Within this article I will describe my opinions regarding the history of console gaming, its trends, and its future! (or lack thereof)
It is my belief that the
was the best console game period in history! Let me tell you why.
First, let us briefly look at the history of games and analyze the pros and cons of each period, and their inherent gaming qualities and trends.
The 4-bit generation.These were the very first console games out there. (Many games were originally in arcades only, then ported to early console systems.) They were the pioneers. They defined video games. Games such as Pong and Pac-Man and Space Invaders are history icons. Atari is a household name.
Okay, that's great. It gets the props it deserves. Now, let's be realistic. Those games sucked. They were amazing for their generation because nothing like it had been seen before, but that being taken into consideration, their graphics and sound were hardly existent, and the gameplay, though challenging and addictive for a bit, was downright downtrodden. They were addictive because they were so hard that they pissed you off, and you wanted to show it a thing or two, before chucking the controller through a near by window.
There is little more to be said about the 4-bit generation.
The 8-bit generation.These were the days of NES and Game Boy. By this point, graphics had come to a point where engaging games could be played, and there was a great deal of experimenting. Story boards began to be developed. This was an interesting period, but the industry still had a long way to go.
The 16-bit generation.This was the time when Super Nintendo and Sega, among others, came into being. This was the generation when games began to develop real character and potential. Detailed backgrounds and models, admittedly catchy midi music, and a lot of really great game titles. This era was fun. Graphics were taking off, and gameplay was still innovative and challenging. The limitations of the technology, however, were still painfully obvious, regarding just what you could get out of a video game.
The 32-bit/64-bit generation.Here we are at what I believe to be the pinnacle point in console gaming. This encompassed systems such as Sega Saturn and Playstation (32bit), Nintendo 64 and the obscure Atari Jaguar (64bit). By this point, bit reference had become more or less obsolete, since performance depended on more varied factors, such as processor clock speed, bandwidth, and memory size. Accordingly, 32-bit and 64-bit were very similar and are under the same generation. (I'll still use the bit reference in the rest of the article, for consistency.)
This was the point when graphics and sound had finally reached a state where really amazing things could be done with them -- 3D, antialiasing, increased graphics with the Expansion Pack -- the developers finally could really work with the technology to create visually fascinating games with great sound. Of course, there were more than the share of lemons in the pile, but the games that did it well, did it well.
The key point to this era, is that the graphics and sound were still limited enough that developers had to rely on engaging storyboard and gameplay, to really get a good game out there. It was the perfect balance of creative gameplay and technology.
The 128-bit generation.This was the generation of PS2, Gamecube and Xbox. Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony had risen to the top of the pack for console brand names. This is where everything begins to go wrong. By that point, genres of video games had been solidly defined, and it was very difficult to come up with new styles of games. Developers were having to work much harder to come up with creative stories and gameplay, and most often failed. This is the era when violence and gore really became mainstream, and family type games faded into the background. Graphics and Sound capabilities were beginning to plateau, and now developers had to find some other way to make their games appealing to a generation of gamers with increasingly low attention spans.
Sandbox games came into play. Grand Theft Auto is a good example, where gaming no longer followed a linear path, or even non-linear progression with strict gameplay rules. Instead, the player got to do whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted, for as long as they wanted, to whatever extent they wanted. Nearly all structure was abandoned. This was good and bad -- it allowed a interesting and engaging way to spend hours and hours messing around with little or no consequence or progression, but on the bad side, this kind of gameplay is like allowing a child to eat as much candy and run around as much as they'd like -- they'll soon get bored and cranky, and that is what happened to gamers. They had now come to expect a certain level of graphics, and they expected it to increase exponentially. They expected more detail, more gameplay options, more stimulation for shorter periods of time.
Developers were put into a tricky position of fighting with each other to capture the attention of the most gamers -- not produce engaging, worthwhile games. Bad news, and so began the downfall of the gaming world.
The 256-bit generation.Here we are. Look at the carnage around you and observe your horrible glory, oh gaming generation.
PS3, XBox360, Wii. Video games are in dire straits. Graphics and memory and sound have all but reached their limits for the foreseeable future. Gamers are restless and bored. They're no longer impressed with parallax and displacement mapping. They want more. Game genres are exhausted and challenged. Story is almost non existent, repetitive and boring. Developers now have turned to the horrible last resort of feature-based gaming. Now they battle with each other to have the most features in a game. Customize your character's skin pore size, collect all 100 feathers to win a prize, etc etc etc. Games are no longer about playing a game, they're about thousands of tiny efforts to grab our dwindling attention span, and the sheer magnitude of the result has left us more bored and overwhelmed than we would have been had the developers decided to tame the game down to something solid and quality. But that sort of thinking is extinct. Developers are fighting to stay alive amidst the hundred or thousands of games released a year -- not to mention the geometrically dwindling production/release time periods. It's not about the player anymore, and the players aren't playing for games anymore -- we're playing for desperate stimulation and distraction. We've become TV dependent, and stimuli-programmed.
This is terrible. I can't see any good coming of this. I predict a short fad of 3D gaming, which will soon burn out with the cost, novelty and irritation of extra hardware like glasses. The gaming industry has beat the shit out of itself, shot itself in both feet, and is on its way into the grave.
R.I.P. video games.
(I still have my very first Nintendo 64 console and controller --
Transparent Purple -- it came with Donkey Kong 64. I also own every n64 game ever made.)
Long live 64-bit. Long live Nintendo 64.
Anyone wanna help me out with another one?
