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The Hookup on High-Def Gaming
Penny Arcade's semi-frequent column The Hook Up has published a new article, and this time around Stormy talks about the coming high-def revolution in gaming and the acceptance of gaming by the masses. From the article: "I'm definitely troubled about the 'dumbing-down' effect that bringing the casual gamers into our fold may have on the quality of games in the future. Sure, tight pants and big tits appeal to the hardcore elite just the same as the casual gamer, but I'm betting that Half-Life 2 on the Xbox will play a lot different than on its PC predecessor. For example, I really took it as a compliment when Valve simply threw me into the fray when I began the game. The beauty of it was that the storytellers assumed that we've all played a shooter before."
The gameplay still has to be there. It goes without saying that it doesn't matter how sexy a game looks, if it's boring to play it won't be a hit. The comments the article made about high-def giving people an advantage is interesting though - you really could get more accurate shots off with a higher res larger display. I don't think it takes into account the natural 'tunnel' that people's vision has though. On a really big screen, it's easy to miss stuff off to one side (try sitting at the front of a movie theatre and see how much of the action you're missing, to get my drift). Basically, unless someone's playing a sniper on an FPS, I don't see a huge advantage - it'll just be tradeoff of clarity in the small area you're staring at vs the guy without the clarity who can see the whole situation better. Interesting observations, anyway.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I despise this writer's elitist slant. Calling people casual gamers, mentioning the "'dumbing-down' effect" and associating himself with the "hardcore elite" reeks of shit. L33t sh1t, too. Just because your inside doesn't mean you're onside, boyo.
The other point made in Stormy's column was that many people have become disenchanted with real-time PC multiplayer gaming because you can gain a huge advantage simply by spending money on nice hardware. Current online console games present a refreshingly level playing field (except for Internet connection-based latency) in terms of inherent hardware-based performance. In the next generation, developers will be encouraged to take full advantage of HD to impress gamers. There will, of course, still be people with standard-definition TVs, as well. Simply owning an HD setup (and maybe surround sound) will give a gamer a tremendous advantage over people still using standard definition TVs, both in terms of field of view (16:9 TVs will offer better than 4:3; to gain the same field of view, a 4:3 viewer has to sacrifice around 1/3 of their vertical resolution, which already sucked) and resolution.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
While the author is worried about console games losing the "level playing field" in terms of hardware, it certainly won't be as bad as in computer games. In computers you have a constant supply of new available upgrades, as long as you have the cash. As for the next generation of consoles, the only upgradable component will be your TV. Once everyone has HD-TVs, that's it, thats the upper limit of upgradability.
Sure, it will be a factor when the consoles are new and only a handful of people have HD-TVs, but these new TVs are the wave of the future, right? Isn't EVERYONE supposed to go out and buy a new one? Within a couple of years, a LOT more people will have HD-TV. You can't expect the hardware vendors to not include HD ability when it is right on the horizon of becoming mainstream. Heck, this could very well push more people to get that HD-TV set, so they can take advantage of new console features.
From Article: I get the sinking feeling that the Standard Definition mode of new games will simply be a boiled down, interpolated, and narrowed port of the High Definition original version. I just don't see how they are going to be able to negotiate the differences between these two customer types--the technology differences are simply too vast.
Simple. Their plan is to kill SD as a serious impediment to a pc or three in every home. It just might work as Microsoft has plenty of collaborators wanting to push as many HDTVs as possible.
If enough people upgrade to HD, it gets cheaper and eventually becomes a trivial purchase for the casual gamer. Especially when its likely the casual gamer has other reasons to upgrade such as digital cable or satellite. It's certainly a bold move on Microsofts part, but also an obvous one. I just don't see how this muddies the waters as the author implies.
Did I miss something?
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The start to half life 2 is actually very novice gamer friendly.
You start out just wandering around. The only thing that's missing to make it very friendly is an in game explanation that W-A-S-D are your movement keys, but presumedly the manual does that (I didn't read the manual). In fact your early game game experience is entirely running around in a 3d space, which is pretty easy even if you have no shooter experience.
