Added on Wed 17 Jan 2007
The Future of Computer Games
I was recently looking at a bunch of game reviews and was also prompted by a job ad I saw to think critically about various PC games, or console games for that matter. This post is I guess ”Part 1“ of the conclusions I came to.
So I started to wonder where I think computer gaming should go? Considering the developments over the last few years and the current crop of games under development and those due out shortly, (some of which, sound great), I did find it difficult at first to think of something better. So while I tried to break free of the usual ideas, I started to think about the gaming past.
Looking back at the past decade of computer games. Apart from the huge development in game graphics, the games themselves have not actually changed all that much. Turning points that stand out, off the top of my head, might include the rise of FPS’s, online gaming, and MMORPG’s. Although there have been refinements along the way, not to mention the refinement of older game genres eg. racing sims, sports games, dictator sims. I could, unfortunately, not think of anything that you could call revolutionary. I find that a bit disappointing. So I went on to consider my personal favourite gaming moments so far. I would probably have to list them as; Op Flashpoint, HL2, Racing Destruction Set, Elite, Interceptor FA-18, Test Drive 2, Mafia, Civ III … 4D Driving (it had another name at the time), Max Pain and ummm well I guess I could think of a couple more but that’s enough. So what can I say about those, well the release date has little to do with how good they are. Having said that, the level of detail in the newer games is amazing, but boy I miss some of those old games.
Something that makes my point in a rather strange way: How much did I spend on my last graphics card, and how much did I spend on my last CPU? Heaps on the graphics card, and not much on the CPU… hence how powerful is a graphics card next to a CPU - very! Why have I spent so much on a graphics card - well the latest games look real nice with a good card. Why haven’t I spent more money on a CPU, well a better CPU doesn’t make the games play any better at all. I left wondering what sort of games I would be playing if the demands of the game on the CPU had risen along with the demands on the graphics card! Unfortunately, it is relatively simple to make a game better by making it prettier, and a bit harder to use some imagination to achieve the same thing.
Still trying to discover a future direction for computer gams, I decided to watch a trailer for a FPS currently in the works. Not sure if this will help, but I came up with a list of nit-picks. They’re sort of specific, but there’s a general concept behind each one which is more important.
1. Every character is a cloned throughout the game. Every monster ‘X’ looks identical to every other monster ‘X’. Not even the colours change! The computer has the power to alter each one a little, so why not? Must everything thing be set in concrete the day the game ships!
2. Linear game play. There was a time when games started to look like moving away from this, but it seems even the best games around are still run along a singular path from ‘the start’ to ‘the end’.
3. The player has no personality. I mean that regardless of how I act in the game the results are the same. It is nice that some games allow the player to move through the game using different techniques, but that’s just scratching the surface. Every payer is different… why not use that to effect in the game? (I think Stalker makes some inroads here!)
That list is really aimed at FPS’s, other genres do take up some of those ideas and apply them nicely. However, it’s time that all games regardless of what genre they fall into, try and incorporate a wider variety of techniques and ideas into their game play. Get those CPU’s doing something, not just physics calculations either…
Computer games are ridged… it’s about time they were a little bit more fluid.
Ok, there was actually another part of this process I went through first… that was to ask “What do I find entertaining?” Which after all, ought to be the reason why I might want to play a computer game in the first place! I’ll go into that in my next post.