What if Game Graphics Never Aged?

An anonymous reader writes "If you've heard of Procedural Synthesis, you already think it's amazing. It's been used to create some extraordinary visuals in tiny packages, like .kkrieger, which is less than 96 Kilobytes big but still has graphics that look like like a modern PC title. Beyond that, there's even more that Procedural Synthesis might be able to do; what if your old video games never aged, never looked out-of-date? Imagine putting Halo 2 into your Xbox 360 only to have it automatically upgraded to look like Halo 3 in graphical quality. This article examines the unexpected way that Procedural Synthesis might impact gaming in the generation after the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo Wii."

Comments

User created content in MMORPGs

[lawpoop]

I think MMORPGs would improve immensely if users had greater control over the environment. Nowadays, the paradigm seems to be to hire quest designers who regularly churn out boring, unoriginal quests.

If avatars were allowed to amass power (i.e. labor) and wealth, they could build castles and form alliances to protect their wealth. They could dig dungeons and spike them with traps and seed them with moster populations. Of course, the greater the treasure, the greater the incentive to find it, and the greater the incentive to protect it, leading to ever more creative dungeons, more daring heroes and quests.

To carry the thinking out of the dungeons, if you have Kingdoms that control wealth, and royalty that commands armies, then you make for the kind of human drama that makes for interesting quests. People would form alliances, and break them and double-cross each other. Someone would try to make an ally look like an enemy.

I think for this to work, there needs to be some kind of lego-type feature for building new, creative things. You start with a basic, finite set of elements, and allow for their combinations to affect the world in novel ways. Put them in people's hands and you will witness creativity you never thought possible.

Basically, make the world creative, generative, and put people in charge, and you will have sustained, user-created content.

On Launch:

[crabpeople]

"pn001.exe has encountered an error and needs to close"

Perhaps all games are really 96k and the rest is error handiling? this seems to be optional with this version.