Charles Darwin has become a very influential literary and scientific figure with his environmental text On the Origin of Species. I have a great love for playing video games as well as learning more about how video games have changed since I was a child. From my observations, I have found that Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species also applies to the evolution of video games. The process of natural selection and the struggle for existence from Darwin can be applied to the evolution of video games.
Today, there is a huge “Console War” between three major video game companies: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. These companies have been battling each other for the past decade in their efforts of staying alive and profiting in the home video game market. They have developed new games in order for their games’ elements to be passed on to the next generation of games. This is compared to Darwin’s theory of the struggle for existence where species must survive in order to pass on their traits to the next generation. These game companies are competing for their dominance of the home console market and their ability to develop new consoles and games for consumers to play. They are constantly battling in order to survive and pass on traits of their games to the next generation of gaming. Game companies’ success in the market allows for Darwin’s theory of natural selection to take effect.
Darwin explained that natural selection drove the evolution of species; video games have gone through this same process. A specific example is a game that I am very familiar with; the 1985 classic Super Mario Bros. The basic elements of the game apply in the majority of games today; the availability of power-ups, getting hit by enemies or hazards damages the player’s character, and losing all the player’s health lost a life, losing all of one’s lives meant a game over and the player lost, and when the end of the game is reached or the goal is achieved then the game is over but the player wins. All these qualities still apply today in many games. The reason that these qualities live on is because the game was good and enjoyable. When a game is well received, then game companies will keep implementing these basic elements that made the first game good and add new things to the sequels to make the next game even better. This is compared to Darwin’s natural selection where species pass on traits that helped them survive onto their offspring for them to pass onto future generations. Game companies use qualities that made video games good and develop games that are even better as the market evolves. Video games have gone through the same process of evolution proposed by Darwin; driven by natural selection in order to keep good game qualities alive and pass them down to the next generation of great video games.
The things I have learned about video games came primarily from documentaries I used to watch years ago, my observations of the video game market today, and a series of YouTube videos that I watch quite a bit: The Angry Video Game Nerd (I don’t recommend anyone watching this if you are offended by the use of inappropriate language and other inappropriate content that is evident throughout the series). If I wrote about more about how On the Origin of Species applies to video games, I’d have an entire novel written by the time I’m done so I’ll ask this: are there any people interested in this subject of how Darwin’s theories apply to the history of video games? I ask because I’d be happy to write on this subject to a further extent including how the tree metaphor can be interpreted in the history of game consoles.
I found this quote to be very enjoyable. I had never thought to look at Darwin’s theory in a way other than as a natural process, but to look at it from this point of view makes perfect sense. It kind of reminds me of the term social darwinism in terms of looking at it in a different subject. However, i would have never thought to look at evolution in terms of technology. Great post!
Nice. I like how you have taken what we’ve learned in class and found how it is still evident today. Once you start to put this kind of lens on you start to see other patterns of Darwin’s theory. I’ve never thought about it with video games, but I like your insight on it. It is interesting how some video games, such as Madden or 007 have so many renditions and versions. Good post.
I found your blog post to be very interesting. I enjoyed how you took Darwin’s theory of evolution and applied it to a completely different idea, video games. I never thought of applying Darwin’s Struggle for Existence theory to anything other than that of living existence and I was surprised at how fitting his theory was to video games or in a broader spectrum, technology. Great job!
Your application of Darwin’s theory of evolution in relation to video games is apt. I appreciated the parallels you drew between the production of future games based on the success of the previous generations of games. Substituting environmental pressures with consumer feedback (probably defined, at least in part, by the amount of money made off the game) as the main method of evolution in the gaming industry makes sense. I also liked how you pointed out that good game traits are passed from one generation to another, while ineffective traits are laid by the wayside, thus improving games successively. Which is also emphasized by game extinctions – such as when a mode of game becomes obsolete and is no longer produced.
Great post it really made me think how human creations such as video games and businesses in general might evolve in a similar way to what we found in The origin of Species. You could write a lot more on this that’s for sure, and some interesting things to think about for myself is could this same type of argument be applied to say movies or television programs, or even literature? Also how do we explain sudden radical shifts of style and content as a response to what was before (if coupling this idea to other creative human processes like art, music and literature) For myself this is the hardest to explain as similar to Darwins theory because human creation is able to make quicker(relatively) and more radical leaps because of the infinite possibilities in the creative process. If that is the case, it seems your model works best when applied to what is successful marketed and sold in the main stream, as that changes less radically, even though recently crazy indie games are gaining more popularity. Finally some fun things that I think are apt but cant explain is how do the rise of the MMO or new genres like first person shooter, which both have come to dominate over the traditional side scrolling Mario games in terms of raw sales,(blizzards World of Warcraft being the most profitable video game to date because of its subscription model) fit into this this theory. Is it that video games are still in a infantile stage where “new species” are still emerging? Cool stuff and great post