(great storyline happens)
You eventually get to a couple jumping puzzles. Here we're got one new gameplay concept - jumping, and it's introduced in a tense setting but where you have all the time you need.
By the time you get into combat you've been playing for half an hour, and I believe it tells you how to "fire" (swing your crobar).
It's a little while before you get a gun.
In short half life 2 is very gamer friendly, starting off with extremely simple gameplay and introducing one new gameplay element at a time. You just don't notice it because the game rocks so much, you don't really think about how the game isn't a frag fest from frame 1.
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I support spreading santorum
I understand the point of HD possibly giving an edge to SD, but isn't that why there are player rankings?
Younger players also have an edge in that they can log more hours playing, learning every specific detail about levels, items, etc. If the HD vs. SD difference is large enough, then won't the rankings clear that up automatically?
The only real problem I see with that if you wanted to play with a specific friend, and one of you was HD while the other was SD . . . but then isn't that the same as playing with an inexperienced friend in the current setup?
When the topic of "dumbing-down for the masses" came up, was I the only one who immediately thought of Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within?
Nobody's dumbing down anything. It's evolving.
Wow, what a fucking retard.
That article can't possibly be serious.
But much as I loathe the XBox and much as I prefer a more cerebral, more demanding gaming experience....
A little excessive there aren't you? Or have you only looked at highlight clips of games available for the XBox?
You are implying that the XBox doesn't currently deliver a more cerebral, more demanding game experience than Halo. That isn't the sum of the system, there are a ton of great games out there.
Halo is to FPS games what Final Fantasy 7 was to RPGs. A accessable, big success that provides the first taste of a gaming genre to the masses. Just because FF7 was on the Playstation didn't mean that all of its RPGs (or all of its games) were poorly written and shallow. The same holds true for the XBox.
If I can learn to love the XBox (raised on Infocom, Atari, Origin, Nintendo, Apogee, iD, and Lucasarts), anyone can. I didn't play it at all until late last year and have been quite impressive with what I've found. More and more my GC gathers dust (except for Resident Evil 4). My desktop hasn't been a game platform since Myst IV.
Plug for an awesome game: Play Psychonauts. Tim Schafer is the best creative genius in gaming today. If you haven't, play Grim Fandango on the PC (or ScummVM...someday?).
From TFA:
Just exactly how did Valve 'throw you into the fray'??? You walked around for about 20 minutes (longer if you stopped to view the scenery), during which you were a.) UNARMED, and b.) IN-FUCKING-VULNERABLE. How exactly is this 'throwing you into the fray'???
*sigh*
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"Blah blah, back when I got into [scene] it was so much better and more exclusive. Everyone was hardcore and there was none of this watered-down-for-the-mainstream crap."
It works for any subculture or hobby. Usually it comes from people who are too young to realize that there were always superficial aspects to whatever it is they're so concerned with, and that in 5-10 years they're going to wonder why they cared so much.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I think it's more helpful to think of video games seriously in terms of genres, and take it from there, when speaking about the dumbing down of video games.
It's also helpful to consider that this argument has all been done before, in other media, again and again. Particularly in cinema. To resurrect a very old debate, there are those who said, and those who still argue that Star Wars constituted a dumbing down of sci-fi. Others, and I included, will contend that Star Wars does not "dumb down" serious futurist sci-fi or any genre of hard science-fiction at all, because it was never any of those things to begin with and doesn't aim at their market. Rather, Star Wars takes heroic tropes and conventions of children's literature and elements of every film genre out there, and makes of them a high quality film in a number of those genres. But to say it dumbs down sci-fi is to say it dumbs down something it isn't. To look at a fantasy hero saga in space and say it dumbs down science fiction makes about as much sense as saying that graphic novels 'dumb down' rennaissance principles of portraiture, or that modern electronica 'dumbs down' Baroque notions of musical composition or that 20th century urban architects 'dumb down' the aesthetics of greco-roman sculpture.
