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If I’ve learnt anything from my gaming passion, it’s just how easy it is to completely misread the way gaming is heading. When the first game was made on an MIT supercomputer who would have guessed that within a few years people would be playing similar games on their television screen at home? At the beginning of the nineties what crackpot imagined that we’d all be playing ultra realistic epics across an international network of gamers a decade later? It seems almost ironic that this forum is called the ‘Future of Gaming’- who are we to predict the future?
During my time gaming, I have seen so many rumours, reports and conceptions of technologies that will revolutionise gaming. Notably, the rumour surrounding the N64’s four controller ports (apparently they’d be used for virtual reality headsets) was one of the most laughable things I’ve heard in retrospect. That said, at the same time it was rumoured that the N64 expansion bay would allow a modem to be connected for net access- and it did when the 64DD was released! At the time, it was the first option that seemed all the more feasible- while the net was in its infancy, VR headsets were coming along nicely with Nintendo even creating the Virtual Boy.
Like I said, it’s ironic that this forum is called the ‘Future of Gaming’. While people discuss how games are going to evolve and technologies change the reality is inevitably going to be completely different. Did anyone predict the creation of cell shading? Who’s to say that more massive changes in gaming styles aren’t just around the corner? While we see consoles as machines that will develop over time to create better and better graphics, one day we may wake up to the news that Nintendo’s new console will use holographic images. Perhaps something even weirder will happen.
Whatever happens in the future of gaming, you can bet no one expected it.
Sonic
During my time gaming, I have seen so many rumours, reports and conceptions of technologies that will revolutionise gaming. Notably, the rumour surrounding the N64’s four controller ports (apparently they’d be used for virtual reality headsets) was one of the most laughable things I’ve heard in retrospect. That said, at the same time it was rumoured that the N64 expansion bay would allow a modem to be connected for net access- and it did when the 64DD was released! At the time, it was the first option that seemed all the more feasible- while the net was in its infancy, VR headsets were coming along nicely with Nintendo even creating the Virtual Boy.
Like I said, it’s ironic that this forum is called the ‘Future of Gaming’. While people discuss how games are going to evolve and technologies change the reality is inevitably going to be completely different. Did anyone predict the creation of cell shading? Who’s to say that more massive changes in gaming styles aren’t just around the corner? While we see consoles as machines that will develop over time to create better and better graphics, one day we may wake up to the news that Nintendo’s new console will use holographic images. Perhaps something even weirder will happen.
Whatever happens in the future of gaming, you can bet no one expected it.
Sonic
Sorry for the late reply...
Although the immediate direction of gaming is easy to define (at the moment it's online development) anything into the next console generation is not- even with a grasp of what other technologies are developing.
As an example, take force feeback. This was developed by people like nuclear techicians at the cost of millions to allow them to remotely feel what a robot they were controlling was doing. No one would ever guess that such complec technology would one day be used in Daytona Racing and later the N64 rumble pack!
This console generation seems to be exceptional in that almost nothing new has come of it! Ok, so we have the expected better graphics and online gaming... what else? In the 32/64 bit days we entered 3D gaming that led to massive amounts of new innovative concepts. Before that we had sprite based graphics that allowed true aristic flare.
Sonic
Although the immediate direction of gaming is easy to define (at the moment it's online development) anything into the next console generation is not- even with a grasp of what other technologies are developing.
As an example, take force feeback. This was developed by people like nuclear techicians at the cost of millions to allow them to remotely feel what a robot they were controlling was doing. No one would ever guess that such complec technology would one day be used in Daytona Racing and later the N64 rumble pack!
This console generation seems to be exceptional in that almost nothing new has come of it! Ok, so we have the expected better graphics and online gaming... what else? In the 32/64 bit days we entered 3D gaming that led to massive amounts of new innovative concepts. Before that we had sprite based graphics that allowed true aristic flare.
Sonic
Although I do agree with edgy to a certain extent, the future of gaming isn't THAT unpredictable. The problem is, in order to predict it, you have to know as much as you can about all the variables involved.
Variables like technology. Developed either by public corporations or by governments and military organisations, most technology eventually cascades down to the public in one form or another, but we don't count that into the equation most of the time. We don't expect that some military regime will come out with a laser with more productive uses that those we use now for CDs and DVDs etc. Something like that can change storage mediums, memory access speeds networking perhaps.
We don't look at the possibility that the companies responsible for putting consoles and games on the shelves have an agenda of their own - not to ride the waves of past successes, but to offer something powerful and new and revolutionary.
If you can grasp the agendas and the potential technology, you can see where gamning is headed.
