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A New Golden Age of Gaming?
Calathea writes "The BBC has an interview with 'Elite' legend David Braben where he talks about the next generation of games that will herald a golden age and equates them with Hollywood of the 30s." From the article: "A similar transition happened in the early 1930s in the film industry. In the 1920s, films were almost pure spectacle, and that spectacle became ever more extreme to keep the audiences coming back - cars skidded around towns, people dangled and fell from buildings, cars were forever being smashed to pieces on railway crossings. The stories were light-weight justifications for linking the dramatic moments together ... But it opened the door for the golden age of film, where Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd gave way to Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles in the 1930s. With hindsight the contrast is immense, and I think we are on the cusp of a similar change in the games industry."
I'd argue that the golden age in gaming, comparable to the movies of the 30's, was the NES-era. The NES opened up gaming in ways that was unheard of before and Nintendo's dominance of the market remains unrivaled today. The current gaming era more closely resembles the movie industry today, with bloated budgets and the emphasis on special effects over substance and style.
It's not like you can predict a golden age anyway. You can only objectively define a golden age in hindsight long after that era is over.
I thought the groupthink was that we're heading for a gaming crash.
The article is just PR for a game called "The Outsider." Don't bother.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
This article seems to become a commercial at the end for this guys game. The author thinks the key to next gen games are more interaction. Maybe. I would like to see someone make a 3D "game" that is nearly totally passive. It is no longer a game, but a piece of cinema. You may make a few choices, for instance to change the ending or to make something less violent. You may get the option to watch the drama or comedy unfold from "spectator mode", so you can view the action from different angles and distances. Or you can view it from predetermined camera views, your option.
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I was thinking about games and their relative merits the other day. I think what really screwed up gaming for the last few years was, more than any other single thing, the transition to 3D.
:)
3D programming is enormously more difficult than the old 2D variety. It takes an order of magnitude more programming skill and computer power to to animate and move things in 3D. But people *really like* 3D, and stopped buying 2D games.
So everyone made the transition, whether they were ready or not. This resulted in subpar games, because most of the development effort went into simply getting the 3D engines working.
As an example, look at the huge amount of gameplay that's in the Baldur's Gate series. By using a 2D engine, they were able to cram a game of immense proportions into just a few CDs. Instead of having to model and texture hundreds of critters in 3D, they could use 2D sprites instead. Result: very probably the finest RPG ever created.
At this point, the pain of the 3D transition is easing off. There are many more programmers and artists that understand it, and have optimized their workflow to support it. The canonical example is probably Civ4. Civ4 is a fully 3D game in all respects, but it offers all the power and flexibility of the old 2D games... plus a bunch of stuff you can easily do only in 3D. For the first time, we have a 3D game that trades off absolutely nothing. And it's tremendous fun.
Another example would probably be WoW, which is an incredibly deep and fun experience. There's so much content there that it compares very well with the Baldur's Gate series. There are some story issues with the world not really being malleable to individual characters, but the total experience is world-class. 500+ hours of gameplay is pretty much standard in WoW.... where with Baldur's Gate 2, even if you replay it several times, you're usually looking at no more than 100 or so.
I think, at this point, 3D has been mastered sufficiently that they can start, once again, writing Truly Great Games. 2005 was a good example of some of the stuff that's coming.... there were some phenomenal games this year. Hardly any of them were mainstream... Civ4 being the major exception. Darwinia, Space Rangers 2, Fate... just some awesome games this year. (I'm in a hurry here or I'd list some more examples... there were a TON of great games in 2005.)
I think, ultimately, that this author is exactly right. The next Golden Age is coming.... 2005 to 2010 will have games you'd have killed for if you grew up in the 70s and 80s, like us old folks.