PCMag: OMFG GAMING DOOMED?! Or something.

[SirNitram]

Link to the article.

So. That was spittle-encrusted. And it has some points; consider Halo 2, which added very little which hasn't been seen before, just with shinier graphics and even more monsters. We won't even touch the generally lackluster RTS horde which is so often the same.

But it strikes me as a profoundly narrow-minded rant-and-rave. Consider Half Life 2; the Gravity Gun is such a neat toy that it does open up alot of things. The profound wierdness of WarioWare ten-second games, and of course, what the hell is up with the Eye Toy and DDR? But they work, and are often new.

It does bring up the question I've wondered, which is, once we have photorealism, what next? My guess? Quite a few development houses and publishers crash, burn, and fade.

[Elheru Aran]

Dvorak *does* make a few good points that there's not many genres that's very new in gaming anymore. Sims, RTS, shooters, RPG's, and so forth; everything's an adaption of those basic genres. Nothing much's gonna change except the eye candy and a few gizmos.

For that reason, I can certainly see PC *and* console gaming decline in a few years once the VFX reaches photorealism; the next big step will have to be either alternative control methods, such as the EyeToy, or a literally immersive gaming experience-- virtual reality made convenient and cheap. Not gonna come for a fair while, though...

[Xon]

Link to the article.

So. That was spittle-encrusted. And it has some points; consider Halo 2, which added very little which hasn't been seen before, just with shinier graphics and even more monsters.

While Halo2 wasnt very original nor feature significant improvments on existing stuff, it is/was vastly sucessful. If nothing else the PC market punishes original game concepts.

Also photorealism isnt the be all and end all. Getting things to act like you exact them to is a fuckload harder.

Photorealism without proper physics will turn people off. There are subtle visual clues which people use all the time when interacting with the enviroment, and when those are misisng or completely the different from the expected it will break suspension of disbelieve at a subconscious level.

[Losonti Tokash]

Wait, so there absolutely has to be a new genre every few years for gaming to sustain itself? What's wrong with simply being fun and immersive? Sure, Halo 2 didn't add much when it came to new ideas, but it's still fun as hell and continued (IMHO) an awesome scifi storyline.

But anyway. After photorealism, my sources tell me that the next likely step would be either virtual reality gimmicks or 3D holograms or some crap like that.

[Elheru Aran]

Wait, so there absolutely has to be a new genre every few years for gaming to sustain itself? What's wrong with simply being fun and immersive? Sure, Halo 2 didn't add much when it came to new ideas, but it's still fun as hell and continued (IMHO) an awesome scifi storyline.

But anyway. After photorealism, my sources tell me that the next likely step would be either virtual reality gimmicks or 3D holograms or some crap like that.

Holograms are a bit too ambitious except for arcades, as they'd require some pretty major equipment. Virtual reality, on the other hand, is more practical; just plug it into your computer/console, pull on the glove or pick up the pistol (something like the light-gun from Duck Hunt, but with a motion sensor in it) and you're good to go. You could likely even get custom light-gun designs made to resemble different weapons, and maybe even VR headsets custom-made... can't you just picture it?

"Empire's Six: Stormtrooper Recon, Now with Full Helmet and Blaster Carbine Accessories!"

[Losonti Tokash]

Holograms are a bit too ambitious except for arcades, as they'd require some pretty major equipment. Virtual reality, on the other hand, is more practical; just plug it into your computer/console, pull on the glove or pick up the pistol (something like the light-gun from Duck Hunt, but with a motion sensor in it) and you're good to go. You could likely even get custom light-gun designs made to resemble different weapons, and maybe even VR headsets custom-made... can't you just picture it?

"Empire's Six: Stormtrooper Recon, Now with Full Helmet and Blaster Carbine Accessories!"

Hehe. I imagine that they could place the controls on the gun itself instead of requiring a separate controller. I remember a game like that on my old NES where you needed the lightgun AND the regular controller and had to operate both of them at the same time. God.

[Uraniun235]

Oh, for fuck's sake, asshats have been predicting the imminent end of PC gaming since Quake.

Yes, there are only so many game types, but so what? It's the same kind of braindead shitheadery that's behind such brilliant annoucements as "Star Wars is just a ripoff of The Hidden Fortress". SO WHAT? Star Wars is still a fucking great movie! Who the fuck cares if it's so similar to another movie? Does this asshat genuinely believe the only reason people buy games any more is because they're shinier than the last game?

