Console Gaming
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haha norries mate as i said i agree to some degree with u neway.RagnorakTres said:I think you missed the part where I said "Over-generalization inbound."ischmalud said:@ RagnaorakTres
mate i agree that there are those 2 types of players, probably various shades in between but i disagree with the idea that its related to ur own physical form.
consider this, im a gym monkey and i work a fairly hard physical job but still id agree with yathzee that gaming for me is to relax, if i wanna do sports i do sports i dont turn on my computer or ps3
none the less some valid points thereI suppose I should have said that there were two types of people, people who prefer physical stimulation and people who prefer mental stimulation.
It's probably a question of how much stimulation of each type one person receives in a day versus another. I've been cooped up all winter, unable to do my usual physical stuff (sword sparring, mostly) and I still haven't managed to land a job, thus playing the Wii feels good, feels like I'm doing some of the stuff I haven't been able to because it's snowy and nasty out. I'm also getting massive amounts of mental stimulation from debates with my friends, tabletops, role-plays and college. Where you're playing games to come down from doing physical labor, I'm playing games in place of physical labor (unfortunately).
P.S.: good luck on the job hunt
My opinion is that the problem with innovation in gaming has been the whole trend for producing triple-A titles all the time. Not only are these titles very risky due to production costs, but, developers all seem to be just playing "follow-the-gimmick" in a desperate to scrape dollars by copying another game that was successful( the "like X but..." design). While this sounds like a reasonable strategy, the problem is that an imitator can never be as good as the original. Why buy a, at best, second-rate imitator when you can just buy the original. In the end, you end up with too many deer all desperately pushing to get a single lap of hydration from the same fist-sized, drying puddle on the ground. Every time a game or design strategy garners any success, there is a mad rush to recreate that success, but the imitation seems to always be done without understand what actually makes the game work properly in the context that it does.
Back in the olden days of gaming, many games had very different styles, feels, and control schemes. One could actually tell who developed a game just by looking at it. Nowadays, every game is just a copy of each other, graphically, contextually, and idiosyncratically. Without the publisher/developer stamp on the box, you wouldn't have a clue who made the game. Some of that may be due to the use of third-party engines, but I think a lot of it is more of the "follow-the-gimmick to the water-hole" style thinking that seems to permeate the game industry.
As for motion controls(damn, Yahtzee, get off the flipping couch, man) the problem that I see there is developers are not using motion controls as a new paradigm of interaction with games. Instead, they are using motion controls as just a simple 1-to-1 mapping to the same ol' button scheme we have always used for decades. I could imagine a motion control game as being used for purposes of physical therapy, learning martial arts, improving performance in sports, or other real-life actions; naturally, there are likely even more possibilities beyond these, but they are not being explored because developers/publishers are just linearly thinking along the same train-tracks they have always followed. The Kinect probably has the most potential to accomplish something new in the paradigm of motion control, however, developers and publishers, in typical "follow-the-gimmick", "like X but..." style thinking simply imitate what they see on the Wii rather than think in terms of the actual paradigm of interaction that the Kinect represents.
To be honest, I have to question whether gaming really has ever been all that innovative in the first place. Over the years, there have been a lot of games that really just do the same thing that has always been done. There really doesn't seem to be much that really tries to push new ideas, new concepts, new paradigms of interaction. We don't seem to hear much about or have much large scale exposure to games that really try to break the mold of what a game can do or be. We really don't try that hard to venture outside our comfort zones, and when we get a game that actually does push outside the comfort zone, there is often a lot of push against it. We end up not liking it because it's not enough like the same games we've always played. In essence, the gamers are just as much responsible for the lack of innovation because we seldom tolerate any true innovation when it happens. We'll often criticize the game for not being enough like whatever is the current popular set of 5-6 main-stream triple-A games.
Making matters worse are the "hardcore" vs. "casual", PC vs. consoles holy wars that have raged in the gaming community. These wars really amount to a set of opinions that do not tolerate gaming deviating from a prescribed formula dictated by a select few in the community. This only serves to further restrict innovation in games to being just the same stuff as always.
Further compounding the problem is the gaming press. The gaming press does not seem too willing to give exposure to the games that really do push the envelop. There might be a single snippet-sized article mentioning it in passing, more like a footnote in the overall news stream, but it will receive none of the copious regurgitation that the main-stream, same-old-thing-as-always triple-A titles are given. For instance, think of how much attention Ico gets now that it has become such a cult favorite in the gaming community. When the game was first released, you barely knew it even existed. Only now, when we are screaming for something new and different, do we finally realize how great a gem we had back then. And this trend continues even now. Even crappy triple-A titles are given much hype and pre-release press, pages and pages of first impressions, beta impressions, preview imagery, and analysis spanning weeks, sometimes months, much of it really just being the same thing said repeatedly. However, that Ico-like gem just gets a half-page article or footnote maybe once in that same span of time. Basically, the gaming press just misses out on the real innovation that is going on because it's too focused on the big shiny triple-A games that are nothing but the same recycled crap.