And the same thing is true of games and their aesthetics, in general. There have always been largely mindless video game genres, and there will always be largely mindless video game genres. Space Invaders, Pong and Demon Attack really didn't particularly inform my view of the world around me, I have to say. And there have furthermore always been games with simpler gameplay, instead favouring story, or simpler story, instead favouring action, and anywhere in between. What you'll find varies from genre to genre like night and day. What's wrong, therefore, is pointing to (just picking one of an infinite set of examples) Action Adventure genre games of the present and while pointing to them stating that they are dumbing down the D&D Dungeon Crawls of the past. There's no sense in it. Let the genres be. And finally, there will always be bad games, mediocre games, and games which simply say and do nothing of particular consequence for gaming in general. If anything, there are far, far fewer bad games today than once there were simply because budgets are too high to allow as many small titles.
I'm as orthodox a PC gamer as can be, so much so that I find myself immediately frustrated by the mere fact of not being able to easily hack and mod a console game, but I refuse to believe that console games are dumbing down gaming in general simply because when I see a simpler action game, based on an original PC RPG or RTS license, reinterpreted for console with simpler mechanics, I don't critique it as a PC RTS or PC RPG. I critique it as an action game, which has long been moreso the domain of the console than the PC. It doesn't say to me "games are getting dumber." It says to me "nothing new under the sun."
I don't believe the playing field is as level as Storm Shadow seems to believe. The TV already is of varying quality. TV size isn't the change HD will be, but someone playing on a 50" big screen is going to have a distinct advantage over someone playing on his old mono 15" tv. My guess is the imminent change of broadcast TV to HD, will do more to level the field than widen it. There is going to be a big wave of TV upgrades coming in the near future and the price for a tube small HDTVs isn't substantially different from projection TVs.
happens all the time.
the one i remember enjoying the most was that openGL quake1 let you see through some walls when underwater looking out, whereas looking from above down was shaded. software renderers had it opaque both ways. except for having to come up for air, a gl'er in the waters was frikkin dangerous.
No.
That game was near the top of a very long list of recent XXXTREME games that flashed before my eyes when reading that bit.
I blame Western society's love of the Xbox for giving publishers the stupid idea that this was the right way to do things. And Viacom, can't forget to blame Viacom for MTV making kids dumber. And the American beef lobbyists, for making it so cheap and easy to purchase hormonally-modified red meat in unhealthy portions. And......
Of course, I remember when people used to be hardcore, before all games had "save anywhere, any time you like", and these fancy 3d graphics. It's always the same, people always think that the time they started doing something with the pinicle, and it's been downhill since then.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I'm a video game enthusiest, but my taste in games is more "casual." I have very little patience for games that require a high level of mastery. Some games are good enough that I eventually get a high level of mastery, but it has to be fun to get there.
There are many gamers like me that like simpler games, but we aren't the problem. Neither are the people just getting into gaming, or the people that do not have a lot of time to devote to games. Games can be simple and fun, yet challenging. Look at games like Lumines or WarioWare. These games are not the problem.
The problem is the "trendy" games. Games likehe Enter the Matrix and LOTR: The Third Age. Games that only survive on hype and product placement. Excessive sequels qualify as well. These are games that care more about money than they do about gameplay, and sold to people who care more about their image than having fun. Now that it is "cool" to play games, more games are like this.
One more point: If online gaming is going to flourish on consoles, special care needs to taken that less skilled gamers aren't left out. Some of us don't have the time to become great at Halo. Some of us don't have the talent to become great at Halo, but to say these people need to take a hike isn't fair or profitable. I'm not saying Halo 2 doesn't try to do this, but the hardcore gamers need to understand that this is necessary for the companies and beneficial to all.
I have played through Psychonauts. On my PC.
This is so simple. The console knows what it's rendering and can report that to Live. People outputting HD play against HD. SD plays against SD. Problem solved!
