History of video games/Book Development

Status

Milestones

• Minimum Viable Product achieved on November 27th, 2020.

Tasks

Fact Checking

While every attempt was made to use high quality sources and care taken to note things that were in dispute or otherwise unclear, extra fact checking can't hurt. As academic and journalistic interest in this topic grows, higher quality sources will appear that can be used to verify or rework existing content.

Furthermore, especially for obscure topics, new information can surface which upends previously held beliefs about a product or event.

As a side note, when long held existing beliefs about something are upended, the upending of common knowledge itself can become a historic event of note.

Improving Prose

This book should be easy and enjoyable to read. Improving prose and fleshing things out helps that goal.

Local Manual of Style

• Italicize game titles. Spell out general acronyms at least once, use numbers like 1,2,3 instead of writing them out one, two, three.
• Naturally for history book, keeping dates straight is a good idea. Spell out the entire month IE: The 2nd of January, 1980. This avoids confusion between American and International readers and editors as to the meaning of shorthand such as 02/01/1980, which Americans would say means January 2nd, 1980 and the rest of the world would say is February 1st, 1980.
• Use __NOTOC__ when appropriate.

Console Information

When reading about video game history it is quite useful to have console information on hand. As such special care has been given to writing about consoles.

• This book treats console generations as chapters, and the pages within as simple pages. Consider how the featured book Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter does chapter or character analysis when making these pages.
• While this is a history book, and not a users manual, occasionally it benefits the reader to bring up how a system is used. This is typically done for a few reasons.
  • Readers may actually own the device in question, or seek one out after reading about it.
  • The operation of the device is unusual, and of historic interest.
  • Some devices are flawed or have safety issues (Typically fire hazards, some devices have other odd problems). If the reader acquires or uses the device, they should be aware of these concerns.
• For header images of consoles, place one or two of the highest quality images you can find on commons of the most common models.

Planning

Printable Version

Once things are more in stone, Creative Commons and other license info for images should be included for printable versions. This is handled automatically for the web version of articles. This is hard to achieve because pages are always going to be in flux, ensuring license compliance when others edit will be difficult. Yet eliminating image use would vastly harm the educational value of this book.

Slideshows galleries are used for the web version as they allow a large picture without wasting bandwidth downloading large thumbnails of everything. A print version should convert these galleries to packed mode.

Expansion

While the scope of the current minimum viable product (MVP) is OK, there are more topics that may be covered within the scope of gaming history.

Care must be taken to not overextend scope, while still including useful information. At the same time, history not written about is eventually doomed to be lost.

Developing Topics

• Game conventions
• Game marketing
• Cheating
• Journalism

• Mobile game evolution, including interesting period of early smartphone ports of console games.
• Gaming Displays

Topics to consider

• Gaming on Devices not intended for Gaming
  • Tetris on Soldering Iron - 2017
  • Doom on Pregnancy Test - 2020
• Biographies
  • Difficult work, and a good number of pioneers are still alive.
  • Would be important info for the reader though.
  • May be better as separate WikiBooks.
• Adoption of Video Games in Education
  • Oregon Trail
  • Minecraft Redstone
  • In 2021 the University of Tennessee at Knoxville announced they would begin using Red Dead Redemption 2 as a tool for teaching American history.

Devices

• Ritmix RZX-50 - Russian Handheld Console?
• Digital Monster (virtual pet)

Games

• Hunt Down the Freeman

Consolidation

I'm considering unifying the different platform subsections under a /platforms/ group, as the current categories are often blurred and subjective, and a general group would provide greater organizational flexibility and coherence.

Pages to consolidate

• First generation of video game consoles
• Second generation of video game consoles
• Third generation of video game consoles
• Fourth generation of video game consoles
• Fifth generation of video game consoles
• Sixth generation of video game consoles
• Seventh generation of video game consoles
• Eighth generation of video game consoles
• Ninth generation of video game consoles
• Cloud gaming
• Microconsoles
• Open consoles

Book Subcategories

Instead of making stub chapters containing simple lists, which often overlap with each other, it is advantageous to categorize topics instead of creating niche lists. This automates work, and follows the style used by featured wikibooks such as the Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter.

Example Template:

Category:Book:History of video games/Open platforms

[[{{BOOKCATEGORY}}/Platforms/Open platforms]]

Categories * [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Home video game consoles]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Tabletop video game consoles]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Hybrid video game consoles]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Handheld video game consoles]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Computers]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Console versions of home computers]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Mobile phones]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Cloud]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Gaming on unconventional form factors]] ** [[Category:Book:History of video games/Platforms/Open platforms]]

• Geography
  • Gaming in the United States
  • Gaming in the United Kingdom
  • Gaming in France
  • Gaming in Japan
  • Gaming in South Korea
  • Gaming in North Korea
  • Gaming in the Soviet Union
  • Gaming in the Russian Federation
  • Gaming in Germany
  • Gaming in India
  • Gaming in Brazil
  • Gaming in space (This comes up a few times as milestones in astronaut leisure.)

Info Wanted

Obscure

• Fate of the MoMA Eve.
• Number of Red Bull Uzebox consoles made.
• Technical info on the Etch-A-Sketch Animator 2000.
• NES & SNES Classic CPU Frequency
• Swinxs specs

Korean

Someone with a knowledge of Korean language could really expand info on the following platforms. These consoles were important regionally, but not much information in English exists for these devices.

• GamePark consoles (Has the most info in English)
• Zemmix
• Gpang Phones (Almost nothing in English)

Expansion

• Etymology
  • Etymology of Video Game Console in French

Images

• 
  Wearable Gaming

Areas of Weakness

• Specific game info
• 1980's computer gaming scene.
• Missing Images
• History of video games/Printable version