2003.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series

Video games getting closer to the form we know them so well, especially thanks a little DRM and distribution program that got started this year. This was the year 2003 in video games, and in the world at large.

2003 was a year best described by cynicism and disillusion that not even Lord of the Rings Return of the King could prevent. The USA invaded Iraq under false pretense, declaring mission accomplished a month later, with thousands of civilians dead, and yet still being involved in a ground war there for over a decade, leading to a total destabilization of the area and an erosion of the concept that you needed a reason to invade a country. The Concorde, the super-sonic jet that was just being shown to the public when we started this series, flew for the last time. Limited usability due to sonic booms, high costs and massive technical failures that lead to tragedies grounding the concept. There would be no more supersonic commercial flights. That year a tragedy that many dread would happen again was seen in the failure of the Columbia Space Shuttle, it broke up upon reentry, leading to the death of its occupants. Hopes for a return to space exploration were dwindling. Heatwaves reached an all-time high, in some regions, 5000 people being killed by the high temperature in France. An earthquake would claim the lives of over 40.000 people in Iran. SARS would claim hundreds of lives in south-east Asia, and the fear of an outbreak of a deadly avian flu were on the rise. It seemed like a gloomy, terrible, horrible time to live in. They even stopped making the classic Beetle. New World Computing and Black Isle Studios were shut down. But it wasn’t all, bad, was it? Somewhere out there I was enjoying Diablo 2 in the comfort of my own home, Obsidian Entertainment was founded and China launched its first manned mission to space, the Shenzhou 5.

In 2003 we got Skype and the Safari Browser. Wordpress, the h264 codec. The first prototype of the Blu-Ray standard was released, the last optical disk developed to date. And AMD brought us the first 64 bit CPUs, with a bump in performance that put Intel’s Pentium 4 to shame, leading to years of anti-competitive practices and downright bribes from Intel to maintain its slipping grasp on market dominance. This was when they stopped making the classic Famicom and Super Famicom consoles… that were apparently still in production somewhere, as well as the Nintendo Gameboy and Gameboy Color. And when a new contender entered the space of mobile gaming, in the form of Nokia. It had a novel idea. What if we mix a phone with a games console? Thus, the N-Gage was born, coming with games like The Elder Scrolls Travels and not truly ever be all that successfully. It sold over 2 million units, but in this field, it was outpaced by just about everything, including a prototype for a new Sony console, the Playstation Portable.

But probably the biggest thing to come out in 2003, in terms of gaming adjacency, was a thing called Steam. Valve, the studio that brought us Half-Life and Counter-Strike, replaced the multiplayer infrastructure for all its games with this thing called Steam, and let you buy them through it. This wasn’t a new concept, you could buy software and games through on-line distribution for some time, Stardock Central already being two years old by now. And it wasn’t going to do a lot this year. But, oh boy, would things change in a few months.

So, onto the video games themselves, where it was a year of dissolution as well, in a way, because of games like Enter the Matrix, disasters that managed to take a great concept of a great movie and drive it into the ground as much as the movie sequels did. Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness Managed to bury Lara Croft better than killing her off did, and sunk Core Design as well, leading to the disappearance of the series for a few years, allowing new action-adventure games to take the stage. Deus Ex Invisible War came with the premise of continuing the fantastic ideas of the exceptional Deus Ex, and managed to under-deliver to the point where some fans of the series would like to pretend that it does not exist. And yet, there was still positivity around, since a lot of the games published this year were made when the world was a tad bit brighter.

But make no mistake, the bleakness and cynicism of that period would ingrain itself into games that were now starting development, that were now being thought of. But until then, 2003 brought us one of the most beautiful fairytales ever put to screen. And best of all, it came in the form of a reimagination, of a reboot, if you will, one with none of the negativity or drawbacks currently associated with that idea.
That game was Ubisoft Montreal’s Prince of Persia The Sands of Time, created under the supervision of Jordan Mechner, creator of the series. A game that brought the cinematic approach to designing a game to a whole new level, with magnificent visuals, fluid movement and a fantastic new mechanic. Max Payne may have brought us Bullet Time, and its sequel that came out that year may have slightly tweaked it, but Sands of Time brought us Time Reversal. Made a mistake? Turn back time. Fell off a ledge in this action-plaformer? Turn back time. Died because of a trap? Turn back time. Got killed by an enemy? Turn back time.

