This is one of two talk proposals I’m sending for GDC. It kind of relies on Dreamcast Worlds actually getting funded, a big problem that you can help me to solve here.

The late 1990s is still an under-studied part of video game history - for many, it still seems like it wasn’t so long ago. But as we reach the end of another console generation, now is a good time to look back to the short and fondly remembered lifetime of the Dreamcast.

It was a time when software and console developers were finally, excitedly pushing frontiers into open-world, online, fully three-dimensional game worlds. Sandboxes, life simulators, and MMOs were turning the Gibsonian dream of cyberspace into a reality.

At the same time, many game developers were using their craft to look back at an already rich cultural history. They preserved in nostalgic virtual worlds such as the 1980s Yokosuka of Shenmue lived memories of places that had been transformed by economic and technological change.

This talk is based on my crowd-funded book on the history of the Dreamcast and research at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I look at three game worlds from the inside-out, to reveal their authentic histories. Taking a design historical approach, I occupy game spaces, analyse artefacts, and draw connections to the people and technologies that created, distributed and consumed them.

I reveal how the scenario design of Skies of Arcadia constructs a networked mobility in three-dimensional space. The tension between mobility and isolation, between natural naivety and the inevitable creation of the ultimate weapon, between imperial expansion and innocent exploration, is coloured by an anxiety about the all-consuming spread of information technologies during the dot com boom. I draw parallels between this and the work of Jules Verne on which the scenario is partly based. Both Verne and Sega were reflecting a time of growing mobility - mobility of people and of ideas. Both were exhilirated by the power of technology, and overwhelmed by it.

Moving on to the architectural organisation of space opera MMO Phantasy Star Online, I show how Sega’s strategy for online networking was reflected in the bureaucratic structure of the quest system. Phantasy Star Online lacked the sprawl of other MMOs, and its game mechanics eschewed the overlapping loops of ad-hoc questing in favour of a simpler, more organised assignment desk. The centralisation of information dissemination in massive, neon space stations reflected a desire for the Dreamcast to function as a network access point for the home, ignoring the mobile network access that was already in rapid development in Japan. This architectural artefact is still present in PSO2, making what was once high futurism appear somewhat old-fashioned.

Finally, I show how the Yokosuka of Shenmue is constructed around nostalgia, memory and utopianism. Despite its lofty aim to be a complete ‘life simulator’, Shenmue was in fact organised as yet another fantasy world, right down to the use of core material elements to differentiate between regions. The utopian preservation of a remembered 1980s, complete with Sega’s retro arcade games, was intended as a leap towards the future of open-world gaming. And to some extent it was, but the high cost of producing the game contributed to the demise of the Dreamcast, consigning the Shenmue series to a cherished memory. Nowadays, Shenmue forms part of a nostalgia cascade, with the nostalgia of the game piled upon by the nostalgia of gamers who remember their own experiences playing the game.

These three stories will show how disruption and innovation leave their mark on the creative expression of game developers. I will argue that this is a fascinating property of video games, and should be explored further by developers now, in another age of instability and technological change.