In lieu of Mr. Gary Gygax’s passing, Gamasutra has an pretty interesting introspective on how D&D has influenced, perhaps even birthed, the modern video game, especially in consideration to the RPG and Simulation genres. It’s quite insightful and well worth reading.
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Great article. It draws a really effective path from the concepts of D&D to the game design concepts used by most video games today. It’s not mentioned in the article, but Gygax was really the father of Gamers in terms of the culture that developed around it, from D&D to video games.
I’d also recommend the Kotaku article that traces the direct path from D&D to video games.
Great article. It really helped me to understand why after over 25 years of RPG’s and Video Games, why I am more of a RPG player than a video game player. It’s because with RPG’s there are no real limits our boundaries, and there is not an end of the game, until the group decides there is one.
The other nice thing was in light of all complaints that the D&D 4e mechanics have incorporated MMO components, it’s nice to see an article that shows how RPG’s helped to create the MMO’s, and how it comes full circle with 4e bringing back some of the things that have worked in MMO’s and putting them back into the RPG.
I’m very surprised that the Kotaku article shows a gap between 1991 and 1996, perhaps nothing big did happen up until Ultima Online was released but I feel like there’s something missing in there.