The power wasn’t unlimited, and unlike Max’s Bullet Time, it was a part of the story and the setting. It was perfect. And the mechanic would find a home in many other games, especially those where an error of a split second could ruin many minutes of work, where saving a game wouldn’t work, like in the racing genre. Sands of Time was and still is a landmark title, building upon both the original Prince of Persia, and all the progress that the now dead Tomb Raider series did in the 3D platforming, action-adventure genre. And Ubisoft didn’t content itself with bringing out one new great franchise this year.

They also made Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. A stealth action game that took ideas from Metal Gear, Thief, and gave them a higher level of fluidity, and a more grounded setting. One that didn’t deal with fantasy or giant robots, but with espionage, assassinations, and a feeling that it was build in an age where national security and terrorism were on the minds of everyone
And since two wasn’t enough, they also came out with Michel Ancel’s Beyond Good and Evil. A game that under performed considerably in terms of sales, ending up bundled with Cheese just so it could generate some money, but it built up quite a following over the years, thanks to its great music and interesting world.

I could probably make a category just for the Star Wars games released this year. Since the new movies were topping the charts in spite of being mostly awful, there were games being made by the bucket load every year, and they were great. Jedi Academy let you wield a dual light-saber. Knights of the Old Republicl showed us what Bioware can do when they stretch their muscles beyond Dungeons and Dragons, and into a new field that lets them explore new ideas and… just about the same character archetypes and plotlines. In spite of that, it was and still is one of the best games the company has ever made, and a great RPG in its own right, in spite of it treating a lightsaber like it was just a glowing stick. A mistake made by many games that weren’t part of the Jedi Knight series.

Speaking of movie adaptations, in 2003 we got Tron 2.0, letting us visit the world of Tron that we saw two decades ago in the movie by the same name, brought to life in a sequel that blended some new ideas with the classic games that were established as existing in that world. A world where electronic entities lived in cyberspace, and where humans could enter. Like a Matrix, or, like a Meta Verse if you will. A digital Habitat. Which was the idea of Second Life. This was not really a game in the traditional sense, much like Habitat wasn’t really one at its core. Second Life was a virtual world, where real people could lead virtual lives, controlling virtual characters and virtual assets, but interacting with real people and sometimes even spending real money and earning it at the same time. Second Life was the fulfillment of a promise made long ago, of living in cyberspace. Now, sure, due to technical limitation it wasn’t an all encompassing immersive experience that the Meta Verse described in Snow Crash was. But it’s a bit more evolved than an on-line chat screen, or a simple MMO game where human interaction is at best an unintended consequence. That was actually one of the main ideas of MMOs released that year. Even Myst got in on the act, with Myst Online: Uru Live. But you’d see it better in games like Planetside. An MMOPFS… with a lot of hit-scan weapons because a dial-up modem wasn’t enough for ballistics, where you’d only be fighting against other people on a huge continent, divided up between three factions caught up in a never-ending war. And it wasn’t just about shooting, it was about driving, it was about piloting, it was about logistics and combat tactics. It was Starsiege Tribes taken to a whole new, persistent level. And it would last along time. Sony Online Entertainment would close it down quite recently, but its sequel is still going strong. That wasn’t the only MMO the company put out that year, there was also Star Wars Galaxies. A game born out of the refusal of Electronic Arts to make a Wing Commander MMO, that went beyond simply being about gathering loot from fallen foes. It was about creating a communities, with actual cities that players could build, and interact with each-other in ways that didn’t require combat. At all. It was a glimpse of a game that could have been one of the greatest MMOs ever made, had an event not occurred quite soon.

