Games Industry Echoes Of Hollywood's Golden Age?

Zack Young writes "I just read an article over at TweakTown Gamer that has an interesting comparison between the movie industry and the gaming industry. It mentions many of the similarities between the relatively young gaming industry and the film industry of the 1920's, including the introduction of new technologies and how they shaped and are shaping the artistic direction the formats take." The article also suggests: "The overall structure of gaming companies... resembles the studio system of the 'Golden Age of Hollywood' rather than the fragmented independent layout of today. The movie studios such as MGM, Paramount or Warner Brothers had their own stock of actors, writers and directors from which the crew of a particular movie was comprised."

Comments

It's gonna be more evolution than revolution

[Toxygen]

The article makes mention of the advent of "talkies" being a revolution in the film industry and what the comparable revolution would be in the gaming industry, but didn't movies just use an announcer or a narrator, or even just a piano playing in the beginning? That's still sound for the movie, regardless of the source, and different implementations of the same idea is just evolution.

Re:It's gonna be more evolution than revolution

[Jerf]

"Quality" and "quantity" are two points on a continuum, not binary absolutes.

A sufficient change in quantity becomes a change in quality.

Having a generalized sound track is so different from having "a human voice not of your choosing and a piano" that the two are hardly comparable, even if technically both are sources of sound.

The litmus test is, "Will my understanding of one contribute significantly to my understanding of the other?" In this case, the answer is no; understanding what is possible with "a guy and a piano" will only give you the barest hint of what is possible with a full soundtrack.

I'd say it justifies "revolutionary" as a term.

(That said, at this point the only true "revolution" left for gaming is significantly more physical interaction, or direct neural connections giving the impression of more direct physical interaction. "(Distributed) Multiplayer", massive and otherwise, was the last "revolution" in gaming and I doubt there will be any more for a while.

("But you can't predict the future! Maybe something awesome will happen!" No, but I can make a structural argument: We've tapped all the senses that can reasonably be tapped (taste and smell are irrelevant, touch in non-trivial modes is essentially what my "physical interaction" point is about and is very hard), and we've tapped human interaction via multiplayer. There's nowhere for a true "revolution" to come from anymore, just a whole lot of incremental evolution that may add up in totality to a revolution, but with no one true "revolution" point.)

OK, this rambled a bit, but hey, this is Slashdot, right?

Re:Definitely

[sofakingl]

Hardly any decent games? This is the SNES and Genesis era you are talking about, an era that many gamers think of as the real gaming golden age. There were so many good games on both of those systems that are looked apon as being classics. Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, the SNES Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter 2, Phantasy Star 4, Castlevania 4, and several others were released in that era, and are cherished by many gamers.

Programmers like actors?

[R33MSpec]

"..The movie studios such as MGM, Paramount or Warner Brothers had their own stock of actors, writers and directors from which the crew of a particular movie was comprised.."

On another train of thought - I wonder if programmers who gain 'status' for creating outstanding games may be well known enough (e.g John Carmack) to be exactly like an actor, in the way:

Programmers will have a personal manager and be able to almost freelance between game companies for particular game projects - like an actor is offered movie roles, a programmer would be offered contracts by gaming studios for a particular game.

Games would highlight even more so the fact that a particular programmer worked on a previous 'hit' game - like any new movie will highlight any A-list actors it may have in it.