Trendsetters: 7 Games Responsible For The Common Gameplay Mechanics We Have Today

Gaming is an interactive medium. You press buttons and some stuff happens, that much is elementary. What might not be so obvious however, is just how that "stuff" is governed. Sure, videogames occupy realms of near limitless possibilities in theory - like flying around the galaxy, going to war, or simply wearing dungarees while jumping a mushroom - but in practice all of this can only be achieved within a strict amount of input commands. You can't, for example, be running around on Call of Duty and suddenly decide you want throw your gun at a useless teammate, or change your underwear or whatever. There's no button for that. No option in the menus.

Ciaran Utting Feb 24, 2014 2:47 pm2014-05-11T21:20:12-05:00

2) Capturing a Flag

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First seen in: Return Fire – 3DO (1995)

The words “capture the flag” are synonymous with online mutiplayer gaming. But isn’t that particular selection and order of words a very random one when considering wargames? Why isn’t it capture the briefcase, or bomb, or the hostage, or in Halo‘s case, capture the stupid bright pink alien stuff? A flag has a certain possessional symbolism in context, but it’s somehow made its way into everything – and it all started on a console so expensive that I don’t think anyone ever bought one.

Unfortunate really, because EA founder Trip Hawkins’ 3DO was so ahead of its time that even today designers are still only just catching up to the things it could do as a console (multitasking OS, controller headsets, and being region-free to name a few). Just a shame about the price tag being equally as ahead of its time, coming in at a whopping $700 over 20 years ago.

To be honest, I did actually own one, and Return Fire was easily one of my favourite games. The attention to detail and isometric free-roaming where unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, and the classical music soundtrack made it stand out as something very different for all the right reasons. And the aim of the game? To pick a jeep, chopper or tank, infiltrate an enemy base, and capture the flag. It probably caught on because it got a PlayStation release, and I hear that console sold quite well.

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