And if that wasn’t large scale enough for you, a small studio from Iceland created the game that would murder every space based MMO, and bring back the sandbox style, in its own way. This was Eve Online. One of the largest and most expansive MMOs ever made, or at least the one that has fit the largest amount of people in one place at the same time, without the servers bursting into flames. Eve Online does have PvE elements, it’s not all about PvP, but it is more about interacting with others instead of just blowing up their ships. The story is driven by this interaction, intrigue and drama is generated by people committing to play it with more dedication that some would put into work or family. It was a landmark MMO that managed to hold out in spite of serious competition, both on-line and offline, in the form of Egosot’s grand X2: The Threat, a space sim so vast that in the end game you would be playing an RTS business simulator and mowing down entire sectors with your fleet of carriers. But in the on-line space, MapleStory was released this year in Japan and South Korea, a 2D game that you may not think much of, seeing as how simplistic it looks, but Wizets game would go on to be arguably the most successful MMO ever made, some numbers putting it at over 90 million players.

But if that was too much for you, there was always Multitheft Auto, the community’s attempt to add a multiplayer mode to GTA 3, one that started from humble origins, but would eventually end up evolving into a much better multiplayer mode than Rockstar has ever managed to create. And as long as you had the game on PC, it was free. Same as Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, an excellent multiplayer game set in World War 2, but released maybe a few years too late, since it came out at the same time as Call of Duty. One of the hallmarks of the FPS genre, combining both a great multiplayer mode and a great singleplayer game, with a heavy focus on the authenticity of the experience, as seen through the lens of movies like Saving Private Ryan, and exhilarating set-pieces. In the coming decade, it alone would sell over 4 million copies. Virtually nothing compared to its sequels.

As we end 2003, it’s probably worth mentioning a few other games. Command and Conquer found its way again, with Generals. A game that wasn’t about time travel or some alien resource, but about terrorism and national security. It didn’t hurt that no matter what theme it had, the basic gameplay was great. Another series that would find renewed vigor was Need for Speed. Taking influence from the emerging trend of tuner car and underground racing cultures, Black Box Studio brought us Need for Speed Underground. One of the most successful titles in the series, dwarfing every other game that came before it, and establishing a new style. One that was about attitude, more than it was about the cars themselves.
Postal 2 came along, and although it is considered by many to be a very violent game, Running With Scissors managed to create a title that has more opportunities to be played as a pacifist than most other action games ever made. The polar opposite of Rockstar’s Manhunt, that was all about being obligated to commit the most gruesome murders possible. Dota All Stars was released, being now based on the Throne of Frost expansion for Warcraft 3. Zuma was released for people that were already getting bored with Bejewled at the Office. And for fans of leering at scantly clad video game characters there came a spin-off of the fighting series Dead or Alive, focused only on its female characters playing volleyball and generally posing provocatively, with Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

As for what was the game of 2003, I would say it was Prince of Persia The Sands of Time. In a year that had a lot of unfortunate events in it, it became a very good refuge for people that wanted a return to a simpler time, with clear definitions between good and evil, with no cynicism, just earnest whimsy and charm. And it didn’t hurt that it was a really good game that set new standards for platformers, for action, for cinematic storytelling, for presentation in general.

So closes another year. Next week we welcome a few new legends and titans to the world of gaming. Goodbye.

We are supporting Steem/Steemit/DLive.io/D.Tube through our Shows

---

Support Us and Our Work !

Youtube.com/c/GaminGHD | Minds.com/GaminGHD | Gab.ai/GaminGHD | Patreon.com/GaminGHD | Steemit.com/@free999enigma | D.Tube/c/GaminGHD | DLive.io/#/@GaminGHD |

- UPVOTE - RESTEEM - COMMENT - FOLLOW -

Gaming-Related Friends you should follow: @StefaNonsense & @ropname & @unacomn & @vladalexan GaminGHD Discord Server https://discord.gg/CZSXJwy