The Future of PC Gaming

Warrior-GS writes "GameSpy has two new articles up talking about the Future of PC Gaming. The first talks about the The Future of PC Game Engines, talking to Tim Sweeney, Chris Taylor, Stuart Moulder and others about everything from physics to lighting to AI. The second is an interview with Peter Molyneux about his areas of expertise and what lies ahead. The series will continue next month with a look at the Future of User Created Games and an interview with Warren Spector on PC Gaming's future."

Comments

Warren Spector

[Illuminati Member]

Warren Spector is a true game innovator.
Look at thief, system shock, ultima underworld, deus ex. I'm always for the lookout of his latest games.
Thief 2 was especially heinous. I used to play that game for hours. My first wife eventually gave me the "you love that game or me" speech, and I ended up choosing the game. That divorce led me down the road to many other ones. Its sad really. But damn was that game fun!

Re:Warren Spector

[CaffeineAddict2001]

When she told you "you love that game or me" you should have hit her over the head with a blackjack and dragged her out to the curb.

Re:Warren Spector

[unicron]

That's too funny.

Pro-Microsoft Comment: -1, troll
Pro-Spousal Abuse Comment: 4, funny.

Games of the past

[Evil Adrian]

Does anyone else miss 2D scrollers like Super Mario 3 or overhead adventure games like Gauntlet? I have grown so weary of 3D shooters, I wish somebody could offer a decent 2D game that engaged my brain.

Re:Games of the past

[katarac]

Get yourself a Gameboy Advanced. The Castlevania games, the Mario games, the zelda games, and the upcoming Metroid: Fusion! This is truely one of the best systems on the market right now, portable or not.

Re:Games of the past

[Pxtl]

I agree - in retrospect, the genre was never really explored. If you look very, very hard you can find a handful of real gems in 2d, but most were just Mario clones (good god, how many games involved jumping on the baddies?).

For the last word in Mario - look up Jump'n'bump. Cute little bunnies stomp each other's heads and explode into bloodnguts.

For 2d games - Liero (worms 1 on 1) and its clones - the original is still the best. NiL is its abandoned (and unfaithful) Linux online version. I hope someone will pick this back up.

Abuse (and the open-source version, FrAbs) is the best thing out there for online 2d action - imagine a hyperfast Quake as a side-scroller. There is deathmatch, and FrAbs promises CTF soon.

Metal Warriors - The rarest, most awesome title for the SNES - 1-on-1 deathmatch splitscreen sidescroller with really, really innovative robots.

For the PC - Z - An RTS with a fresh approach to the genre - its paced more like an arcade game then an RTS. Scorched Earth - come on, this was just cool.

There were a lot of really good platformers and side-scroll games right up until Super Mario came out. New innovations didn't arrive until the genre was dying, and then it was too late - 3d took its place.

Re:Games of the past

[Pxtl]

I have actually been really really freaking disappointed with the lineup for my gameboy advanced. There's really very little besides Pokemon clones and sidescrollers. I was hoping people would take better advantage of what is really a handheld LAN (finally you can conceal the screen from other players) to make some innovations. I want Spy VS Spy, and Metal Marines, and Metal Warriors, and Z, and StarCraft, and old flight sims and suchlike. The only games that even hold my interest on the GBA are the racing games and the FPS games. Even the puzzle games are kinda weak compared to some of the PC titles I've tried.

Re:Games of the past

[Pxtl]

Well, 3d shooters, aside from interface (why does every game use 1-10) actually have some real variety. The problem is in the leaders - Q3, UT, HL, Shogo, Doom, ROTT, Wolf3d - those are all one genre, just some have more multiplayer mods and some have an SP campaign.

If you look a little further you will find some variation. BattleZone (FPS/RTS hybrid), Tribes 2 (Team FPS with some RTS elements), Aliens VS. Predator (really impressive), the new OMF (waiting on the edge of my seat for that) and various other games that are breaking away from the FPS stereotypes.

The main element they have in common is control - move with left hand, aim with mouse. And really, there's more variety then those sidescrollers had.

Mmmmm...new game engine

[fobbman]

What are the game producers going to do when they finally get to the point where the games look like real life, but still have the entertainment value of the movie "Glitter" or "It's Pat"?

An exquisitely rendered turd is still a turd.

The future conan?

[CaffeineAddict2001]

The future andy.

IN THE YEEEEEAR 2000!!!!!!!!

In the year 2000 robots will do 80% of our housework. But we will do 90% of theirs.

Advanced graphics != good graphics

[weird mehgny]

It has become common belief that the better tech, the better graphics. It's simply not true. There's much more than a technological aspect of graphics in games, there's also something called aesthetics.

SNES era games come to mind. Games like Zelda 3 and Super Metroid had wonderful graphics - they are in low resolution and in few colors when compared to today's games, but the design work is excellent.

I have no doubts that DOOM 3, for example, will have a great combination of technology and design. My point is just that graphics aren't bad just because they're old!

Good ol' Days Syndrome

[Torgo's Pizza]

I'm already seeing a bunch of messages talking about the games they used to play in the past and how great they were. There seems to be an equal amount of posts complaining about what their vision of the future should be.

Funny thing is that I've seen these same articles and the same reactions for over twenty years know. Ever since Bill Kunkel et al started the first video game magazine, there always has been articles with a prognostication about the future of gaming and how crappy the games of today are.

It seems that the future articles state that: the games will be bigger, faster, have more features and be more realistic and interactive. The complaints seem to be the games of today lack innovation, have no plot or substance and have poor quality. The best articles have a up-and-coming game designer revealing the latest and greatest and a wily veteran designer with a "return to the basics" mantra.

Do yourself a favor. Next time you see an article with the "Future of Gaming!" title, just read the above paragraph which will sum it all up neatly for you and you've saved ten minutes of your life that you can now apply to playing Vice City.

The Future of Tech Journalism!!!

[Elwood P Dowd]

This article is about the future of tech journalism. Notice the byline at the end? "This article is the editorial opnion of gamespy network. Sponsored by the Intel Pentium 4"

Obviously, it was a well written and insightful article. And it was about all the reasons that new games will need bigger and faster processors. And Intel paid Gamespy to write it. Interesting, not wrong.

The best games the last few years

[Multiple Sanchez]

Are the most immersive. Think Zelda 64. Think GTA3. These are games with a lot of action and a lot of attention to detail. The designers made it entirely entertaining to do nothing more than explore the landscape all day long. The attention to every detail is there in some of our other favorites, too... Space Quest I-III spring to mind, not to mention the Z-word, Zork. Even the abstract, near-wordless Out of This World -- a game I'd happily spend hours arguing is the most entertaining game of the last twenty years -- had this quality, full of the little details in the periphery that made playing the game such a successful escapist fantasy.