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I have often wondered where gaming is going, what it heading towards and how it has reached where it is now from its humble beginnings. Gaming has progressed from being a cult activity based in dank lofts with very slow machines and enormous loading times to a fully accepted part of today’s culture.
Gaming started off with machines such as the Spectrum and games that people can hardly remember anymore, except Pong which of course everyone remembers, and has improved and travelled along its winding journey ever since. Gaming has gone through many different ports of call, some good e.g. the SNES and the Playstation, and some undeniably poor consoles such as the Lynx. Overall though, gaming has dramatically improved over the years to become the phenomenon that it is now.
Some strange things have happened upon its journey. Many manufacturers of consoles have dropped by the wayside, discarded by gaming like chocolate wrappers. Most notable occurrences in gaming of recent times have to be Metal Gear Solid and of course Sega’s exit from console production to become a games developer.
What does the future hold in store for Gaming? Its decline? An even more dramatic upsurge in popularity? Who knows? What we do know however is the general direction that gaming is pointing in. It is towards PC gaming with the advent of modems, keyboards, mice and hard-drives. It is hurtling away from its roots at an alarming speed in its quest to become a worldwide spectacle ensuring that not one home is missing a games console or entertainment machine as they like to be called now, Pah! This somewhat shortsighted urge to make consoles and gaming as worldwide as TV’s, VCR’s and DVD’s amazes me.
I mean why bother with all this stuff? We play games on consoles more than PC’s because consoles are made for playing games. They have the best games, they give the best experiences and they are the best machines for playing games on. So why change? Why attempt to change a successful, tried and tested idea? What will these ‘advances’ bring to us?
Lets see…
Hard drive and modem-Hmmm, makes us shell out more money for something we think we want and need. We will supposedly eventually be able to download entire games from the Internet by paying the developers for a download. Oh yes, what a joy, now instead of spending obscene amount of cash on games from a shop we will be able to pay our money for something we can’t even see let alone touch. Excellent! I will be first in line for this pleasure. Oh and what are the gains of such a system. Well most obviously we do not have to undertake the chore of leaving our houses. Yes, we can become social recluses. No longer will we have to venture out into the scary world. Our next-gen consoles will do it for us.
Mouse and Keyboard-Yes! Now we can turn our consoles into fully-fledged PC’s. Wow I have always wanted to do that. With the sales of these peripherals will also come a free how to speak like a PC geek guide along with a wipe clean poster of the embodiment of PC’s the great bowl headed one, Mr Bill Gates himself. Excellent! I completely change my mind this is a good thing.
For those of you not too sharp on sarcasm that was about as good as it gets.
Now on a more serious note what good things will come out of gaming’s imminent move to the PC’s side? Well, multi-player gaming will be fun if we all had the same connections and ping rates, but lets face it we won’t have. Perhaps a hard-drive could be used to import MP3 files and pictures of our-self into our games but is this really worth Ł200, I think not. The improvement of games is already evident and this is brilliant but the move into PC territory and making GAMES consoles into ‘home entertainment systems’ is bound to be a bad move that could ruin gaming.
Gaming started off with machines such as the Spectrum and games that people can hardly remember anymore, except Pong which of course everyone remembers, and has improved and travelled along its winding journey ever since. Gaming has gone through many different ports of call, some good e.g. the SNES and the Playstation, and some undeniably poor consoles such as the Lynx. Overall though, gaming has dramatically improved over the years to become the phenomenon that it is now.
Some strange things have happened upon its journey. Many manufacturers of consoles have dropped by the wayside, discarded by gaming like chocolate wrappers. Most notable occurrences in gaming of recent times have to be Metal Gear Solid and of course Sega’s exit from console production to become a games developer.
What does the future hold in store for Gaming? Its decline? An even more dramatic upsurge in popularity? Who knows? What we do know however is the general direction that gaming is pointing in. It is towards PC gaming with the advent of modems, keyboards, mice and hard-drives. It is hurtling away from its roots at an alarming speed in its quest to become a worldwide spectacle ensuring that not one home is missing a games console or entertainment machine as they like to be called now, Pah! This somewhat shortsighted urge to make consoles and gaming as worldwide as TV’s, VCR’s and DVD’s amazes me.
I mean why bother with all this stuff? We play games on consoles more than PC’s because consoles are made for playing games. They have the best games, they give the best experiences and they are the best machines for playing games on. So why change? Why attempt to change a successful, tried and tested idea? What will these ‘advances’ bring to us?
Lets see…
Hard drive and modem-Hmmm, makes us shell out more money for something we think we want and need. We will supposedly eventually be able to download entire games from the Internet by paying the developers for a download. Oh yes, what a joy, now instead of spending obscene amount of cash on games from a shop we will be able to pay our money for something we can’t even see let alone touch. Excellent! I will be first in line for this pleasure. Oh and what are the gains of such a system. Well most obviously we do not have to undertake the chore of leaving our houses. Yes, we can become social recluses. No longer will we have to venture out into the scary world. Our next-gen consoles will do it for us.
Mouse and Keyboard-Yes! Now we can turn our consoles into fully-fledged PC’s. Wow I have always wanted to do that. With the sales of these peripherals will also come a free how to speak like a PC geek guide along with a wipe clean poster of the embodiment of PC’s the great bowl headed one, Mr Bill Gates himself. Excellent! I completely change my mind this is a good thing.
For those of you not too sharp on sarcasm that was about as good as it gets.
Now on a more serious note what good things will come out of gaming’s imminent move to the PC’s side? Well, multi-player gaming will be fun if we all had the same connections and ping rates, but lets face it we won’t have. Perhaps a hard-drive could be used to import MP3 files and pictures of our-self into our games but is this really worth Ł200, I think not. The improvement of games is already evident and this is brilliant but the move into PC territory and making GAMES consoles into ‘home entertainment systems’ is bound to be a bad move that could ruin gaming.