[Drooling Iguana]

What, exactly, is the difference between the rash of nearly identical FPSs and RTSs we have now and the rash of nearly identical side-scrollers and shoot-'em-ups we had back in the '80s and '90s? When have the majority of games ever been original?

[Admiral Valdemar]

It's hard, nigh, impossible to be 100% original. Anyone doomsaying based on that pretext is obviously ignorant of the past.

[Praxis]

Sure, just like movies died after all genre's had been tapped, right?


We still have a long way before we have systems that can render NURBS in real time and can do Shrek 2 or Star Wars...so graphics is nothing to worry about, either.

Game prices might drop eventually though.


And he COMPLETELY ruined Iwata's speech, cutting out ALL the important stuff.

Iwata's point was for the Nintendo Revolution (not even mentioned in the article), and how he was saying that it would Revolutionize the gaming industry and create a new way of playing games, rather than rehashing the same old things with better graphics. Dvorak doesn't even mention this, and only focuses on the Nintendo DS part.

Proof right here:

r. We are already getting pre-hype for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 2, as well as the new Nintendo. All this will do is make the visuals more lifelike and the blood and gore more realistic and nauseating.

Did he even LISTEN to the entire speech?

Satoru Iwata: "We've reached the point where games are already photorealistic, and we need to do something new instead of just focusing on graphics". Dvorak doesn't even mention the highlight of it.

[Jaepheth]

...It does bring up the question I've wondered, which is, once we have photorealism, what next? My guess? Quite a few development houses and publishers crash, burn, and fade.

Once image quality is down pat, I expect they'll start going for quantity.

Imagine being a Spartan at Thermopolae against a million Persion troops, each one photo realistically rendered. (Est. release date: 2131AD)

[Alyeska]

Considering the number of revolutions and refinements still making it into FPS games, its pretty damned obvious they will continue to be highly popular. Whats even more telling is that games with good gameplay and good stories can be very popular even when the game itself is not revolutionary and the graphis are not high end.

[Stark]

The article is stupid, because it goes to far, and it just points out what thinking gamers already knew.

I agree with Nits point that new types of game are emerging all the time: however, they never go anywhere. Every game is either Doom, or Dune, or Baldurs Gate or Sims. Everything else gets buried. Sequels to quirky and unique games are generic rubbish produced by Eidos. Anything INTERESTING doesn't get shelf space bought for it.

But who cares? The only PC game that I'm looking forward to is STALKER, and after that I think the only game I'll be buying is HL2 for INF. Once the industry dies, there'll be room for innovation again: big business and sure-thing LCD game design isn't going to last.

My beef isn't originality: you can't bottle originality or get it on demand. It's the way cookie-cutter games SUCK. Remember all those 80s Double Dragon clones? Neither does anyone else.

[Alyeska]

Personaly I would like FPS games to stop dominating the market. RTS games have really slowed down (I remember when they used to dominate) and good titles aren't as easy to find as they used to be. Simulation games are almost dead (kept alive by a hard core fanbase). RPGs come and go.

[Darth Wong]

I agree with Alyeska about wishing for more RTS games. When you think about it, RTS games have the most room to grow. How many deficiencies in AI, tactics, and historical or tactical realism can you point out in even the best RTS game? A fuckload, I'll bet. And most of them are of the sort where you could see how superior resources and CPU/graphics power could theoretically resolve them someday.

Meanwhile, a FPS game is intrinsically unrealistic by nature and that situation won't improve. After they added squad teammates to the FPS game, what else is there to add? And how long can you play a game where the central conceit is that one lone unstoppable superman can defeat an entire enemy conspiracy, army, or invasion?

[Drooling Iguana]

Well, we did have quite a few games focusing on a lone unstoppable spaceship defeating an entire enemy fleet, although we don't get too many of those anymore.

[Alyeska]

I would have to say the last truly revolutionary RTS games came out in the late 90s and early 2000. The likes of Total Annihilation, Star Craft, and nearly forgotten games like Ground Control (which introduced true 3d with an incredible viewing system). There just hasn't been much of anything since. RTS games are far from dead (they aren't in a coma like Space Simulations), but they are not "healthy" like some would say FPS games are. The domination of FPS games gives us a lot of crap, but also forces game makers to generaly try new concepts. RTS development has significantly slowed and instead of inovation you just see RTS games bassed on new or established series (Battle of Middle Earth, AOE 3).

