Ask yourself in 1998...

[Ando85]

What would you be playing in 2012?

For those old enough to remember gaming in the 90s what would you have predicted gaming would be like in the present day? I'd likely imagine some super virtual reality almost real life looking game...but I'm actually playing a PS1 game that came out in 1999 and enjoying it just as much as a new current gen game.

 

[Ldude893]

Something Disney-related. The first games I seriously played were from Disney Interactive, like the Bugs Life game for the PS (Japanese version) and various point-and-click Winnie the Pooh games.
Hey, I'm honest. I was four back then, and I didn't get into 'real' games till The Sims.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Something like the holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I really wanted one back in the day and I was convinced there was gonna be one by now.

Imagine my surprise when one isn't made and we can barely get 3D right. >.>

 

[Zhukov]

I would have assumed that future-me would be playing more RTSs.

As it turned out, I don't play them at all. I prefer my action small scale, turn based or up close and personal. Also, I suck at multi-tasking.

 

[Joccaren]

Much how it is now, but with worse graphics, and not accounting for business practices.

As fast as technology moves, it was pretty obvious we wouldn't have virtual reality by now. That would require both an immense amount of processing power in addition to psychological/biological research to cut signals from the brain and redirect them [I.E: The Sword Art Online method], or a giant cage of some sort that nobody would be able to fit in their house, and which would only allow you a visual and motor sense of virtual reality, rather than the whole deal. I did think such machines would be a little more prominent, in maybe one in a billion people's houses - as opposed to the 0 I think are actually in existence presently - but that was before I started thinking about why anyone would make games for a system with so few players.

 

[AD-Stu]

For the most part I think I figured it'd be like it is now - pretty similar, but with better graphics and sound. I certainly didn't expect to be playing in 3D virtual reality helmets or anything.

DLC and microtransactions probably would've come as a surprise to 1998-me though.

 

[DustyDrB]

I'm weirded out that a lot of people who read this thread probably weren't alive in 1998. I believe that's the "I'm getting old" blues.

Anyway, I'd probably assume that I'd still be playing Ocarina of Time and Mario 64 forever. I didn't have many games since my parents wanted me to be doing...other things. So I just kept playing those and added my own goals and storylines. I'd pick up a bob-omb or a box in Mario and act like it was urgent for me to take it to some place.

And I'm pretty sure I spent a whole afternoon rolling into every tree in Ocarina of Time just to make sure I didn't miss anything. Every damn tree.

Past me would have loved Minecraft. If you'd have told me there was a game where the goal is whatever you make it and you can build anything, I'd have been all over that. Present me, however....not so much.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I imagined games would somehow melt into all genres at once... not sure how that would work out, I guess Mount&Blade is a close example as you move between RPG quest/exploration stuff to RTS, to hack&slash, but obviously to make it a whole with the same resources every part just hasto be that much smaller.

And if you told me back then devs 14 years later still only barely understood options menus, mouse & keyboard, that RPG makers all but forgot how inventory works and Baldur's Gate will not be surpassed... well I'd say you are ripe for the insanity ward.
Yet here we are.

 

[Bernzz]

I was 5. If you asked me, I'd have no fucking clue. I can't even remember if I played games when I was 5. I can't remember when I got my NES. Or getting it at all.

It was just always there...

 

[Neverhoodian]

I would probably say awesome platformers by Rare and awesome Star Wars space sims by LucasArts.

...

 

[Norrdicus]

"A new Diablo!"

That's right young me, I'm playing Torchlight 2

 

[Rack]

Xbox Live Arcade style stuff. Basically I predicted technology stagnating in 5 or so years as it just got too damn expensive to make games prettier than (say) Metal Gear Solid 2. They'd get better draw distance, framerates and resolutions (I didn't realise the graphical expense for draw distance increased exponentially so I thought you'd be able to see for miles) and extra lighting effects, but the models, textures and animations would stay largely static.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

In 1998, if memory serves, I was playing a lot of Team Fortress Mega. My favorite map of all time was Frontlin. Modern battlefield games are, more or less, exactly what you'd expect to see eventually. Helicopters you can fly and transport people in? Mortars? Objective based gameplay set in giant maps that replicate reasonable world locals? Check across the board.

Battlefield is in many ways the game I wanted to play in 1998. That Team Fortress 2 bears so little in common with it's predecessor certainly is a shame. Hell, even classic made enough changes to disinterest me. I want a grappling hook for my spy, damnit! And Toasters!

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Breath of Fire 9, probably.

Fuck...

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I wouldn't have been expecting to play anything. I dip in an out of playing games and it's not something I care about enough to imagine what things might be like in the future. 1998 wasn't really a time I was interested in gaming. I had a playstation but that was pretty much reserved for post-rave mong time.

 

[Randomologist]

1998, I had a Win 3.1 PC, but not many games- Monopoly, Chess, Lego Island, an obscure FPS and an even more obscure racing game.

I wouldn't have had a clue- I still mostly played with Lego those days.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Pokemon Magenta Sodium on the Gameboy 2000 X9S.

I didn't have my PS3 yet.

 

[renegade7]

I was only 6 but I was fairly in the know regarding games, particularly Nintendo.

What would really have blown my mind would have been smartphones. Back then, a cell phone was something my parents had, or a couple of the 'big kids' around town if they were really lucky, and you made calls on them and that was basically it. Now you have these handheld fully functional computers, and they're so common even among children that you would think the government issued one at birth. This was stuff straight out of my Eyewitness (you will remember these if you were a geeky little brat like I was ) book about the future. Up until relatively recently I've viewed games as something only a few people did, now it's almost impossible to find someone who hasn't played Angry Birds, and I would have been shocked if you'd said it could be played on a cell phone.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Something like Age of Empire or Counterstrike possibly.

Captcha: small fries
Silly captcha, those are godfathers not small fries.