The problem is, when looking to the future we only look at the trends, and not the potential breakthroughs. Cel-shading was undoubtably a breakthrough. A new way of doing things that no-one expected, although I'm quite sure the gaming industry would have been looking into it for some time before we heard about it.
In order to see with clarity, people have to make the distinction between the facts and the truth. They are two very different things.
Variables like technology. Developed either by public corporations or by governments and military organisations, most technology eventually cascades down to the public in one form or another, but we don't count that into the equation most of the time. We don't expect that some military regime will come out with a laser with more productive uses that those we use now for CDs and DVDs etc. Something like that can change storage mediums, memory access speeds networking perhaps.
We don't look at the possibility that the companies responsible for putting consoles and games on the shelves have an agenda of their own - not to ride the waves of past successes, but to offer something powerful and new and revolutionary.
If you can grasp the agendas and the potential technology, you can see where gamning is headed.
The problem is, when looking to the future we only look at the trends, and not the potential breakthroughs. Cel-shading was undoubtably a breakthrough. A new way of doing things that no-one expected, although I'm quite sure the gaming industry would have been looking into it for some time before we heard about it.
In order to see with clarity, people have to make the distinction between the facts and the truth. They are two very different things.
I agree with Sonic...
Give that man a GAD!
Give that man a GAD!
Edgy- the only GAD worthy post that's not a topic in it's own right!
Nobody can predict the future. Not even the immediate future of gaming can be predicted. Sure, we can all fantasise - have our ideas of what we'd like videogaming to be like in x amount of years. Who could've predicted four-player three-dimensional gaming on a really powerful games console on one TV? (Well not Sony at any rate). I don't think anybody predicted GameCube's price drop from £170 to £130 - before launch!
Gaming has evolved so much in the last decade, I doubt anyone could have predicted that gaming would be competing with the music and the films industry for being the richest sector. The twentieth century was the century when humans became technologically dependant. We use computers for virtually everything now. Washing machines, cars, aeroplanes, watches, dishwaschers, they all contain computers. Even the automatic doors of a supermarket are computer operated!
New technology is being created all the time. Every day there's a new scientific breakthrough. Whether it's to reduce engine emissions, to speed up data transfer in cables, to colonize Mars, technology is being created all the time! That's why gaming has improved so much in the last ten or so years. We went from 8-colours maximum per game to a 16-bit colour system with brilliantly sharp two-dimensional graphics. And from that we went to full colour three-dimensional graphics. Sure, it's not just about graphical enhancements over the years. We've gone from quiet bleeps of an internal ZX Spectrum keyboard speaker all the way to Dolby 5.1 surround sound! We've also gone through lots of different control methods, storage mediums and even the effort put into games has changed over the years.
None of what we have today could have been accurately predicted twenty or thirty years ago. It's like that TV science-fiction series made in the 1970s: Space 1999. It predicted we'd have a moon colony by then, but what do we have? A flag of the stars and stripes. Even predictions for only a few months intpo the future have been wrong. Despite being told that the FMV clip of Link and Ganondorf fighting was just to display how powerful the GameCube was, everyone believed that was going to be a part of the next 'Legend of Zelda' game. A few months later and we find that Link looks entirely different in an adventure that's completely different.
That's what makes videogaming so good. You never know what to expect. Sure, we have Electronic Arts, the developers who grow money out of their backsides as they surely can't get it from the selling of their shoddy Fifa games that never really improve - can they? Who would have thought that Shigeru Miyamoto would change gaming and create new genres on many occasions? Who would have thought that Sonic The Hedgehog, who was one of gaming's most popular characters in the early 1990s, would be struggling in the 2000s? Nobody could have believed that a full colour back-lit handheld with superior games would be beaten by an old handheld which played monochrome games on a barely visable screen.
The unpredictability of gaming, it's spontanaeity, it's ability to give us something new each time, is what makes gaming so good. So what's wrong with making predictions? Sure, we only really know what's going on in the present, and can easily criticise the past, but that's history, and we, as a gaming community, are always looking to the future - for the newer, the flashier, the more entertaining, the more original games. It gives us something to look forward to.
Yes, the future is unpredictable, but it's still good to talk about. The Future of gaming - The Predictable - unpredictable.
Gaming has evolved so much in the last decade, I doubt anyone could have predicted that gaming would be competing with the music and the films industry for being the richest sector. The twentieth century was the century when humans became technologically dependant. We use computers for virtually everything now. Washing machines, cars, aeroplanes, watches, dishwaschers, they all contain computers. Even the automatic doors of a supermarket are computer operated!
