A New Golden Age of Gaming? · Slashdot Mirror

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday January 4, 2006 @06:28AM from the sans-short-shorts-superman-i-hope dept.

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."

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The Golden Age has come and gone. by MaWeiTao · 2006-01-04 06:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.