Dvorak Trashes Modern Gaming Industry

oskard writes "John C. Dvorak recently posted a PCMag.com rant trashing the gaming industry, predicting a complete market-meltdown in the near future. Titled 'Doom 4: End of the Game Industry?', it was interesting to see how the 3D Realms Forums reacted to the article. He claims that 'games have hardly changed since the invention of the first-person shooter.' His kids have obviously showed him too much Halo 2, and not enough Half-Life 2." From the article: "The business is going to attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy newer and newer machines. Computer gaming has always been sustained by never-ending improvements in resolution and realism. But once we get to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth?"

Comments

Starship Troopers

[alnya]

If you want to see exactly how inane this is, go out and rent the brain-dead Paul Verhoeven film, Starship Troopers.

Poor use of an example there, being that Starship Troopers is a oft-misunderstood anti-war satire.

Mod article +5 Ironic

Quake Family Tree.

[Tei]

Anyone interested on modern FPS engines sould check this Quake Family Tree.

This pict how actually most people its on modding already existing engines. Valve its even forward, modding his how mods ( Counter Strike: Source ). /me...Looking forward for Quake 4.

Re:Don't fall for it.

[quakeroatz]

So true.

Don't tell me that 70,000 people we're playing Counter Strike on the crusty old Half LIfe 1 engine because of the graphics. Gameplay sustains a game's life after the initial buzz, look what happened to Doom 3, all flash no substance. And on the other hand you have Gameboy's Tetris, what a graphical nightmare, but still a strong classic few didn't enjoy for a long time.

Re:I think his agrument is off base

[DrLex]

I don't play games because of the graphics.

You are right, even though its graphics and structure are much more primitive, I actually enjoyed playing the Marathon series of games more than, say, Half-Life 2. (FYI, Marathon, originally a Mac game, can now be played through the open source Aleph One project, and can be downloaded for free at Bungie's site.) Marathon had a storyline which was a few factors more complex than HL2's, but it was woven inobtrusively into the gameplay through interactive terminals. The story was so interesting that the gamer's imagination enhanced the perception of the otherwise rather primitively texture-mapped polygons. It's a bit like with a good horror movie, where the 'evil' is not shown explicitly, only hints to it. The viewer's imagination turns the evil into something more horrid than anything that can be shown by CGI, as is often tried in modern movies. Here, imagination turned the game into something more thrilling than can ever be shown by the most realistic graphics.
Yes, HL2 also had hints to a story, but actually nothing more than hints. After I finished the game, I still had no idea what the heck 'combine soldiers' were and where those aliens came from and how/why this guy teamed up with them.

Of course, playing a straightforward shooter like UT2k4 can also be fun. People just don't always have days to spend to get immersed in the complex world of a game. But I bet playing onslaught would be just as much fun if everything were still rendered using Quake I graphics.

Re:Food for thought

[espressojim]

And then, you can work on realistic physics, and AI. After that, you can work on better stories, non-linear plots, etc.

There's a million directions that technologies can improve in for games. I don't see the world ending when graphics get to be photorealisitc (and that's not going to happen any time soon anyway - compare Pixar level graphics to today's PC, we're many years away from having the processor power to do that in realtime.)

Re:Don't fall for it.

[buddhaseviltwin]

bzzzt, wrong! people think that deaths and gunshots and things look as sanitized as they do on tv. A little more realism, I think, might be a GOOD thing.

Hate to break it to you, but real gunshots are usually not as gory as Hollywood's depiction, which isn't to say that reality can't be horribly gory and disturbing. IMO, the most disturbing part about violence for me is the real human suffering and senseless insanity rather than the actual blood and mutilation.

I would think most doctors would agree with me.

Re:Don't fall for it.

[pilgrim23]

Back in the pre-CG days of the 1930s, Warner Brothers was constantly fielding complaints over the level of violence Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig Daffy Duck and the immortal (Lucky for him) Elmer Fudd were constantly portraying. After all: Seeing Bugs put a finger in Elmer's hunting rifle and having it blow up on Elmer with the only result being soot on face, a flower petal looking gun barrel and no problem for Bug's finger was only encouraging our youth to take similar actions...
As the saying goes: Nothing new here, move on.