[Robert Walper]

I think the next goal will be games of bigger and bigger scale, incorperating aspects of all types. RTS, FPS, etc...

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Oh yeah, good idea: more games with gimicks...

[Xon]

Personaly I would like FPS games to stop dominating the market. RTS games have really slowed down (I remember when they used to dominate) and good titles aren't as easy to find as they used to be. Simulation games are almost dead (kept alive by a hard core fanbase). RPGs come and go.

Where is the equivelent of the gravity gun for RTS? Where are the better fire control systems? I want my units to fire intelligently instead of massive fire on the 1st thing they see.

A great physics engine would go a long way to helping RTS games, as well as unit AI & AI players.

But both of these require incrediable amounts of CPU processing power. Something like the PPU(Physics Processing Unit) would be a ray of light in an otherwise stale genre.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

While game "improvement" in graphics and 3D and such may reach the point of saturation, there is still HUGE room of improvement when it comes to GAMEPLAY. In fact, there are good things in the past that simply abandoned by game makers today.



(1) Random missions. Do you still remember the good old Microprose's flightsims like Gunship 2000? Instead of pre-made single missions like we see today, the game generates a random mission everytime we fly a single mission. So we never fly two same missions in a row even though we choose the same theathre again.

Probably anything enhances the replay value is heavily avoided like a plague by game publishers today because they can potentially hurt the market for "expansion packs"? :rolls:



(2) Dynamic campaign. That's why I find Total Air War is still enjoyable even after all these years. 'Nuff said!



(3) Life-like AI and dynamic world/battlefield to interact with. Consider Privateer 1. It has a believable, life-like universe which 'reacts' properly to our actions. Sure Privateer 2 has better graphics, but we flown the same scripted contracts again and again and again until bored to death. Considering Privateer 2 enjoyed more computing power, not to mention larger storage and memory than its older siblings, then what the difficulties of creating a more "organic-like" universe?

While today we can still enjoy believable 'universe' in RPG like Morrowind, I would love to see more of those thing in other genres. And yes, that includes FPS as well. But alas, it seems game makers today is contend with the same scripted actions again and again. Doom 3 is the most notorious example of this. The graphic is beautiful but the gameplay just plain suck, and I wonder who can stand seeing the same scripted enemies over and over again everytime they die and have to repeat the level.

Why there's no more games like Deus Ex, where how we interact with in-game people actually counts and still carried away to influence the plot?



(4) Smarter AI. I mean, come on! Computing power has been leaping so high in recent years and still there's no leap in AI??? Why strategy games are resorting to AI cheats instead of some really smart enemy AI? I mean, playing a strategy games when the overwhelming odds comes from the fact that the AI has way more starting resources to steamroll us is not my idea of a good time.

I would also love to see smart friendly AI who can actually help us in combat instead of making our hands full of nursing them. This is particularly true in both flight simulations and RPG. Common AI flaws in flight-sims are smart enemies but DUMB wingmen. I would really love to be escorted by smart pilots that really protect my ass when I'm busy bombing the installation, for instance.

As for RPG, I've been longing for smart companions since the day of Ultima VII (oh, Iolo is a good friend but he's still firing his crossbow like an idiot), which fortunately starts to appear in games like Neverwinter Nights where Wisdom actually counts in combat.

How hard actually to code a smart friendly AI? Particularly with humongous computing power we have today? I mean, if some amateur Quaker can write their own intelligent bots, why game developers can't?



(5) Old-school graphic adventures. I believe today's graphics can benefit graphic adventures like we saw on Gabriel Knight: Blood Of The Sacred, Blood Of The Damned. But instead of improving the genre, they choose to kill it once and for all (in favor of Barbie This and Barbie That "games" *winces*). Hello, Sierra? What went through your head, actually?



(6) Dynamic, self-evolving plot. I believe this thing can be made with today's computing power and humongous storage/memory capacity, but it seems game makers today is more interested to improve the graphics.



(7) Cross-genre innovations. When was the last time we see interesting cross-breed like Quest for Glory or Microprose's Sword of Samurai?



