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The Future of Video Games |
by:
Daniel Punch |
I’ve recently been thinking about where video games could be going infuture. I’m hoping to work ingame industry one day after I’ve finished university study and I’ve been wondering about itlot. What do I want to see happen infuture? Well I may not have too many answers right now, but I have come up withfew ideas that I think may come into ‘play’ innot too distant future.
Firstly forget Virtual Reality, as we know it. They’ve tried VR goggles and they madelot of people sick in doing so. It’s probably never going to work very well in its current form. They’re still around and you can still buy them but they really don’t seem to be taking off. It will probably takelot to get people totally immersed and involved innew form of game play. It’s threatening to lose touch withoutside world andpeople around you aren’t going to appreciate it much either. The Sci-fi neural implants are also bothlong way off and not likely to be accepted bymajority ofgeneral populace without some severe marketing and luck. I for one am not planning on going through brain surgery just to havecomputer attached to my head. In fact I never want anyone to able to plug into my brain.
A technology that was brought to my attention byzealous presenter atlocal ‘Science and Technology Centre’ (a sort of science museum aimed at making science fun for children and juvenile adults such as yours truly) is that of ‘Augmented Reality’. Augmented Reality is essentiallyoverlaying of virtual elements ontoreal world, such aspair of transparent glasses that can display certain elements overtop of what is actually there. I agree withpresenter in that this could indeed have some awesome potential. Forget allsocially beneficial applications such as workmen being able to view underground pipes before digging, think about it fromgames point of view. This technology could provide gamers withability to run around looking like complete idiots shooting at things that aren’t actually there and that no one else can see, kind of like infilm ‘They Live!’ The upside to this is that it would belot of fun. A group of people fromUniversity of South Australia created‘ARQuake’ project, http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/www/, mergingclassic shooter Quake with this Augmented Reality technology. Again, this technology may not ever become overly popular, but it would be entertaining to play with.
Technology has drivengames industry forlong time with new games always trying to keep one step ahead ofcompetition. It started way back atdawn of technology and it continues to this day. twoD graphics gave way to threeD and threeD is becoming ever better. Graphics are starting to loseability to impress like they once did. The step between Quake two and three was amazing, but DOOM three while being visually very impressive isn’t leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors insame way new games used to be. twoD graphics encounteredsimilar problem; there comespoint where you just can’t do much more with graphics technology. It is this that turns graphics from striving for technological achievement to becoming art. It is my hope that we will start turning away from tech demos and return to game play and making great entertainment. Games such as Zelda: The Wind Waker or The Sims that strive to show greater depth of character through simplifyinggame enough to portray emotions will hopefully become more common (and more fun… but that’s just one person’s view…). Technology playscertain part inconveying of emotions and story but it’s quite hard to focus on everything at once. When technology is easier and less essential to game sales we’ll hopefully seeincrease in games that castlasting impression.
Somewhat unfortunatelyrise of‘Casual Gamer’ will probably lead to more simplistic games being released. While personally I would love to see depth of story and characters, there aresignificant number of players out there who want to pick upgame for twenty minutes or so, havebit of fun, and then put it down until another time. These gamers are generally less interested inlatest greatest technology and more interested in‘fast food’ kind of entertainment that satisfiesmoment, despitelack of quality orlasting effects. Hopefullytwo game types can co-exist peacefully although recently it has been seen that some developers are cutting down on some ofplanned depth oftitle in order to accommodatemore casual gamer.
As technology pushes forwards boundaries are slowly being broken down between systems. We sawBleemcastfew years back enablingrunning of Playstation games onDreamcast, andPC is able to run almost anything givenright emulation software. Consoles are able to emulate other consoles and new consoles are being announced that promiseability to play PC games. The Xbox two is reported to havemodel in planning that comes inPC case and withability to run both PC software and Xbox software. Macs can emulate Windows software and vice-versa. We’ll probably start seeing less ofdistinction between consoles and PCs asprice of technology continues to drop and consoles continue to become more and more powerful and able to compete withmore expensive computers. Ideally we’ll seesingle platform come into prominence so that everything can be run without purchasingcopious number of different machines, although that does havedownside in that it can establishmonopoly for one particular company.
The technology price drop and increase in power has also lead to more powerful hand-held machines than before. Real games, not just simple toys are now available forportable market. The advent of PDAs and mobile phones withability to play games raises awareness of portable gaming and new competitors are starting to get in onfield that was once primarily dominated by Nintendo’s GameBoy. There isnew product,gpthreetwo, that can run many different emulators and hence, many different system’s games (including some PC games).
I can’t say for sure what’s going to happen but these are justfew ideas that I’ve had recently. Hopefullygames industry will continue to strive towards new heights with new and interesting game play, stories, characters and ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens innext few years.
Aboutauthor:
Daniel Punch
Msix.Net
http://www.msix.net
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