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A History of Touch Games Technology
Next Generation has up a lengthy article about the history of touch interaction in games. Above and beyond the obvious, like the DS or the touch panel table demonstrated last year, they also explore concepts like physical interaction in adventure games like Myst. "The popular growth of videogames has been more or less tied to a minimization of distance, and an increase in tangibility; making the player feel like he can touch the world, and that doing so will matter. It makes sense, right? Make people feel actively involved, and they will actively involve themselves. As developers have piled on the abstractions - more buttons, more unspoken conventions, a more confusing perspective - and reveled in the already-existing distance, videogames have passively sunk into their niche, to appeal only to those familiar enough to overlook and accept the abstractions."
They missed the touch master games that have some cool games in them.
...the just need to offer a 3-dimentional touch interface with such classic titles as "Lap Dance Simulator", "Prostitute for a Night" and my personal all time favorite "Play with her Pussy 2: The Dream Genitals"
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Honestly I really miss the puzzle mouse-only games of Mysts, the Journeyman Projects, etc. They were great games with a good bit of exploration, puzzling, and brain power was needed to succeed. No button mashing here.
No need to call me an old-time gamer, I'm only 24, but I did play these games when they were released, and I play WoW and own a Wii and XBox 360 and Halo 2 and etc. Let's face it though, as much work and thought was put into these games, they were under-appreciated and new work in the genre is sorely missed.
Closest you'll get to a good similar puzzle game nowadays is Portal. Awesome freakin' game though. The cake, however, is a lie.
The popular growth of videogames has been more or less tied to a minimization of distance, and an increase in tangibility; making the player feel like he can touch the world, and that doing so will matter
I never felt more "in touch" with a game than when I played Dungeon Master As games have become much more advanced, I still feel like you move through them with only a cursory awareness (or remembrance) of the surroundings.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Quite possibly the worst handheld gaming system, but Tiger's game.com did have a touch screen interface (not to mention dual cartridge ports and internet connectivity) back in 1997.
While the system is a failure, it did have some big names games (Resident Evil, Sonic, Virtua Fighters, Duke Nukem, etc), all of which are pretty dreadful adaptations.
And of course, nothing on Tiger is complete without the R-Zone, a Vritual Boy wannabe (think about that), without the headache inducing stereoscopic vision stuff.
Anyone?
Posting AC for obvious reasons. But why was the Catholic church the first thing that popped in to my mind?
Your mom and I were playing touch games last night...
and no mention of Tiger's Game.com?
That thing was way ahead of its time. Full touch screen, text based internet access, and several big series like resident evil and Duke nukem. It even had some PDF functionality in it. When the DS was first shown, all I could think of was "game.com 2.0". I find it amazing so few people seem to give credit to the little handheld, as without it there would be no DS.
The author basically regurgitates what every game designer should already know about game interaction and interfaces, but instead substitutes his (her?) own terminology related to "touch". May be a different paradigm for some less experience game designers or lay-people... I don't know. Nothing new here other than acknowledging what we already know.