ABSTRACT

Akalabeth, like many early computer games, was packaged in a humble plastic bag instead of a custom printed box. Dozens of successful games span multiple genres and are best described as hybrids, such as Infocom's Zork Zero, a fusion of text adventures and computer role-playing games (CRPGs), and Ion Storm's Deus Ex, a first-person shooter/CRPG. In action games, such as Track & Field for the Nintendo Entertainment System, players hold down a button and release it at just the right moment to hit a moving target. According to James Paul Gee, “Video games situate meaning in a multimodal space through embodied experiences to solve problems and reflect on the intricacies of the design of imagined worlds and the design of both real and imagined social relationships and identities in the modern world.” CRPG development has not taken a linear path, and the most successful games of any given era are not necessarily the most technologically sophisticated or innovative.