Basically, gaming innovation is stagnant because the people in gaming are stagnant and closed-minded. They aren't willing to venture outside their basic comfort zones, and once they find one cool or funny thing, they simply repeat it ad nauseum in any and every possible context.
Gaming is capable of a lot, but until we go pass thinking and designing games as just amusement-park thrill rides, gaming will never achieve that level of maturity and social significance many of us wish to see.
(I wrote this in stream-of-consciousness, so I don't guarantee all the logic is sound everywhere.)
Back in the olden days of gaming, many games had very different styles, feels, and control schemes. One could actually tell who developed a game just by looking at it. Nowadays, every game is just a copy of each other, graphically, contextually, and idiosyncratically. Without the publisher/developer stamp on the box, you wouldn't have a clue who made the game. Some of that may be due to the use of third-party engines, but I think a lot of it is more of the "follow-the-gimmick to the water-hole" style thinking that seems to permeate the game industry.
As for motion controls(damn, Yahtzee, get off the flipping couch, man) the problem that I see there is developers are not using motion controls as a new paradigm of interaction with games. Instead, they are using motion controls as just a simple 1-to-1 mapping to the same ol' button scheme we have always used for decades. I could imagine a motion control game as being used for purposes of physical therapy, learning martial arts, improving performance in sports, or other real-life actions; naturally, there are likely even more possibilities beyond these, but they are not being explored because developers/publishers are just linearly thinking along the same train-tracks they have always followed. The Kinect probably has the most potential to accomplish something new in the paradigm of motion control, however, developers and publishers, in typical "follow-the-gimmick", "like X but..." style thinking simply imitate what they see on the Wii rather than think in terms of the actual paradigm of interaction that the Kinect represents.
To be honest, I have to question whether gaming really has ever been all that innovative in the first place. Over the years, there have been a lot of games that really just do the same thing that has always been done. There really doesn't seem to be much that really tries to push new ideas, new concepts, new paradigms of interaction. We don't seem to hear much about or have much large scale exposure to games that really try to break the mold of what a game can do or be. We really don't try that hard to venture outside our comfort zones, and when we get a game that actually does push outside the comfort zone, there is often a lot of push against it. We end up not liking it because it's not enough like the same games we've always played. In essence, the gamers are just as much responsible for the lack of innovation because we seldom tolerate any true innovation when it happens. We'll often criticize the game for not being enough like whatever is the current popular set of 5-6 main-stream triple-A games.
Making matters worse are the "hardcore" vs. "casual", PC vs. consoles holy wars that have raged in the gaming community. These wars really amount to a set of opinions that do not tolerate gaming deviating from a prescribed formula dictated by a select few in the community. This only serves to further restrict innovation in games to being just the same stuff as always.
Further compounding the problem is the gaming press. The gaming press does not seem too willing to give exposure to the games that really do push the envelop. There might be a single snippet-sized article mentioning it in passing, more like a footnote in the overall news stream, but it will receive none of the copious regurgitation that the main-stream, same-old-thing-as-always triple-A titles are given. For instance, think of how much attention Ico gets now that it has become such a cult favorite in the gaming community. When the game was first released, you barely knew it even existed. Only now, when we are screaming for something new and different, do we finally realize how great a gem we had back then. And this trend continues even now. Even crappy triple-A titles are given much hype and pre-release press, pages and pages of first impressions, beta impressions, preview imagery, and analysis spanning weeks, sometimes months, much of it really just being the same thing said repeatedly. However, that Ico-like gem just gets a half-page article or footnote maybe once in that same span of time. Basically, the gaming press just misses out on the real innovation that is going on because it's too focused on the big shiny triple-A games that are nothing but the same recycled crap.
Basically, gaming innovation is stagnant because the people in gaming are stagnant and closed-minded. They aren't willing to venture outside their basic comfort zones, and once they find one cool or funny thing, they simply repeat it ad nauseum in any and every possible context.
Gaming is capable of a lot, but until we go pass thinking and designing games as just amusement-park thrill rides, gaming will never achieve that level of maturity and social significance many of us wish to see.
(I wrote this in stream-of-consciousness, so I don't guarantee all the logic is sound everywhere.)
I think Yahtzees' on to something about not getting the player physically involved. There are times where I would love to smash a heavy battle-axe into what used to be someone's face, but apart from the likelihood of me hitting the chandelier (again) or scaring the cat, I don't get an innate feeling of control. I am not the character, I am an entity controlling by proxy, with my character swinging wildly because I hit something, and getting his bollocks bitten off while I scrabble around for the controller that I dropped. Then again, I am somewhat clumsy IRL, I think I might have touched on that.
