A lot of people, myself included, often have a lot of complaints and concerns about how the gaming and the industry as a whole. We see a lot of things that worry us, or make us think that the games industry might become a shadow of what it used to be. We see games like Modern Warfare 3 and worry that First Person Shooters might become glorified Michael Bay shooting galleries. We see the closure of studios that made awesome games and grow concerned that only the giant companies will be able to churn out games, or we see once great publishers and developers on the brink of bankruptcy. Everywhere we look it seems things are not going well. Some have even argued that the best days of gaming are behind us.
However, despite the many things that upset me or worry me these days I have never been more excited about where gaming is headed. In fact, I think the best is just around the corner.
When I talk with friends, or write various pieces, I often find myself somewhat depressed. Especially when I look at some of the games I have played the past year or two and see how many disappointed me, or just weren't very strong titles. The other day though, I took another look and saw just as many that surprised me or lived up to the hype around them. So I decided to think on it more, and I realized something should not be all that shocking, but yet still felt like a revelation. In order to set that up, think about this for a second:
This is what games looked like ten years ago.
Look at all that blood...
This is what they look like now.
At least the trees are safe.
I really hope the difference is obvious. Graphics have moved so far ahead in just ten years, we actually doubt we can improve them much further right now. Graphics may not be everything in a game but they can really help pull players into a game world and with the graphical power we have nowadays. We can create detailed worlds and characters, and we can create better visual effects with the technology we currently have. Thanks to this, we have some truly realistic looking games, such as Crysis and Forza 4, as well as some very interesting art styles in games like in Limbo and Catherine. We have games like Skyrim, where the game world feels truly alive, and even classics like Mario and Legend of Zelda have benefited from the advances made in graphical technology.
It's not just graphics though. Gaming has become something that just about everybody does in some fashion. With all these people playing games, indie developers have been able to find an audience for their games. Just browse the internet for games sometime. There are literally tens of thousands of independent projects and companies that produce all sorts of games. It's not just the well known ones like Castle Crashers and Limbo. The internet is filled with hidden gems like Super Brothers: Sword and Sorcery EP. In fact, some of the better games of the past five years have been indie titles. Independent developers also aren't obligated to make their games a certain way nor do they have a publisher or larger group to answer to. This has allowed for some truly innovative games from the indie developers. I mean look at the success of Minecraft if you don't believe that indie games can succeed in the industry. The past five years of gaming have also brought countless innovations and changes to the industry thanks in part to the number of people playing now. The Wii was hyped by Nintendo as a big change for gaming, and for a while it was. The Wii successfully pulled in a huge new crowd to video gaming, and proved, at least for a little bit, that motion control can be more than just a gimmick. They've followed that up with the 3DS, a handheld with glasses free 3D. While the games may not quite be there yet, the technology behind it is impressive.
It's not just indie games that have benefited from gaming becoming a popular activity. Because of the number of people playing, games rake in all kinds of dough for their developers and publishers. This enables them to hire better staff to create better games. This has shown up particularly in the writing department. Fifteen years ago most developers could not afford to pay for actual writers. A few people involved with the game development would usually be given the task to do the bulk of the writing. And if you look at some of the games from fifteen years ago, that doesn't really seem all that hard to believe. Nowadays however, we have some truly talented people penning incredible scripts, worlds, and lore for our favourite games. The rise of the writing quality has allowed for the creation of some of the best stories and worlds that we have ever seen in gaming in the past few years. Mass Effect and Bioshock are examples of games that have truly raised the bar for writing in games. The amount of money pouring into the industry has also enabled developers to hire better voice actors, and bring in more experienced and diverse personnel for everything fro creating the soundtrack to designing the game art.
RA Salvatore is writing game fiction now. Surely Stephen King isn't too far behind...
Of course there are bad parts about the industry and where it's headed, but when hasn't there been? Gaming today sits upon the precipice of maybe going somewhere no entertainment medium can take us. With books you can read stories, but what it looks like, or what it might feel like to be in that story are left largely up to your imagination. Not a bad thing, but sometimes we want to see what we're reading. So then we've got movies, which take written stories and then show us what it would look like. It brings us into the world the story is trying to tell. However, we're still just an audience. We don't have any control over what's going on, and we don't have any say in how things happen. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but often times we want to experience these stories for ourselves, or to put ourselves into the characters shoes, or hell, even just insert our actual selves into the story and make it go how we would want it too. This is where gaming shines. It puts us into these stories and settings and allows us to experience them directly. Sometimes we experience them as a defined character, other times the character is more or less us. We could soon see games that will take us places movies and books just simply can't. We've already seen many situations in games were the decisions we're given aren't necessarily good or evil. Some decisions in games are judgement calls.
Now we're seeing games like the upcoming Rainbow Six: Patriots where every decision and option is in a morally grey area, and it's up to you whether defeating the bad guys should come at any cost. Then we have the Mass Effect trilogy, which takes every decision you make and lets it snowball up until the upcoming conclusion, where every choice you have made will determine the fate of the whole galaxy. Who lives, who dies, if you even succeed at all. Entire civilizations could disappear because of your choices. Games like this can cause us to examine who we are as people, and what decisions we'd make when push comes to shove. Even without these choices, we're beginning to see games that make us feel like we're part of what's going on. We're not just playing as a big dot that eats smaller dots, we're experiencing an event through a characters eyes. We're not just watching the action unfold before us, we're taking part in it. Even classic titles like Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Pokemon feel more alive than ever before.
And if you just want to run around blowing people's heads off in Fallout: New Vegas, you can do that too.
My seven year old gaming self thought Microsoft Flight Simulator 95 was one of the most incredible games ever, and I thought that games that looked any better wouldn't be something that Iwould see until I had kids. Really if I look back on it, gaming has come so far in such a short time. It's almost unrecognizable from when I was kid. Even more so for people who grew up in the era of arcades and the Atari 5200. And you know what? I think it's going to grow and change just as much in the next fifteen years. Call it a hunch.
Perhaps the Unreal 3 tech demo "The Samaritan" reinforces the hunch...
Well that was long one, I hope you enjoyed it.
Until next time!
Image Source:
#1. http://3.s3.envato.com/files/4040128/Golden_Glow_Preview.jpg
#2.http://i.neoseeker.com/screenshots/R2FtZXMvUEMvQWN0aW9uL0FkdmVudHVyZQ==/diablo_ii_the_lord_of_destruction_image2.jpg
#3. http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/shared/images/articles/600-crysis-2-computer/Crysis2-screen3.jpg
#4. http://www.boomtron.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Salvatore-R-A.jpg
#5. http://www.udk.com/elements/img/galleries/Samaritan2.jpg
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