Conclusion

Adaptability, is the word that comes to mind when I think of Tempest.  This word was the reason that Tempest was such a success but it was also why the game ultimately failed. The developers of the game were able to use global issues to create a game that everyone could enjoy. They were able to incorporate an outer space setting, and enemies that are constantly improving parallel to the players, like an arms race. At the same time, the developers were unable to adapt the emerging market of home consoles. Due to their inability to create a standard controller and their ROM chips, Tempest was unable to leave the arcade scene and settled for being bonus games on consoles.

As a new media encounter we can fall into the trap where we simply look down at the developers for using a very ineffective way of coding and storing memory. We can also look at arcades as very old and think “why would someone leave their room to play video games”. But these disagreements arise from the missing context. We have never experienced playing a video game in an arcade during that era. During this time, arcades were an activity for friends to get together and play. People made friends through playing these games, and there was less of a “stranger danger” stigma because they could see who the other person was that was playing the arcade game with them.

However there is also a lot we can gain from these disagreements. We can learn about these developers’ mistakes and make changes to how we develop games now. As someone looking back at an issue we can see the bigger picture, that is we can see how the game started and ended, and see where they went wrong. As we saw, the ROM chips were very inconvenient if there was a bug in the game, because they would need to manually insert the new chip into every Tempest game. Now, all video games can be updated through the internet and this allows for a better gaming experience because it means that whenever there is a bug the developers can make changes as we sleep. As someone looking back at an issue we can see the bigger picture, that is we can see how the game started and ended, and see where they went wrong.