(9) Greater involvement. I would like to see greater involvement in flight-sims/action games like in MiG Alley where we can formulate our own strategy to win the campaign by deciding the targets ourselves.


Conclusion: Yes, the graphic improvement may reach the point of saturation on the day when we have photorealism, but there's always a room for improvement in terms of **gameplay**. Sadly, it's the thing have been long abandoned by most of game makers today.



Additional note: While most game makers are always striving for more demanding graphics, I should make a point that 3D is not always the best way to play the game. Consider RPG, where everything went first-person during 1996 (probably trying to profit from the popularity of Doom?) resulting in mediocre, arcade-like RPG like Stonekeep or Lands of Lore. Fortunately, Fallout and Baldur's Gate saved the day; revitalizing the genre while reminding us that it's always nice to see our RPG character with their NPC companions scuttling around on our computer screen even though it's not 3D.

[Ra]

KAN, your ideas are right on, but the game manufacturers are all focused on making more money, churning out eye candy and forcing people to buy improved consoles/graphics cards/RAM/computers to play them. It's a brutal cycle that will eventually self-destruct on them, and they'll deserve every bit of it.
Take HW2, for example. My computer runs Homeworld and HW: Cataclysm just fine. In fact, they fly on my system. But Sierra got a new, "improved" engine for HW2, one that's incompatable with some graphics cards, including my Intel card. Result: I have to buy a new expensive graphics card to play the game, despite the fact that I bought my computer after the damn game came out! Would it have hurt them to use their tried and still-impressive HW1 engine, and provide good gameplay to boot? They only saw the $$$.
- Ra

[Elheru Aran]

.....Have you ever considered working for a game company, Kreshna? If they took you, you'd be GREAT...

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

.....Have you ever considered working for a game company, Kreshna? If they took you, you'd be GREAT...

Thanks, but the problem is: NO profit-mongering, blood-sucking, generic-spawning game companies today would ever hire me.

KAN, your ideas are right on, but the game manufacturers are all focused on making more money, churning out eye candy and forcing people to buy improved consoles/graphics cards/RAM/computers to play them.

In fact, I believe good, innovative, and non-repetitive gameplay is abandoned in favor of generic clones, since generic games are cheaper to produce and less-dependent to real talents like Sid Meier or Warren Spector. I guess recording companies have been doing the same thing by churning out generic, disposable boys band every year because they're cheaper to produce.

It's a brutal cycle that will eventually self-destruct on them, and they'll deserve every bit of it.

I wish I could share your , but I'm afraid the self-destructing act may cost us gamers as well. And then everybody will start playing solitaire on their PC after the fallout.

Nah, won't happen on me, since I keep stockpiling old games and old hardware from eBay.

By the way, I read Jeff Green of CGW still keeps five Amiga machines to play old amiga games. I had never been an Amiga generation since it wasn't popular in my country, but now I could understand his sentiments.

Take HW2, for example. My computer runs Homeworld and HW: Cataclysm just fine. In fact, they fly on my system. But Sierra got a new, "improved" engine for HW2, one that's incompatable with some graphics cards, including my Intel card. Result: I have to buy a new expensive graphics card to play the game, despite the fact that I bought my computer after the damn game came out! Would it have hurt them to use their tried and still-impressive HW1 engine, and provide good gameplay to boot? They only saw the $$$.
- Ra

I wonder: why they should kill backward compatibility with every new release? 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 is still backward compatible with earlier Glide titles (and yes, you CAN enable FSAA on old Glide/Direct3D titles. Imagine playing Red Guard or Archimedean Dynasty with 4xAA and silk-smooth frame rate). nVidia cards are still backward compatible with old games like Jane's F/A-18 or Falcon 4.0 (and yes, SimHQ shows that even the 6800 PCIe plays Falcon 4.0. In 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF), unlike ATI when even that old 8500 exhibits strange graphic artifacts on Jane's USAF. Even Micro$$oft DirectX 9 is still compatible with earlier DirectX titles (or so they claimed).

[Praxis]

I've always figured that someday in the future we'll see the converging of different genre's.


Imagine a real time strategy where you can take over individual characters like an FPS game.

Or an FPS combined with a platformer (I've heard that the Oddworld series does this? never played them).

etc, etc