I haven’t seen this on a message board before and this is just the kind of message board to ask this question on.
If you for some reason had to choose between only playing games that have been released as of today or only playing games that will be released in the future which would you choose? Would you have enought faith in the future of gaming to trust that there will be enough good stuff in the future to keep you busy for the rest of your life or is your leet item collection and your 70th level MMORPG character just too much to give up?
I don’t understand what’s interesting about this question.
Twenty-five years’ worth of archaic games that I’ve already played versus forty to fifty years of new games with technical and creative potential that we can only begin to imagine?
The future of course. Why would you only want old games that you’ve played before. Even if I never played the old or present games I’d still choose future.
I’ve already played all of today’s good games, I want the future!
I think it’s obvious that things are going to better at least in the near future. If we ever move on to virtual reality gaming, the industry might take a temporary dive, but I’ll pick gaming in a Fable-future for the now. I’m sure that’s far enough in the future to count.
Just out of curiousity, and OT I’m sure, but how close are we to that? When am I going to get to turn my head and look out the side of my Sopwith Camel using a workable virtual reality headset? I almost tried those stupid shutter glasses just so I could come close to experiencing this.
Just out of curiousity, and OT I’m sure, but how close are we to that?[/quote]
Like Duality said, the technology probably is there. You would need a reliable sensor for the software to know which way you are looking, but that can’t be too difficult. I think you could use LCD glasses: each eye gets its own very small screen to show a 3D effect
When am I going to get to turn my head and look out the side of my Sopwith Camel using a workable virtual reality headset?
I can see several problems. First, LCD glasses (not shutter, the tiny-screen ones) are very expensive. So there is no point making games for them, because nobody will have them. And there is no point buying expensive glasses if all you can use them for are games. This viscious circle may be broken if a console ships with them. Second, they are usually not very comfortable. They fit not quite right, and are heavy. Third, there may be a motion-sickness problem if you start moving your head while viewing something else.
On the positive side, we may have true 3D monitors soon, and cheap flat-screen monitors (using polyleds instead of LCD). Maybe it would be more practical to have two monitors on your sides. A fixed viewpoint would be much easier to incorporate into software. Also, Steel Batallion is an interesting development. If money can be made by selling a product that is exclusively designed for one game, many more things become possible.
Just some thoughts, I welcome any responses. It is an interesting subject.
I almost tried those stupid shutter glasses just so I could come close to experiencing this.
I got a pair of those shutter glasses, they are not so bad. The effect is really kind of cool, they just are not suitable for long periods of use.
I think were close. I’ll have mine in a month or so. Actually, with this thing I can turn my head and look straight through the walls or floor of the C-17 and see the surrounding terrain, which in any direction but forwardish is generated synthetically from a database much like with a game. Only with lots more detail.
OK, it’s not actually MY helmet, and it hasn’t actually flown yet, but very soon. Can’t wait. The simulations give a pretty good feel for what flying it will be like, and it’s pretty fucking cool.
Anyway, as I’m sure everybody knows, the tech is there already so getting it into our homes is just a matter of cost.
I’m waiting for a game where I can whack orcs for exercise, or something similar. After all, I spent almost $1000 on a rowing machine, why not a little more on machinery + game?
In a country with as much of a problem with obesity as America, you’d think it would be a natural fit.
Like novel were to the nineteenth century and movies were to the twentieth century, I believe games will be the defining artform of the twenty-first century.
That’s hardly an original thought, I know. But let’s extend the games-as-cinema metaphor for a moment: the hobby that we call “gaming” has been around for about twenty-odd years now. In movie terms, that would place us at about the end of the silent era; where early cinema had it’s auteurs in Murnau or Griffith or von Stronheim, we have some visionaries (Sid Meier, or Warren Spector) and some studios (the late, lamented Black Isle, or Squaresoft) that could be considered auteurs. We even have a canon of games that many of us, I suspect, would consider essential to play if you wanted to consider yourself a “well-read” gamer - Doom, Civilization, X-Com, Fallout, Ultima, etc.
But what gaming hasn’t had yet is the really big, really spectacular breakthrough success that suddenly will legitimize the potential of games to the average, unwashed masses. We need the gaming equivalent of “Gone With The Wind”, or “The Battleship Potemkin”, or “The Wizard Of Oz”, before gaming takes it’s place as not just a legitimate artform, but one that will uniquely belong to the upcoming century. (The Sims may have actually come pretty close to this already, in the sense of being very popular among a large cross-section of people.)
This theoretical game may arrive this year, or next year, or ten years from now. But it’s coming. And I, for one, can’t wait to play it.
What do you mean by “defining artform”? I don’t think anything that takes big bucketfuls of money to participate in makes a good basis for art – too hard for an artistic purpose to predominate. Just look at the movies.
What do you mean by “defining artform”? I don’t think anything that takes big bucketfuls of money to participate in makes a good basis for art – too hard for an artistic purpose to predominate. Just look at the movies.
Money is as good a motivator for art as any other. Motivations, in my opinion, are the least important element of what makes a given piece of art interesting.
When I say “defining” artform, I mean it in any connotation you can think of that would fit. Motion pictures defined the twentieth-century in that they were the most popular form, they drew the most talented people to it, they were the most artistically satisfying creations of that century, and they illustrated what it was like to live in that century better than any other competing form. Hence, “defining”.
