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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."
If this is what comes after the golden age, I'm not sure I want that to happen.
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.
Braben prefers to keep monetizing works like Elite. I'm more of an Ian Bell fan, if only because he has the balls to make the original Elite free.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
People consider the 'classic' era of great games has come and gone. The reality is games were so simple then that a great one could really stand out. There wasn't much to compare besides pure gameplay.
Now games are judged on Dolby 5.1 sound, 1080i graphics, broadband online abilities, and gameplay. It is harder for a great game to stand out because there are so many different elements to master that appeal to so many different people. Add this to the fact that the gaming industry is booming creating massive competition and things get really blurry.
If we aren't in a golden age, oh well. Madden 2006 on 360 may not have the best gameplay of any football game (I think it does) but the surround sound and native wisdescreen HDTV graphics makes an amazing gaming experience.
Movies were original then.
e tto-Part-Eleven"l ay-Soldier-Here-At-Home-Part-Five."
We're stuck with gems like:
"Run-Down-the-Hallway-and-Shoot-It-Part-Six"
"Suburban-WhiteBoys-Pretending-They're-from-da-Gh
"Not-Enough-Guts-to-Join-the-Army-but-Enough-to-P
If by "Golden Age" he means games worth pissing on, then yeah, I'd say MS & Sony are bringing it on..
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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Future games just have to take a cue from Deus Ex, the first one (not the second one). You could have a repitition of maps, with different figures in different places, the advancement of the main character, and with a good story to bind them all together, these things become a very entertaining item.
Think "Rear Window."
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Braben makes the oh-so-common mistake of comparing the development of film to games. But while there are certainly patterns to the development of a media format, their very format changes their maturation. Radio and TV developed very differently than film, for a variety of reasons. Likewise, so will (and have) games.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of Braben's argument for a "golden age" is that the type of games he believes will populate this golden age already exist. He writes that "[the] game character's objectives are defined rather than the overarching story narrative, to allow the story to unfold in response to the player's actions." He derides his own game, Elite, by saying it only hinted at this freedom. But I can think of other older games, like Pirates! or Ultima or Starflight or even Simcity, where the player does exactly what Braben suggests will happen in his next game.
Secondly, Braben chastises recent games for putting the player on "pre-defined railway-lines." Ok. Sounds good. But then the harbinger of this new age, his own The Outsider, apparently has its own railway-line: "This is a thriller where the player begins by being accused of a terrible crime but can respond in many different ways, from getting revenge, to proving his innocence, to joining the secret organisation that came after him." Seems like I was presented with similar choices in games like Elite or Pirates. So there are branches in the railway, but it's still a railway. What made GTA so fun for many was the player often created their own objectives. Maybe this was to kill as many innocents, or explore every nook and cranny, or make the boat jump onto land. But Braben has already up a set number of objectives. Ok, so there are 4 rather than one. Big whoop. So what makes this game better? Apparently, the very thing Braben prophesies against: graphical enhancements.
Elite certainly gives Braben some credence, and if The Outsider is anything like Elite it will probably be quite fun. But if it's open-endedness he's after, he needs to stop superimposing film onto the very different medium of the video game.
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.