Slashdot Mirror
Will Modern Games Stand the Test of Time?
The Multiplayer blog spoke with Tadashi Iguchi, one of the developers for the recent Pac-man and Galaga remakes, about the decision to bring new life to old classics and whether today's games will receive similar treatment twenty years down the road.
"'I think more than half of the games you see today with huge budgets and such a "realistic" focus will be either stale or forgotten in 20 years,' he said. 'On the other hand, the masterpieces of the '80s will definitely be enjoyed far into the future. The reason for this is simple — many of these classic titles have unique and fascinating mechanics that can't be diminished by the advancement of technology.'"
I call BS on the "unique and fascinating mechanics". The real reason games from the 80's will be "enjoyed" far into the future is that the generation that grew up with or played it will get nostalgic and run back to it every once in a while.
Games that I think might be hailed as "classics" in 20 years:
Portal
Most Mario games (they're still reselling all the old ones on handhelds, I doubt this'll stop in 20 years).
Counterstrike - Immensely popular in the day, it'll certainly be a fun fallback in the future.
never have mod points when you need them. I was scanning through this thread to figure out where to post exactly what you just said. I will add though, that early video games had simple gameplay mechanics that couldn't really be improved upon without making it a completely different game. Games today will see and endless amount of minor enhancements, improvements and spinoffs over the next many years. When most people look back at games from today, they will be weak early versions of current games. Games from the 80's will never have modern equivalents. That being said, it's not really a knock on today's games, they're still good, just someone else will make the same game but better sometime in the near future.
I don't think graphics are a problem. Yes, I know the graphics in Quake I, Diablo I, Red Alert I, and Half-Life I are "bad." But I love them nonetheless. Also, I have played NONE of those games before I was 17. I'm 19 now, so I haven't had too much time to get nostalgic over them.
The problem with really old games is CLUNKINESS. You know, how in the original Metroid Samus's beam gun only shoots two inches before the shot disappears? Or how Link's shield in the original Zelda only works against projectiles, and it's fickle at that? How about leaving games on all night because otherwise you need to start from the beginning?
I think everyone has a certain level of "clunk" that they are willing to tolerate. The things I listed above may be fine for others. Someone may get frustrated at my childhood favorites like Kirby Superstar, Sonic 2, or Civ II, for whatever reason.
I don't think there are really that many graphics whores out there. I do, however, think that there are people who are used to modern saving systems, matchmaking systems, control systems, etc. that make modern games feel more refined than their "classic" counterparts. Who knows, maybe in the future people won't understand why our online shooters had hitboxes, or why our online fighters lagged so much. Maybe it will seem weird that MMO's of today took cuts in detail to render large open spaces. Hell, maybe they will think it odd that we stored our games on discs instead of hard drives. As new generations come and go, the average level of tolerable clunkiness will move forward. Maybe someday Call of Duty 4 or World of Warcraft will be as old as some people would be willing to go.
And then old people will reminisce about the days when 360 and PS3 graphics were "next-gen."
I recently decided to reinstall Civ IV just to play a quick game. I came home from classes early in the afternoon, and the next thing I knew it was dark out. Every Civilization game since the first one I played (II) has been able to do this to me. It's crazy. No matter how much Sid Meier tinkers with the Civ formula, the result is always the same: once I click the icon, I kiss the rest of my day goodbye.
The ability to think quickly, manage a complex and changing battlefield environment, and not only defend the infrastructure to manufacture a large army but also maintain the flow of resources in order to feed that (hungry) tank machine - all add to the appeal of RTS games - and I'm a veteran of both turn-based and RTS wargames.
Turn-based strategy games are intellectually stimulating. It requires deep strategizing and planning, and can result in a good game that lasts days. They are also, regrettably, a bit boring. They lack the same shifting-puzzle nature that makes Chess a classic for the ages. There is a reason why the RTS market completely dominated the TBS market as soon as it became viable.
RTS games are a totally different animal. It's not as dry as a TBS game - the speed and constant activity give you a much more solid connection to the mind you are trying to defeat. Every moment of attention spent in one place is a gamble. There is no boredom - you never have to wait for a slow player. Additionally, it rewards quick thinking and resiliency in ways that TBS just can't compete with. I never broke a sweat during a TBS game, but there is no gaming experience like the nervous tension (often filled with chainsmoking) you experience when you have an entire army poised on the tip of an all-or-nothing assault.
Also, psychology is difficult to employ, and impossible to deploy well, in all but the very best TBS games. On the other hand, even the most poorly-designed RTS game allows for misdirection, confusion, and outright misleading your enemy.
The average RTS games, in my opinion, have generally been superior (in terms of entertainment) to all of the best TBS games I have played (and I have fond memories of Axis and Allies, Risk (if that counts), and of course a blast from the past - Ogre). Risk remains popular largely due to it's simplicity - more complex versions of it have been made for a very long time, but never stand the test of time.
I don't think many individual RTS games will last for long, largely because they are all based on a specific gimmick, story, or appearance. As a format, I think RTS will remain a major theme in games for the foreseeable future. TBS has already fallen by the wayside, no matter how much a few segments of the populations love them. The only way a specific RTS would last is if it were more generic - if it had fewer associations, and fell into the format of "army vs army" with less emphasis on story.
Also, I happen to be a tank rush aficionado. A great many have fallen, sobbing, before the unholy might of my inhuman efficiency.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
Well, it's true for almost any competitive video game too.
E.g., take a l33t zerg rusher from Starcraft and put him in a situation where he can't mechanically repeat the same rush, and watch him proclaim that the map is crap.
E.g., I once had the mis-fortune of working with a complete CS-head, and made the mistake of listening to him at first, which made it nigh impossible to shake him off when he got boring. Well, actually, I am a gamer, and at first it was just another talk about just another game, so it was interesting.
Then it got massively boring as I quickly realized that he was playing the exact same map, and did the exact same thing, every bloody day. Several hours per evening. He'd buy the same bloody weapon and a grenade, run behind the same warehouse, climb the same ladder, drop through the same vent in the roof, crawled through the same duct, dropped in the same room, and shot the guy camping in the corner, if one was there.
I guess that's the thing that got him the best score, or something, and he repeated it religiously. (And somehow thought it's worth talking about again, every day. But I digress.)
One time I'm dumb enough to say "yes" when he wants to show me how cool CS is and how great he is, after hours. (We were pretty much free to install what we wanted to on the company computers, and a multiplayer round in the lunch break or occasionally after hours was pretty much a sacred tradition for most people.) So he finds a server with that map, and he's even on defense this time, so it promises to be different.
He buys a weapon and runs and starts jumping in place in front of a vent. Some guy drops into that duct from the roof, my co-worker shoots him, and keeps on jumping. Next round, the same. Next round, you guessed, he's jumping in front of the same vent again like he's got mad kangaroo disease. Repeat for two bloody hours O.o
So I'm standing there dumbfounded, mostly out of sheer morbid curiosity. I mean, it was painfully boring even for me to watch that repetitive _work_. I expected him to go, "ah, screw this, lemme show you something else" any time now. Nope. For two bloody hours he repeated the exact same sequence and hopped in place in front of the same vent.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You can compare classic games to chess, because they're pure gameplay.
Many modern games are more about story-telling, so a comparison to Citizen Kane would make more sense.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
Civ IV is really good.
I played all the Civs including Alpha Centauri and Civ IV was the only one that came close to making me rethink my conviction that 'Alpha Centauri is the best civ-like ever.(period)'.