Post by goldensandslash on Jul 27, 2017 6:17:14 GMT
Video games are awesome.[citation needed]
And yet, I can't help but feel... have we reached the end?
Before I go any further, let me address the elephant in the room. Four years ago, I made a post on DeviantArt all about why I hate modern-day gaming, and will probably forever stick to games from the 1980s and 1990s. And while I do still believe in most of what I said in that post, I will acknowledge that it was incredibly immature of me to do that. For one thing, I come off as a whiny baby (yeah, I still had a lot of growing up to do back then). For another, I very clearly don't know what I'm talking about there, and I don't really do a good job of explaining myself. But the TL;DR of that post is that I don't like the fact that gaming is now focused so much on social interaction. I miss the days when you could just plug in a game and then unplug yourself from the world around you for a bit as you immerse yourself in it.
Having said that, I do fully acknowledge that I am in the extreme minority there. Most people like taking their gaming online. As such, for the remainder of this post on WyvernIRC, I will not mention my opinions about modern-day gaming at all. I will stick only to the facts, and tell you why I think modern-day gaming is no longer moving forward.
First of all, we need to define what we mean by modern-day gaming. When exactly does "modern" start? Well, to do that, we can look at a list of game consoles in release order and see where we draw the line.
So, here's my list: pastebin.com/MENqwzun
Now, a lot of people consider games that are two generations old to be "retro". Now, how the hell do you define a generation? No, I'm serious. Like, if we were only counting the mainstream companies, then that would make sense. The current generation, at the time of this writing, is the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and the Wii U. The previous generation was the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the Wii. And the generation before that was the original Xbox, the PlayStation 2, and the GameCube. So, that's two generations? Are these not considered to be "modern" games anymore?
Regardless of how you answer that question, it's a poor definition. Because this answer defined only 9 consoles out of that 133-console list. As far as I can tell, these "generations" seem to be completely arbitrary. A single generation can last three years or ten years. Or anywhere in between. The only place that seems to define the generations is Wikipedia.
[sarcasm] Y'know, because that's a totally reliable source. [/sarcasm]
And Wikipedia's definition isn't even that good, because they have generations overlap with each other. Like, according to them, we're currently in the seventh generation and the eighth generation. Um, what? How can we be in both?
Okay, so that definition didn't work. Let's try again.
Other people consider a decade old to be "retro". Can we use this definition? Well, no. The Xbox 360 was from 2005, so that's over a decade, but it certainly isn't retro. We need to try again.
And that gets me to my main point: games used to evolve. Now they don't. We've been playing the same games for over a decade now.
Think back to 1983. You're playing on your Atari 2600, your Bandai SuperVision 8000, your Sega SG-1000, and so on. And then all of a sudden, here comes the newest gaming craze: the Nintendo Entertainment System. All of a sudden, all of your game consoles are now obsolete, because the NES can do a hell of a lot more than these can.
But if we apply the same argument to today, here's what happens. You're in 2001, and you're playing the original Halo on your Xbox. Now jump to today, and you'll see that the latest consoles of 2017 are playing more-or-less the same game. If Halo were just coming out today, it would sell and do very well on the market. I mean, the graphics would probably need to be upgraded, but that's it.
By comparison, *Tomb Raider* on PlayStation is radically different than anything on SNES. Though, to be fair, SNES wasn't all that different from what came before either. You could probably play *Super Mario World* on NES if you downgrade the graphics.
And that's where the dividing line is to me. It's not about generations or time. It's about how the games are played. In that regard, we come to what I am dubbing the five eras of gaming.
The First Era (Wikipedia: first generation) goes from 1972 to 1977. In this era, gaming consoles don't have any computing power and can't be programmed to do more than they already do. Each console generally only has a single game on it, usually either Pong or a variant of it, and you can't change that.
The Second Era (Wikipedia: second generation) goes from 1977 to 1982. In this era, games were coming to people's homes for the first time, outside of video arcades. Games were still incredibly simplistic, generally only relying on static images of shapes for graphics, and often only allowing minimal controls. Directional movement and possibly a button or two, that's it.
The Third Era (Wikipedia: third and fourth generations) goes from 1982 to 1993. In this era, games started to feel more like games. You could actually immerse yourself in them and become a knight trying to save a princess from a dragon, or whatever. They mostly showed games in one of two perspectives: either over the top from a bird's eye view, or from the side as a side-scroller. We have not yet made the leap into the third dimension.
The Fourth Era (Wikipedia: fifth generation) goes from 1993 to 1998. This is where we're in 3D. They let your characters move around in six directions instead of four. You can move up or down, or in any of the four directions that surround you. It felt magical. Think of games like Panzer Dragoon, Metal Gear Solid, or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for ideas of what I'm talking about.
And then the Fifth Era (Wikipedia: sixth, seventh, and eighth generations) goes from 1998 to the present day. These are the games we are still playing today. I already mentioned Halo, but this also applies to Soul Calibur, Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and so on. Basically, if the game could be released today with nothing changed apart from graphical upgrades, then they're Fifth Era. And yes, that means that I feel we've been stuck in this era for nearly twenty years.
We have yet to play anything new since 1998. It looks fancier, but if you strip away all the fancy bells and whistles, you'll find that they are the same types of games that we played back in the late 90s. Nothing has changed. The gaming industry is not innovating anymore.
Maybe things will change. Maybe the ninth generation will blow me away. Maybe it will allow for holodeck technology or something crazy like that. All I know is that the style of gaming that we do has not changed in a really long time.
And I just can't help but feel that stagnation is a bad thing. If we want to keep moving forward, we can't let the past hold us down. Because if we do, then we can't make any progress or innovations.