New technology is being created all the time. Every day there's a new scientific breakthrough. Whether it's to reduce engine emissions, to speed up data transfer in cables, to colonize Mars, technology is being created all the time! That's why gaming has improved so much in the last ten or so years. We went from 8-colours maximum per game to a 16-bit colour system with brilliantly sharp two-dimensional graphics. And from that we went to full colour three-dimensional graphics. Sure, it's not just about graphical enhancements over the years. We've gone from quiet bleeps of an internal ZX Spectrum keyboard speaker all the way to Dolby 5.1 surround sound! We've also gone through lots of different control methods, storage mediums and even the effort put into games has changed over the years.
None of what we have today could have been accurately predicted twenty or thirty years ago. It's like that TV science-fiction series made in the 1970s: Space 1999. It predicted we'd have a moon colony by then, but what do we have? A flag of the stars and stripes. Even predictions for only a few months intpo the future have been wrong. Despite being told that the FMV clip of Link and Ganondorf fighting was just to display how powerful the GameCube was, everyone believed that was going to be a part of the next 'Legend of Zelda' game. A few months later and we find that Link looks entirely different in an adventure that's completely different.
That's what makes videogaming so good. You never know what to expect. Sure, we have Electronic Arts, the developers who grow money out of their backsides as they surely can't get it from the selling of their shoddy Fifa games that never really improve - can they? Who would have thought that Shigeru Miyamoto would change gaming and create new genres on many occasions? Who would have thought that Sonic The Hedgehog, who was one of gaming's most popular characters in the early 1990s, would be struggling in the 2000s? Nobody could have believed that a full colour back-lit handheld with superior games would be beaten by an old handheld which played monochrome games on a barely visable screen.
The unpredictability of gaming, it's spontanaeity, it's ability to give us something new each time, is what makes gaming so good. So what's wrong with making predictions? Sure, we only really know what's going on in the present, and can easily criticise the past, but that's history, and we, as a gaming community, are always looking to the future - for the newer, the flashier, the more entertaining, the more original games. It gives us something to look forward to.
Yes, the future is unpredictable, but it's still good to talk about. The Future of gaming - The Predictable - unpredictable.
If I’ve learnt anything from my gaming passion, it’s just how easy it is to completely misread the way gaming is heading. When the first game was made on an MIT supercomputer who would have guessed that within a few years people would be playing similar games on their television screen at home? At the beginning of the nineties what crackpot imagined that we’d all be playing ultra realistic epics across an international network of gamers a decade later? It seems almost ironic that this forum is called the ‘Future of Gaming’- who are we to predict the future?
During my time gaming, I have seen so many rumours, reports and conceptions of technologies that will revolutionise gaming. Notably, the rumour surrounding the N64’s four controller ports (apparently they’d be used for virtual reality headsets) was one of the most laughable things I’ve heard in retrospect. That said, at the same time it was rumoured that the N64 expansion bay would allow a modem to be connected for net access- and it did when the 64DD was released! At the time, it was the first option that seemed all the more feasible- while the net was in its infancy, VR headsets were coming along nicely with Nintendo even creating the Virtual Boy.
Like I said, it’s ironic that this forum is called the ‘Future of Gaming’. While people discuss how games are going to evolve and technologies change the reality is inevitably going to be completely different. Did anyone predict the creation of cell shading? Who’s to say that more massive changes in gaming styles aren’t just around the corner? While we see consoles as machines that will develop over time to create better and better graphics, one day we may wake up to the news that Nintendo’s new console will use holographic images. Perhaps something even weirder will happen.
Whatever happens in the future of gaming, you can bet no one expected it.
Sonic
During my time gaming, I have seen so many rumours, reports and conceptions of technologies that will revolutionise gaming. Notably, the rumour surrounding the N64’s four controller ports (apparently they’d be used for virtual reality headsets) was one of the most laughable things I’ve heard in retrospect. That said, at the same time it was rumoured that the N64 expansion bay would allow a modem to be connected for net access- and it did when the 64DD was released! At the time, it was the first option that seemed all the more feasible- while the net was in its infancy, VR headsets were coming along nicely with Nintendo even creating the Virtual Boy.
Like I said, it’s ironic that this forum is called the ‘Future of Gaming’. While people discuss how games are going to evolve and technologies change the reality is inevitably going to be completely different. Did anyone predict the creation of cell shading? Who’s to say that more massive changes in gaming styles aren’t just around the corner? While we see consoles as machines that will develop over time to create better and better graphics, one day we may wake up to the news that Nintendo’s new console will use holographic images. Perhaps something even weirder will happen.
Whatever happens in the future of gaming, you can bet no one expected it.
Sonic