Charlie Brooker's How Videogames Changed The World [Channel 4]

Thargor

Charlie Brookers doing a 2 hour special on the history of gaming this weekend.

Saturday 9pm on Channel 4

Pong to Grand Theft Auto, Atari to Angry Birds, the broadcaster delves into the history of the games industry and celebrates a selection of its most significant titles. He explores how interactive entertainment has evolved from a penny arcade diversion into a medium that some believe is art, and shows how it is changing the way people work, communicate and play. Joined by Jonathan Ross, Dara O Briain and leading designers including Will Wright and John Romero, Brooker looks at how video games have become one of the most progressive art forms of the past 40 years

Doge

Found this really enjoyable, even better than I expected.

I never knew the ghosts had different personalities in pacman!

It was great to see Jeff Minter and Dara O'Briain being interviewed.

Not sure if this was pure coincidence but during one Ad Break,
you had the Robocop Gameboy tune playing, and next thing a Sourthern Comfort ad with the lyrics "And on, And on And on."

it was all very reminiscent of the Ariston commercial!

Doge

Would have preferred to see more emphasis on the 16-Bit era,

but I guess you can't expect them to fit everything in a once off documentary.

Optimus Prime

I enjoyed it, though i dont think feckin Angry Birds should have been there, plus Twitter? Really, they must have been sponsored by twitter.

horgan_p

On that robocop theme tune :

http://kotaku.com/5885431/what-do-robocop-washing-machines-dilbert--lil-b-have-in-common

Doge

keithgeo wrote: »

I enjoyed it, though i dont think feckin Angry Birds should have been there, plus Twitter? Really, they must have been sponsored by twitter.

I think the Angry Birds Series had a significant enough impact on the world to be included in the Documentary.

Just looking at Wikipedia and it has almost 2 billion downloads across all the games in the series and all the platforms.

It also had a huge impact on kids, hence all the merchandise it sold.

I'm not saying its a good game or anything, but it is certainly one of the most significant App based games because of its success.


As for Twitter, I honestly couldn't see Charlie's connection between gaming and Twitter.

Optimus Prime

ah maybe im just biased against it, i cant stand it.

Thargor

I cant stand it either, I have absolutely no idea why its so successful, I saw near identical ballistic games like that on flash sites like Newsgrounds for years before it came along so never understood why it was considered so groundbreaking, its just not a very fun design. Its not completely awful, there's definitely a game there especially AB: Star Wars its just there's about ten thousand better games people could be playing.

Doge

keithgeo wrote: »

ah maybe im just biased against it, i cant stand it.

Just remember that the documentary is about Games that changed the World for better......



.....or worse! :P

STG.Otaku

Watched the first 10 minutes, thought it was bollocks and knocked it off.

Jack burton

I didnt get a chance to watch this...I'll be honest, I'm not too tempted to watch it. I see enough angry birds **** when I walk through town and I dont really give a sh1te if Dara O'Brien had a SNES or MD growing up :P

Steve X2

I might have a look at this later on 4OD. Is it really that bad?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/charlie-brooker-videogames-changed-the-world/4od

Doge

STG.Otaku wrote: »

Watched the first 10 minutes, thought it was bollocks and knocked it off.

I did the exact opposite of this!

I missed the first ten minutes and watch the rest of it! :pac:

DinoRex

Annoying that it had to be a pointless list. If guess that's the only way to get the thing commissioned though.

There were some nice contributions in there, Jeff Minter in particular.

But it got pretty naff towards the end.

Twitter is a communication tool, if you view it as a game you're possibly a sociopath.

Steve X2

I watched it, wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Very much not something aimed at people who would frequent a retro gaming forum for sure(although nice to see some of the retro bits at the beginning).
I'd class it as mild entertainment more than any kind of informative or comprehensive documentary.

I find it very hard to like Charlie Brooker, I really do.

Also, Twitter.... F*** off Charlie!!!

briany

I really enjoyed this documentary. I just like hearing Brooker talk about games, because it's a subject close to his heart and a big part of his past journalistic career. Now, true, it was just an extended version of Gameswipe but at least with new interviews and narration.

Brooker used to write for PC Zone magazine and that's probably where his sardonic writing style first caught on with people. Here's a couple of clips of him 'reviewing' (prank calling) a couple of publishers/developers help lines back in the late 90s...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjwUJIkXx_g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Swptd_NLDs

And some PC Zone magazine scans, look for Brooker's 'Sick Notes' letters to the editor section at the end.

Casey120

I downloaded this in HD last week and enjoyed it up until about 75% when I lost interest .
His other video docu I think was called history of video games and was also pretty enjoyable .

briany

Casey120 wrote: »

I downloaded this in HD last week and enjoyed it up until about 75% when I lost interest .
His other video docu I think was called history of video games and was also pretty enjoyable .

Do you mean Gameswipe? Because if you do, that was pretty enjoyable. If you don't, I need to find that video.

The bad thing about Brooker's videogame documentaries is that, each time he's presenting one, he basically has to spend a huge amount of time, almost all of it nearly, explaining what a videogame is and why they're good.

Casey120

It was probably called Gameswipe .

Last week I downloaded " The Video Craze " where where you in '82 , a nice docu about Arcade collecting in the US .

LoGiE

Not bad but what was all the Twitter nonsense?.... Watched 100 Yen - The Japanese Arcade Experience which was much better.

Doge

LoGiE wrote: »

Not bad but what was all the Twitter nonsense?.... Watched 100 Yen - The Japanese Arcade Experience which was much better.

I reckon he was coming from the angle, that people who use twitter only use it to brag about accomplishments and what they're doing as if it's some sort of game to them,

which is clearly a sweeping generalization imo.

briany

waveform wrote: »

I reckon he was coming from the angle, that people who use twitter only use it to brag about accomplishments and what they're doing as if it's some sort of game to them,

which is clearly a sweeping generalization imo.

You could take Twitter as a massive MMORPG game where each player attempts to earn the greatest reputation but then again, you could also apply that to nearly every public online community since CBBS went online in '79. Kibo Parry would like a word.....

MrVestek

I did enjoy the documentary but no mention of The Dreamcast or even Shenmue irked me a little.

Shenmue was a bit of a game changer for a time and paved the way for stuff like Grand Theft Auto III in an open world sense.

briany

Achilles wrote: »

I did enjoy the documentary but no mention of The Dreamcast or even Shenmue irked me a little.

Really influential console in many ways, pioneering things like a gamepad screen and proper online gameplay but just not enough market penetration to enter the public consciousness. Since there was so much of the obvious stuff to touch on first, I'd say that's why it got left out.

corcaigh07

Only saw this today.

My takeaway: Aoife Wilson is a bloody babe! Enjoyable enough show, he takes a few too many leaps though, not just the Twitter leap.