And so I return to the title of this thread: Video games. Is this the end of the line?
And yet, I can't help but feel... have we reached the end?
Before I go any further, let me address the elephant in the room. Four years ago, I made a post on DeviantArt all about why I hate modern-day gaming, and will probably forever stick to games from the 1980s and 1990s. And while I do still believe in most of what I said in that post, I will acknowledge that it was incredibly immature of me to do that. For one thing, I come off as a whiny baby (yeah, I still had a lot of growing up to do back then). For another, I very clearly don't know what I'm talking about there, and I don't really do a good job of explaining myself. But the TL;DR of that post is that I don't like the fact that gaming is now focused so much on social interaction. I miss the days when you could just plug in a game and then unplug yourself from the world around you for a bit as you immerse yourself in it.
Having said that, I do fully acknowledge that I am in the extreme minority there. Most people like taking their gaming online. As such, for the remainder of this post on WyvernIRC, I will not mention my opinions about modern-day gaming at all. I will stick only to the facts, and tell you why I think modern-day gaming is no longer moving forward.
First of all, we need to define what we mean by modern-day gaming. When exactly does "modern" start? Well, to do that, we can look at a list of game consoles in release order and see where we draw the line.
So, here's my list: pastebin.com/MENqwzun
Now, a lot of people consider games that are two generations old to be "retro". Now, how the hell do you define a generation? No, I'm serious. Like, if we were only counting the mainstream companies, then that would make sense. The current generation, at the time of this writing, is the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and the Wii U. The previous generation was the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the Wii. And the generation before that was the original Xbox, the PlayStation 2, and the GameCube. So, that's two generations? Are these not considered to be "modern" games anymore?
Regardless of how you answer that question, it's a poor definition. Because this answer defined only 9 consoles out of that 133-console list. As far as I can tell, these "generations" seem to be completely arbitrary. A single generation can last three years or ten years. Or anywhere in between. The only place that seems to define the generations is Wikipedia.
[sarcasm] Y'know, because that's a totally reliable source. [/sarcasm]
And Wikipedia's definition isn't even that good, because they have generations overlap with each other. Like, according to them, we're currently in the seventh generation and the eighth generation. Um, what? How can we be in both?
Okay, so that definition didn't work. Let's try again.
Other people consider a decade old to be "retro". Can we use this definition? Well, no. The Xbox 360 was from 2005, so that's over a decade, but it certainly isn't retro. We need to try again.
And that gets me to my main point: games used to evolve. Now they don't. We've been playing the same games for over a decade now.
Think back to 1983. You're playing on your Atari 2600, your Bandai SuperVision 8000, your Sega SG-1000, and so on. And then all of a sudden, here comes the newest gaming craze: the Nintendo Entertainment System. All of a sudden, all of your game consoles are now obsolete, because the NES can do a hell of a lot more than these can.
But if we apply the same argument to today, here's what happens. You're in 2001, and you're playing the original Halo on your Xbox. Now jump to today, and you'll see that the latest consoles of 2017 are playing more-or-less the same game. If Halo were just coming out today, it would sell and do very well on the market. I mean, the graphics would probably need to be upgraded, but that's it.
By comparison, *Tomb Raider* on PlayStation is radically different than anything on SNES. Though, to be fair, SNES wasn't all that different from what came before either. You could probably play *Super Mario World* on NES if you downgrade the graphics.
And that's where the dividing line is to me. It's not about generations or time. It's about how the games are played. In that regard, we come to what I am dubbing the five eras of gaming.
The First Era (Wikipedia: first generation) goes from 1972 to 1977. In this era, gaming consoles don't have any computing power and can't be programmed to do more than they already do. Each console generally only has a single game on it, usually either Pong or a variant of it, and you can't change that.
The Second Era (Wikipedia: second generation) goes from 1977 to 1982. In this era, games were coming to people's homes for the first time, outside of video arcades. Games were still incredibly simplistic, generally only relying on static images of shapes for graphics, and often only allowing minimal controls. Directional movement and possibly a button or two, that's it.
The Third Era (Wikipedia: third and fourth generations) goes from 1982 to 1993. In this era, games started to feel more like games. You could actually immerse yourself in them and become a knight trying to save a princess from a dragon, or whatever. They mostly showed games in one of two perspectives: either over the top from a bird's eye view, or from the side as a side-scroller. We have not yet made the leap into the third dimension.
The Fourth Era (Wikipedia: fifth generation) goes from 1993 to 1998. This is where we're in 3D. They let your characters move around in six directions instead of four. You can move up or down, or in any of the four directions that surround you. It felt magical. Think of games like Panzer Dragoon, Metal Gear Solid, or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for ideas of what I'm talking about.
And then the Fifth Era (Wikipedia: sixth, seventh, and eighth generations) goes from 1998 to the present day. These are the games we are still playing today. I already mentioned Halo, but this also applies to Soul Calibur, Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and so on. Basically, if the game could be released today with nothing changed apart from graphical upgrades, then they're Fifth Era. And yes, that means that I feel we've been stuck in this era for nearly twenty years.
We have yet to play anything new since 1998. It looks fancier, but if you strip away all the fancy bells and whistles, you'll find that they are the same types of games that we played back in the late 90s. Nothing has changed. The gaming industry is not innovating anymore.
Maybe things will change. Maybe the ninth generation will blow me away. Maybe it will allow for holodeck technology or something crazy like that. All I know is that the style of gaming that we do has not changed in a really long time.
And I just can't help but feel that stagnation is a bad thing. If we want to keep moving forward, we can't let the past hold us down. Because if we do, then we can't make any progress or innovations.
And so I return to the title of this thread: Video games. Is this the end of the line?