Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

References to video games, gaming terms, and gaming history occur throughout the novel. As Samson Masur and Sadie Green grow up, the games they play also change, from single-player, simple-graphics games like The Oregon Trail to multiplayer, role-playing games such as Pioneers. One of the most important aspects of game creation that the novel explores is games as works of art and literature on par with books. This is fitting since some of the earliest groundbreaking video games were inspired by science fiction novels. During the 1960s, MIT students Steve Russell and his friends created Spacewar!, a science fiction-inspired dueling game between two spaceships. Spacewar! wasn’t released to the public since at the time, computers were too large and expensive for consumer use and were confined to universities and offices.

To be commercially viable, video games needed displays like computer screens and televisions could provide. The solution in the 1970s was arcade games, where audiovisual games could be played on coin-operated machines in video game arcades. One of the earliest such games released commercially was Computer Space, inspired by Spacewar!. While Computer Space failed to take off commercially, Pong, an arcade ping-pong game, launched in 1972 and was a huge hit. Launched by Atari, Pong sparked the heyday of arcade games. Arcade game machines, or cabinets, were often installed in restaurants to draw clientele. In Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Sam and Sadie play one such arcade game, Donkey Kong, in the late 1980s. The cabinet is installed in Dong Hyun’s restaurant, as was typical of the period. Sam’s high score, marked by his initials S.A.M. is almost imprinted on the screen. Donkey Kong is a real-life 1981 arcade video game developed by Nintendo. In the first Donkey Kong, players manipulate Mario to rescue Pauline from the giant gorilla named Donkey Kong. This is the first time Mario, of Super Mario Bros. fame, made an appearance in a video game. Donkey Kong was one of the first commercial arcade games in which a story unfolded visually on the screen. This narrative aspect likely appealed to Sadie and Sam in the novel and inspired their creative journey in designing narrative games.

Though the technology that enables one to hook up a video game console (very roughly, a specialized mini-computer containing games) to a TV screen had been available for some time, video game consoles for home use only became available in 1975 with the release of Pong’s home console version. In parallel, handheld consoles with screens built into the consoles were also being developed and launched. Super Mario Bros., a platform game (in which characters have to pass many levels, or platforms, to meet their objective), became a very popular game played on Nintendo’s (NES) home console system in the mid-1980s. The format of Super Mario Bros. mimics a quest, making it a narrative.

Around the early 1980s, home computers were finally becoming a reality in the US. Affordable for the average American, home computers had much more powerful processors than the previous generation of consoles. This enabled the development of more complicated games, with better graphics and non-linear progressions. In the early 1990s, consoles too became more sophisticated, and cartridges were replaced by CDs. The advanced processors in PCs and consoles allowed game designers to evolve complex, narrative-heavy, multi-player games with advanced graphic effects. Dov’s fictional game Dead Sea is one of many early PC games referenced in the novel. PCs and home consoles also helped spur the first-person shooter game genre, where the player experiences the action through the eyes of the protagonist. Doom spearheaded this genre in 1993. In the novel, Sadie does not like shooting games.

Sadie’s first game, Solution, is a nod to the real-life controversial board game Train (2009) by Brenda Romero. In Train, players are supposed to transport passengers along a railway. At the end of the game, it is revealed that the final station is the Auschwitz concentration camp. Video games are often inspired by board games; Scrabble has been adapted into video games since the mid-1980s, while Catan (2008) and Catan Universe (2017) are based on the popular board game Settlers of Catan, where players settle territory while trading resources and building holdings.

Complex multiplayer games such as Catan became possible because of the Internet, the next big leap in tech after the ubiquity of PCs. Increasing bandwidth meant games could be played online between friends instead of in a single location on a console system. Multiplayer gaming over networks took off with the release of Pathways into Darkness in 1993. In 2004, World of Warcraft (WOW) was launched on PC, a subscription-based online game that was a tremendous success. The Internet enabled MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, which combine elements of role-playing games (RPGs) with the gameplay of multiplayer online gaming worlds. Lord of the Rings Online (2007) is another example of an MMORPG and is inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien’s books. In the novel, Pioneers is an MMORPG. Because it is an online game, Sadie can download it and play it in real time over a network.