What I want to know is will xbox 360 support keyboards, mice and monitors? That will kill PC gaming. I know MS is saying 720p, but what if it can output 1920x1080 progressive on a monitor or very high-end TV? The PC gaming market will crash and burn because plenty of people tired of paying for a new video card every two years, a new CPU/mobo/RAM/HD every three, and a new power supply every four. That's $700-1400 every 5 year console cycle. Yes PC games have better graphics in the last couple years, but to too many people it won't be worth it.
Microsoft wants to own the computing world, but PC gaming is a large part of what sells CPU's. They may not want to harm the market like that. However, Sony and Nintendo have lots of reasons to step in and do this.
Slightly O/T, but am I the only one who gets annoyed when people refer to Sands of Time and Warrior Within as PoP1 and PoP2 (respectively)?
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
If I can learn to love the XBox (raised on Infocom, Atari, Origin, Nintendo, Apogee, iD, and Lucasarts), anyone can. I didn't play it at all until late last year and have been quite impressive with what I've found. More and more my GC gathers dust (except for Resident Evil 4). My desktop hasn't been a game platform since Myst IV.
Perhaps you're experienced, but I don't think you're what would be considered a hardcore gamer. The main drawbacks of consoles are their severely limited input capabilities and their similarly limited storage capabilities. A third would be their proprietary nature, which practically prohibits the kinds of mods and add-ons that PC gamers enjoy. These things limit the design options for developers and cause the "dumbing down" effect that PC gamers pick up on immediately in games that are developed for both platforms. We see the cumbersome interfaces, the annoying save features, the small levels, and the relatively simple gameplay of console titles. Not that simple gameplay is necessarily a bad thing. There are many great games that have simple gameplay, on both console and PC, but sometimes we'd like something that isn't simple, and consoles just don't give many options in that area.
So he wants games only for the l33t, games which assume you're already l33t at FPS and just kick you in the pants as soon as you've hit "Start new game".
Anyone else see the stupidity there? What about those who _didn't_? You know, those who (potentially l33t or not) just moved into the age bracket for violent games.
If anyone started making games which are outright hostile to newbies, that genre would dwindle and die. Any market needs a steady supply of new customers, and doubly so for the games market which needs exponential growth just to keep up with the costs of those high res graphics.
So he proposes... what? That everyone should concentrate only on those who are already l33t at fps? Yes, and those gradually get married, get a kid, run into a job where overtime is required, or whatever, and get out of that market. Then what?
Geesh.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Here I am, using a 24" widescreen monitor at 1900x1200 resolution, powered by a 6800GT and 1 gig of ram, using a logitech mx1000 laser mouse and I still get the shit kicked out of me at counterstrike by people playing on 486s with 14" monitors. The exact same amount of shit kicked out of me when I was playing with a geforce 2 mx and a crappy 15" monitor.
Ok, I'm exagerating about the 486s but you get my point: Skill is everything, the edge you get from the best hardware is negligible, period.
The article is worried about the dumbing down of future games, but it's been like this for a few years now. Most new games use their first level as a tutorial, and you can't skip it, some even do it throughout the entire game. For example, do you know how annoying it is to try and play through the first level of Gunvalkyrie (2002) and have the game stop every 10 seconds to tell you how the controls work even though you've already played it 100 times before? I'm tired of games thinking they need to hold my hand for everything. When I play a game searching for a key to unlock a certain door then the game feels the need to remind me to take that key back to that door, I feel like it's telling me I'm too stupid to remember what I was just doing for the past 5 minutes. It's insulting. If they would just give you the option to turn these kinds of things off in the options it would help greatly. I understand the need for this the first time through with some players, but it should be optional, and most of the time it's not, and it's annoying. I've died in places where the game paused and told me what I needed to do next while I was already trying to do it, and that does not equal a fun game for any one.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
not in the least
the same thing regarding vice city and san andreas as well its not gta 4 and 5 people