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The direction of games is simple..... the furthur we go into the future the more advanced the games get, in ten years time I doubt anyone will be sitting in front of their TV playing a home console... I feel virtual reality would have kicked in by then, it will become the norm to have a headset and gun in your lounge, everytime you want to play you stick in on your head and begin to play.
Gaming is really only going to grow, after the consoles which are currently being introduced to us we will see another set of consoles which would have 'evolved' from the current ones. Soon we won't be able to tell the difference between real and gaming life, soon we just won't know which is the the gaming world and which is the real world.
Five years ago the most powerful PC was probably an P266mHz. Today we have dual processors and 1.7Mhz computers.... that change was in the space of five years... imagine in five years time what its going to be like.
Many different things are going to change in the gaming world, I feel probably the most exciting is interactivity.
Characters like Mario are going to evolve and take on a whole new meaning as gaming characters, they will talk and interact with the gamer, giving hints and helping them so they don't get hurt. The gamer will actually be convinced that the character on the screen has emotions.
When you kill someone in an FPS in the future, the death will be unique to that person, say you shoot him in the kneecaps he will still crawl away and cry in pain while trying to sound the alarm.
When you have a gun to somebodys head they will not look at you and shake, but the games of the future will become something new, they will introduce new sound effects. Because if he is not looking at you in the eyes then the game will automatically shout out 'LOOK AT ME', and just like in the film Heat, you will shoot him three times in the chest.
For all these advantages and examples I have given you there will be a huge disadvantage to the younger generation of gamers, because as these games get more real as we go into the future, the games will become more heavily rated and up against many bans... simply because all the games will take on the appearance of being just too real and for some that prospect is scary...
....but for others this is the future of gaming.
Thanks
muggins.
Gaming is really only going to grow, after the consoles which are currently being introduced to us we will see another set of consoles which would have 'evolved' from the current ones. Soon we won't be able to tell the difference between real and gaming life, soon we just won't know which is the the gaming world and which is the real world.
Five years ago the most powerful PC was probably an P266mHz. Today we have dual processors and 1.7Mhz computers.... that change was in the space of five years... imagine in five years time what its going to be like.
Many different things are going to change in the gaming world, I feel probably the most exciting is interactivity.
Characters like Mario are going to evolve and take on a whole new meaning as gaming characters, they will talk and interact with the gamer, giving hints and helping them so they don't get hurt. The gamer will actually be convinced that the character on the screen has emotions.
When you kill someone in an FPS in the future, the death will be unique to that person, say you shoot him in the kneecaps he will still crawl away and cry in pain while trying to sound the alarm.
When you have a gun to somebodys head they will not look at you and shake, but the games of the future will become something new, they will introduce new sound effects. Because if he is not looking at you in the eyes then the game will automatically shout out 'LOOK AT ME', and just like in the film Heat, you will shoot him three times in the chest.
For all these advantages and examples I have given you there will be a huge disadvantage to the younger generation of gamers, because as these games get more real as we go into the future, the games will become more heavily rated and up against many bans... simply because all the games will take on the appearance of being just too real and for some that prospect is scary...
....but for others this is the future of gaming.
Thanks
muggins.
2 months what a laugh.
Well done dan! First time in two months isn't it? At least we won't have to put up with any more complaints about not winning for a while. ;-)
Dan2K1 wrote:
Very true - that's where the name is
> from....
errm... No... I was meaning that the PS2 had USB ports... ???
Very true - that's where the name is
> from....
errm... No... I was meaning that the PS2 had USB ports... ???
Dan2K1 wrote:
Anyway, USB
> ports on a console? Hmmm
Aye... makes it sound all PS2... :P
Anyway, USB
> ports on a console? Hmmm
Aye... makes it sound all PS2... :P
jd99 wrote:
Why is
> this sort of thing done? In nearly every post someone writes
> something along the lines of 'God, this has been done before' or 'Oh
> no not another >insert name here< topic'. If we all stuck to
> this rule that topics are only allowed to be done once and by one
> person then there would be no new threads. Besides the posts are
> not the same. They are written by other people who are just
> expressing their views on a subject.
The point is... I guess... that theres no point going over old ground...
If something new is being expressed... then surely it can be expressed just as well as an entry into the original post... rather than giving it its own post...
This is the chat forum... so things are very different heres... but on average, we are being bombarded by either irrelivant stuff... or stuff thats already been done...
Theres still a lot of stuff going on in the games industry to come up with new stuff... and not constantly regurgitate new ideas..
Also, I think the original post covers all the questions your asking... and in many cases already answers them...
Really... I dunno though...
Why is
> this sort of thing done? In nearly every post someone writes
> something along the lines of 'God, this has been done before' or 'Oh
> no not another >insert name here< topic'. If we all stuck to
> this rule that topics are only allowed to be done once and by one
> person then there would be no new threads. Besides the posts are
> not the same. They are written by other people who are just
> expressing their views on a subject.
The point is... I guess... that theres no point going over old ground...
If something new is being expressed... then surely it can be expressed just as well as an entry into the original post... rather than giving it its own post...
This is the chat forum... so things are very different heres... but on average, we are being bombarded by either irrelivant stuff... or stuff thats already been done...
Theres still a lot of stuff going on in the games industry to come up with new stuff... and not constantly regurgitate new ideas..
Also, I think the original post covers all the questions your asking... and in many cases already answers them...
Really... I dunno though...
You know. if you're a banana, not many people would take you seriously.
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