Although James Portnow is probably the person I respect most in this conversation, I find myself agreeing mostly with Yahtzee, at least in terms of opinion on motion controls. I've been gaming with controllers and buttons for some 13 years, it's a good system and it works. If I didn't like that experience, I obviously wouldn't have come back to gaming, nor would the other millions of gamers in the world.
That's not to say that I'm not open to innovation in console gaming, or that I don't think motion gaming has it's place (the sale figures don't lie), but I just don't see any reason to make the move from buttons to motion.
That's not to say that I'm not open to innovation in console gaming, or that I don't think motion gaming has it's place (the sale figures don't lie), but I just don't see any reason to make the move from buttons to motion.
Good stuff. On a slight tangent to the train of thought, does anybody else disagree with the "this is just the last generation in HD" notion? Wouldn't that made the PS2/Xbox/GC generation "just the PS1 generation but better looking"?
The PSWii60 generation has brought us a number of innovations, more fleshed out UIs, online market places, more meaningful and expanded online components and more processing power to tool around with (at least for the PS3/360).
The most the PS2 did was more processing power.
The PSWii60 generation has brought us a number of innovations, more fleshed out UIs, online market places, more meaningful and expanded online components and more processing power to tool around with (at least for the PS3/360).
The most the PS2 did was more processing power.
I always suspected that one day The Escapist would just pile all their big name talents into one piece and let them have at it. Looking forward to seeing what sort of topics are to come.
Well damn, this came out of nowhere...
...and it made my day.
Throw Shamus into the mix and you might just destroy the universe. Whoever thought this one up deserves a medal.
...and it made my day.
Throw Shamus into the mix and you might just destroy the universe. Whoever thought this one up deserves a medal.
Official suggestion: SKYPE THESE GUYS!
I'd pay money to see that. Coincidentally, I'm already paying money to see this hypothetical video in high-res.
I'd pay money to see that. Coincidentally, I'm already paying money to see this hypothetical video in high-res.
Personally, I'm right with it up to the point where James and Yahtzee decided that sports are better when players are not physically exerting themselves... ummmm nah, sorry not to me. We all have a wonderful little switch that turns on our endogenous endorphins in response to exercise. Blood, sweat and tears are SATISFYING when rewarded, crushing when not, but the stakes make it better. And if that makes me a masochist so be it (I'm not really, for anyone who's wondering).
Bother! Now we'll never see another one! Cuurrrse youuuu Francis...!!Susan Arendt said:Yeah, you know, oddly that doesn't really do much for me. So you might want to rethink your approach.Fr said:anc[is]Dear Escapist, what would you consider your best source of positive reinforcement? Because I want you to continue this behavior.
Yes! This is exactly what I wanted to see. I would have liked to hear more from James though. Hopefully this becomes a regular thing.
Existential uncertainty? I like it. XD
An interesting discussion here. Oddly enough, I'd have to side with Yahtzee on what makes a good motion-controlled game, but not nessesarily on his reasons for disliking it.
But whatever. I have my own crazy dreams, and they have nothing much to do with this conversation.
Still, makes for an interesting read regardless.
What, precisely would happen if you locked this lot in a room together anyway? XD
An interesting discussion here. Oddly enough, I'd have to side with Yahtzee on what makes a good motion-controlled game, but not nessesarily on his reasons for disliking it.
But whatever. I have my own crazy dreams, and they have nothing much to do with this conversation.
Still, makes for an interesting read regardless.
What, precisely would happen if you locked this lot in a room together anyway? XD
Neural Interface woudl have to have an auto Log Out sequence, I mean that is something that kinda scares me for what it could lead to
This is amazing. I love that you guys have started an article that is an actual dialogue between different people about a topic. That it has James, MovieBob and Yahtzee as your starting lineup... definitely the crowd to get the masses interested. ^_^
I really hope you continue with this, and involve other members of the Escapist Staff and gaming/development community. I love the articles and insights you guys have into the gaming world, but dialogues between people are always more interesting and gives people the chance to hear different opinions and beliefs and respond in interactive ways.
Being on another continent, this is the closest thing I'll have to a gaming convention panel. Win! Can't wait to read more!
I really hope you continue with this, and involve other members of the Escapist Staff and gaming/development community. I love the articles and insights you guys have into the gaming world, but dialogues between people are always more interesting and gives people the chance to hear different opinions and beliefs and respond in interactive ways.
Being on another continent, this is the closest thing I'll have to a gaming convention panel. Win! Can't wait to read more!