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Life After the Video Game Crash
codecasting writes "There's an interesting, very satirical story over at David Wong's Pointless Waste of Time where he makes a good case for the upcoming death of the video game industry. His key points include gaming platforms largely reaching a technological plateau, the aging of the 'Original Gamers' audience, and the slew of games that are just copies of the same game from last year, but with a new title and different cars/guns/bikinis/etc. An interesting and humorous read."
I may be a little bit old school, but nothing has generated as much excitement as the release of a new Mario game or Final Fantasy 2 and 3 (US) used to when I was younger. Perhaps age has something to do with it, or it could be a lack of quality and fun. My money is on the latter.
Clearly, there is a reason of this polishing trend. I don't think this is good but it is what people want.
Look at GTA for example, it doesn't have anything new but still it is one of the most popular games.
On the other hand, maybe lack of new ideas is related with increasing cost of producing a new game (number of designers, programmers etc). Publishers don't want to risk their money with completely new ideas.
I just did that last night too, but for different reasons. What worries me is that the person I talked to on the phone said that my CD Key for the game would become invalid after 3 month, and that there was no way to get a new key other then buying the game again. This sucks if at some point I change me mind and want to play some more.
We may have a graphical-niceties plateau, at some point. We're not there quite yet.
But, what can be done with improved processing power from now on?
1. BETTER AI. We can improve AI at range. Instead of monsters staying in one place in a game till they hear the player, they can ALL be moving around in the level, ALL the time. If you never know exactly where they are, the game gets more exciting. One time you go through, sure, they might be right around the corner - the next, they're NOT right there, and instead they're sitting back waiting to ambush you somewhere else.
This is not to say that better AI is killer AI, by the way. Better AI is the AI that CLOSEST APPROXIMATES WHAT THE CREATURE SHOULD DO. If I'm in a D&D adventure and killing Orcs, I expect them to ACT like Orcs. If they're some devious wizard, I expect run-and-snipe tactics. If they're a brawny brawler, I expect to be charged. The better processing power you have, the less you have to cut corners, and the deeper you can make the AI such that a creature not only looks and sounds as expected, but ACTS like one might expect it to.
2. EXPANDED LEVEL SIZE. This is one of those biggies. Doom, for all its technological prowess of the time, relied on sending players back and forth through levels a lot. Hexen, with its "hub" setup, even more so - reusing content to make things SEEM much bigger than they were.
The PS2 can't handle the size of areas we want these days. Best example is the PS2 port of Deus Ex, where every level got chopped up into 5-10 areas with load zones in order to fit them together, as compared to the original PC version (which still rocks, BTW).
3. Multilinear gameplay. THIS is where the "in the movies" feel comes from - where YOU, the GAMER, are picking what the story is. Choosing your side and defining what your character thinks/feels is a level of immersion that makes pencil-and-paper gaming still survive and even thrive today, and video games are finally going expand out from the "reading a book" format of the Final Fantasy 'roleplaying' idea, into the TRUE Roleplaying idea where you have a control over your character's destiny and placement.
4. Finally, he misses out on where video games are going. Look at Hollywood: how many pathetic, bad, annoying sequel movies or just bad premises with bad actors are put into theaters or straight to video each year? TONS. The Video Game industry is the same way, and the reviewers are important in both industry in getting people to buy in - but the number of games is a sign of long-term health, not a signal of impending doom.