and stable internet becoming the norm, and the rise of the casual and hyper-casual gamer has brought gaming into a new era. Also, with both vintage gaming options and current hi-tech options available, people feel they have the best of both worlds, thus marking the 2000s as the true golden age for gaming. On a public gaming forum, one user commented that everyone’s “golden age” is really just a sliding time slot that depends on what people grew up with and which console they should have chosen.
They continue: The Golden Age has always seemed like a term to describe a time that was great until it all went wrong. Right now, after the video game crash of the early 1980s, we’re in the golden age. The audience for video games has steadily increased, revenues for developers have increased, technology for games has improved, and the cost of games has stayed within inflationary levels. All this creates the basis for being able to speak of a second golden age as regards the context of current videogames. Not to mention the attractions that belong to the online gaming circuit and digital casinos which experienced a sensational boom between 2010 and 2020, thanks also to gaming apps for smartphones and tablets.