Dr. Matt Barton is a tenured associate professor of English at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, where he has been teaching courses in writing and technology since 2005. He is the producer of "Matt Chat," a weekly YouTube program featuring interviews with noted videogame developers and in-depth retrospectives of great videogames. He's the author of Honoring the Code: Conversations with Great Game Designers and Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games. He's the co-author of Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. He lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, with his wife Elizabeth.

Dungeons & Desktops by Matt Barton

Written in an engaging style, for both the computer game enthusiast and the casual computer game player, this book explores the history of the special genre of computer role-playing games (CPRGs) by telling the stories of the developers, games, and gamers who created it. CPRG development has not taken a straight path, and, as the author shows, the most successful games of any given era may not necessarily be the most technologically sophisticated or innovative.

Dungeons and Desktops is of particular interest to all serious fans of role-playing games who will enjoy reading about their favorite games as well as lesser known gems they may have missed. It is destined to become required reading in any course concerned with game studies, and it has much to offer game developers and publishers.

This book examines the history of computer role-playing games (CRPGs) (such as Ultima, The Bard's Tale, Pool of Radiance, Diablo, and The Elder Scrolls) and seeks to identify and wrestle with the genre's key issues. Should the player control a single character or a group of characters? Should the player create his own character(s)? How should the game translate abstract concepts like "experience" into numbers and statistics? Should a game "rail" the player into a coherent plot structure, or allow him to roam freely about the world? What will be the consequences of the player's actions; how does the game deal with good and evil? Which perspective is more immersive, first or third person?

Throughout the years, developers have responded differently to these questions, and each game is a part of a more general conversation about how computers can serve as a medium for creative and engaging role-playing. While it contains many details about the games, the book is organized as a narrative—telling the story of the developers, games, and gamers who created the CRPG as we know it today.

CURATOR'S NOTE

Matt Barton is not only a friend of mine, he continually leads the field of research into the design of roleplaying games by turning out stories that are interesting and straight-up fun to read. Dungeons & Desktops wades into the primordial ooze of RPGs to bring readers and players up to speed on how their favorite genre got started, and it makes for quite a ride. – David L. Craddock

 

REVIEWS

  • "Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing games is an incredible tour-de-force of a recreational industry."

    – The Midwest Book Review, April 2008

  • "In a Gamasutra holiday bonus feature extracted from his new 'Dungeons & Desktops' book, author Matt Barton looks at 'The Silver Age' of role-playing games, from Richard Garriott's Ultima I through Sir-Tech's Wizardry and beyond."

    – Gamasutra

  • "Role-playing games have moved the traditional board game to the desktop, and includes a cast of popular games: while many books cover rules and playing, few provide the essential overall history of the genre's development and evolutionary process. DUNGEONS AND DESKTOPS: THE HISTORY OF COMPUTER ROLE-PLAYING GAMES surveys not only game development and milestones, but issues affecting the industry and playing computer role-playing games. From how players create and interact with characters to the ethics of good and evil in gameplaying, DUNGEONS AND DESKTOPS is an outstanding choice for any high school to college-level collection catering to computer gaming fans."

    – California Bookwatch
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

1

An Introduction to Computer Role-Playing

"Beware, foolish mortal, you trespass in Akalabeth, world of doom!" These words graced the card insert of Richard Garriott's first foray into computer role-playing games: Akalabeth, "a game of fantasy, cunning, and danger." In- side the Ziploc bag was the treasure that launched a genre—a 5 1⁄4" Apple II floppy diskette containing "10 different Hi-Res Monsters combined with per- fect perspective and infinite dungeon levels." For obsessed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fans, it sounded like the Holy Grail: unlimited fantasy role-play- ing at the touch of a button! It truly was the beginning of a "grand adventure," an adventure that is still going strong today.

Released by Garriott in 1979, Akalabeth: World of Doom is one of the earliest known examples of a computer role-playing game (CRPG). Although aesthetically primitive by today's standards, Akalabeth included many of the conventions that are present in even the most modern CRPG, such as the choice of character class, attributes, a store from which to buy weapons and armor, a leveling system based on experience points, strategic combat with increasingly powerful foes, and a large area to explore. Unlike the later Ul- tima games, Akalabeth is represented entirely in first-person perspective using wireframe graphics. First published by Garriott himself and then by Cali- fornia Pacific Computer Company, Akalabeth sold tens of thousands of cop- ies, providing the young "Lord British" with a comfortable income during his years at college. One must wonder how many of his classmates neglected their literature to battle his monsters in those infinite dungeons; as he himself once remarked to Steven Levy, author of Hackers, "I can't spell, have no grammar techniques, and have read less than twenty-five books in my life."