Poll: Is gaming ultimately moving forward?

[SplashyAxis]

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Yeah, you said what I was trying to say, but you said it much better. Using gimmicks to entice a player into playing the game, only for them to be (sometimes) left unrewarded with a good and worthwhile experience. And this, is what I feel is hindering the forward progression of gaming today. Basically having great concepts and/or gimmicks, but not having everything else to support it. There's no longer anything completely new or groundbreaking, such as Doom, GTA 3 or Half-Life, probably because everything has been done already.

I think developers have realised that all there is to do in certain genres have been done. They don't want to make a regular run-of-the-mill FPS because it's been done thousands of times over. So they try to implement these gimmicks (for want of a better word) and hope it's enough to pull players through.

So, yeah some aspects are moving forward, some not so much. But overall, I think gaming is moving forward, but not as fast as it was 10 years ago. I must say though, this thread has been very enlightening.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

It depends on what goals you have when deciding on lofty judgements like "is gaming moving forward" and saying things like games are moving forward without saying what forward is is just empty rhetoric.

Is the goal making sure that games publishers are more focussed on impressing share holders in the short term? Then games are arguably moving forward. Is the goal making sure that graphics technology is always moving forward and production budgets keep on going up? Then games have been moving forward.

It is obvious to me though that ten years ago there were a lot of things I would have seen as being areas where games could get better where they have been back sliding. I never really cared if games had full voice acting, rooms full of pixar animators or if investors lost all of their money.

 

[DueAccident]

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I am not sure I agree that everything has been done before; it's just hard to see what hasn't been done...for the very reason it hasn't been done.
To me, I see plenty of ways to be innovative within gaming. Though heck, I'm not even sure if every single game has to have some new gimmick to hook people, just a higher quality of design would be nice really. Just focusing on good plot, good writing, an involving game rather than graphics.

Something I realised the other day, when I was playing Dead Space, is that even so called survival horror games like that become a routine of;
Walk around in creepy silence > Something jumps out at me > I was startled and killed it > Repeat several hundred times.

Coming across an enemy is no real surprise, it eventually suffers from what a lot of FPS's do, i.e. that of basically running and gunning down hundreds of enemies, just at a much slower pace. Is that really what survival horror should be? I am not so sure.
When I think of what it could be, I think of more akin to the movie The Thing, (not the dreadful game), the suspense where anyone could be the monster, no one can trust anyone else, friendships fall apart, violence ensues. Similarly, most of the greatest horror movies only have one enemy, 'Alien' is a case in point. 'Aliens' loses it's terror value in favour of a scare value(i.e. that of things jumping out at you).
This is just one example I could see games taking a step forward; the Survival Horror genre could be so much better in my mind, true terror comes from being helpless, tension building, uncertainty, lack of trust, not simply waiting for something to jump out at you.

I think if more developers went back to stage one, trying to create something, as opposed to simply trying to improve on last years version (Fifa, COD etc.), we'd realise there was a whole lot more games could be doing as a medium.

On your other points, the problem is developers are just churning out standard, by the books FPS's. I agree gaming is moving forward technologically, but it is beginning to feel like the phrase "Man's reach exceeds his grasp" is all too pertinent; we have this fantastic technology, but are we really doing anything ground breaking with it? Are we making the absolute most of it? I am not sure..

Snip

I understand it depends on what criteria you judge it, that's why I left it purposely vague, and tried to indicate a few ways in which it could be argued to be progressing or regressing, to see what people thought. It's why I put "ultimately", to see if people think taking everything into account, if it is progressing.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

Part of me almost feels gaming has become too mainstream. I love my hobby to get the good attention it deserves, for more and more people to experience the true immersion and joy a game like System Shock 2 or Thief can give you, but instead it's becoming a victim of it's own success, you no longer have to be innovative to make money, and infact most companies that make money, aren't innovative.
Case in point Lucasarts again, churning out anything, chucking the label on it. Also EA, Fifa every year. Makes a metric fuckton of cash, but innovative? No.

And the same can be said of every form of media--eventually, it becomes a victim of its own success once it goes mainstream because we see an increase in output. In accordance with Sturgeon's Revelation, this means that what is actually released is in a 9:1 ratio of crap to something worthwhile. It doesn't matter if it's books, films, or games--if it can make money, people will slap a price sticker on it, regardless of quality.

But I'm going to argue that going mainstream isn't as bad as you imply. Think about it this way: before literacy was standard, writing was used mostly as a form of record keeping, and even then it was only done by people wealthy enough or lucky enough to get an education. THe market of books as entertainment was small. But once education became cheaper (or the average wealth increased), we see basic literacy becoming standard, and thus the market for books as entertainment grew. If this never happened, would Melville write Moby Dick? Would Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities have ever come to be? What about Poe, who was incredibly poor for most of his life? Would he have been able to write The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, or The Fall of the House of Usher?

As media goes more mainstream, the tools to both enjoy and create said media become easier for the public to use, as well. How many people could create high quality films when it was first released? Very little, seeing as how the first reels were used mostly as newsreels. Today we have people able to create amazing short videos [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk] on a budget of less than $500. Even Windows and Mac PCs come with basic movie editors; all the aspiring fil-maker needs to invest in is a cheap video recorder and he can be making films in no time flat. We can do the same with games, too--with programs like Game Maker and Adventure Game Studio, ordinary people can make games, too, without needing to learn programming languages (despite it being a plus). Going mainstream isn't bad; if anything, it's a good thing, and one step for helping gaming move forward.

 

[JoshGod]

overall ill'd say yes. but most mainstream games aren't helping. then again it is a recession, mainstream games are understandable. hopefully when the recession is over games developers will gain more freedom.

 

[Manji187]

Finally....a thread with real discussion value!

Well...first off..what is progress? What is "forward"? In terms of technology we're definitely moving forward. Plenty of examples have already been mentioned (processing power etc.).

But technology is only a part of the total picture.

Is more people playing games progress? If so then the "casual gaming" development should be welcomed with open arms.

But if you say that narrative (story and plot) is important...or genuine character development or "immersion"...then those things have definitely become scarce these days...and IMHO are becoming even more scarce.


I really don't mean to offend but...in my book...games like CoD MW(2) and Gears of War (2) are the way to "gaming hell": the reduction of variation in experiences. A serious emotional/ moral/ psychological/ philosophical dumbing down that doesn't do justice to the rich potential of the human imagination.

Deep/ interesting dialogues? Fuhgetaboutit! Genuine character development? Fuhgetaboutit! Nuanced morality? (I'm not talkin Mass Effect 2/ Fallout 3...that's anything but nuanced) More than superficial relationships between characters? Villians you could actually sympathize with? Fuh...get....about....it.

 

[PurplePlatypus]

Technology wise, yes, with bigger and bigger leaps each time. Of course as far as graphics are concerned we may have hit or be close to hitting a wall, there is only so much you can do to make them look realistic or smooth out the shapes and make them look less blocky. Then it will just transfer to another area.

As far as game play and game stories are concerned, some of it might be but I think it?s evolving rather than taking a definite step forward or backwards. Things change, tastes change, current gimmicks and fads change. There?s a lot of crap now for sure, there are a lot more games so you are going to get a lot more crap. The past has the benefit of you remembering the good stuff, maybe better than it was, and forgetting a lot of the fleeting crap. This isn?t even getting into the effects you get from childhood nostalgia; there is a lot of stuff I don?t want to ever see again because I know I would hate it and it would just ruin a childhood memory.