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The Hookup on High-Def Gaming 66

Posted by Zonk from the so-many-dpi-so-little-time dept.
Penny Arcade's semi-frequent column The Hook Up has published a new article, and this time around Stormy talks about the coming high-def revolution in gaming and the acceptance of gaming by the masses. From the article: "I'm definitely troubled about the 'dumbing-down' effect that bringing the casual gamers into our fold may have on the quality of games in the future. Sure, tight pants and big tits appeal to the hardcore elite just the same as the casual gamer, but I'm betting that Half-Life 2 on the Xbox will play a lot different than on its PC predecessor. For example, I really took it as a compliment when Valve simply threw me into the fray when I began the game. The beauty of it was that the storytellers assumed that we've all played a shooter before."
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The Hookup on High-Def Gaming More

The Hookup on High-Def Gaming

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  • Graphics are just the baseline... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sefert ( 723060 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @03:47PM (#12456631)
    The gameplay still has to be there. It goes without saying that it doesn't matter how sexy a game looks, if it's boring to play it won't be a hit. The comments the article made about high-def giving people an advantage is interesting though - you really could get more accurate shots off with a higher res larger display. I don't think it takes into account the natural 'tunnel' that people's vision has though. On a really big screen, it's easy to miss stuff off to one side (try sitting at the front of a movie theatre and see how much of the action you're missing, to get my drift). Basically, unless someone's playing a sniper on an FPS, I don't see a huge advantage - it'll just be tradeoff of clarity in the small area you're staring at vs the guy without the clarity who can see the whole situation better. Interesting observations, anyway.
    • "The gameplay still has to be there. It goes without saying that it doesn't matter how sexy a game looks, if it's boring to play it won't be a hit."

      Yes and no. I'd argue that there have been games in the past which have been hits only for their graphical prowness. I do agree that games without good gameplay will begin to fail in the near future. The problem won't be that graphics cards (and equivalently consoles) will increase in power; they will. The problem is that people will stop noticing the differenc

      • Re:Graphics are just the baseline... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by __aailob1448 ( 541069 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:24AM (#12460907) Journal

        I keep hearing how graphics can't be improved all that much and it just makes want to punch people.

        Graphics have a LONG, LONG, LONG way to go before we get to photorealistic quality. It's not going to happen in 5 years, or in 10 or in 20. Heck, I'll be surprised if it happens within the next 50 years. So please shut up about it.

        • Yes, but it's diminishing returns now, isn't it? The leap to 3D with the PS1 was a huge advance in console gaming. Now it's just inching towards photo-realism. The PS3 will not be a quantum leap, just same games, better gfx.

        • We'll never reach complete photo realism... not until we're using atom sized voxels or something, b/c polygons will never cut it. It isn't that graphics are about to be as good as they ever will, it's that they're going to be as good as they'll ever need to be.

          Look back in history at painting. Around the time of the renissance they reached near photorealism, but once they hit that where did they go? There was a backlash against photorealism in the art world and numerous new styles came about like impress
    • It goes without saying that it doesn't matter how sexy a game looks, if it's boring to play it won't be a hit.
      98% of gamers do not realize that, but "gameplay" is just a buzzword. It does not mean anything in particular. You may be speaking about shooting, while other people will think about dialogs, or mathematical system behind the game, or even about graphics.
      • Gameplay isn't a buzzword. The fact that what the gameplay is differs from game to game, doesn't make it a non-existant concept.

        That's like saying, because the manner in which you drive a car is different from the manner in which you drive a boat or drive an airplane, the action of driving a vehicle doesn't actually exist, or the word driving is a buzzword.

        When thinking of gameplay in general, people will think of different things. However, if you bring up the subject of gameplay in an FPS, no one is go
        • A good example of what gameplay really means would be to let someone play through they're favorite game with no sound, no story and primative box and sphere shaped levels and enemies. What's left is the "play mechanics"...which is basically what people are meaning to say when they talk about "gameplay." Now of course, no one wants to play a game like that, so you have all these nice rich layers on top of it...but it's that basic core that really matters the most. And that is what we mean when we say that "g
          • While this would logically make sense, it takes away the possibility of gameplay that uses sound and graphics for central parts of the gameplay.


            Also, with adventure games, while you could create puzzles that have nothing to do with the story to show gameplay, that's generally not the best way to go.The puzzles will either be unlike the ones you'd find in the actual game, and without any context, or the developers would spend an exorbitant amount of time creating puzzles they won't use.

            Basically, not al

  • Frist Psot! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by triso ( 67491 )
    Sorry, I couldn't resist.

    I despise this writer's elitist slant. Calling people casual gamers, mentioning the "'dumbing-down' effect" and associating himself with the "hardcore elite" reeks of shit. L33t sh1t, too. Just because your inside doesn't mean you're onside, boyo.

    • So he wants games only for the l33t, games which assume you're already l33t at FPS and just kick you in the pants as soon as you've hit "Start new game".

      Anyone else see the stupidity there? What about those who _didn't_? You know, those who (potentially l33t or not) just moved into the age bracket for violent games.

      If anyone started making games which are outright hostile to newbies, that genre would dwindle and die. Any market needs a steady supply of new customers, and doubly so for the games market whi
      • Harcore gamers != 1337 bastards...

        Up until recent years the term "hardcore gamer" actually meant something. It meant that you lived to play games, it meant that you loved them and would play any and ever kind. The current "leet" kiddies don't know the first thing about being a real gamer. What the original author was getting at is that the majority of 'gamers' these days don't appreciate where we came from as a industry/community. A true gamer would play games based on their actual merit and not their pr
      • "If anyone started making games which are outright hostile to newbies, that genre would dwindle and die." See: fighting games. Sure, most games can easily be button mashers - and going against someone on the same level can be fun, but you will always lose to someone who mastered the controls.

  • The rest of the story (Score:3, Insightful)

    by UWC ( 664779 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @03:54PM (#12456745)
    The other point made in Stormy's column was that many people have become disenchanted with real-time PC multiplayer gaming because you can gain a huge advantage simply by spending money on nice hardware. Current online console games present a refreshingly level playing field (except for Internet connection-based latency) in terms of inherent hardware-based performance. In the next generation, developers will be encouraged to take full advantage of HD to impress gamers. There will, of course, still be people with standard-definition TVs, as well. Simply owning an HD setup (and maybe surround sound) will give a gamer a tremendous advantage over people still using standard definition TVs, both in terms of field of view (16:9 TVs will offer better than 4:3; to gain the same field of view, a 4:3 viewer has to sacrifice around 1/3 of their vertical resolution, which already sucked) and resolution.
    • "you can gain a huge advantage simply by spending money on nice hardware."

      How so? Maybe you'll be able to run with better graphics at the same framerate on your Falcon Mach V, but the plebians with the lesser systems can still turn down their graphics enough to counteract any advantage that might give you.
      • Turning the graphics down will more often then not hide important details. Is that a team member or an enemy, if you shoot you might teamkill if you don't you might get killed, you have 0.5 seconds.

  • Upgrade Upper Limit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by calikahuna ( 826232 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @03:56PM (#12456778) Homepage
    While the author is worried about console games losing the "level playing field" in terms of hardware, it certainly won't be as bad as in computer games. In computers you have a constant supply of new available upgrades, as long as you have the cash. As for the next generation of consoles, the only upgradable component will be your TV. Once everyone has HD-TVs, that's it, thats the upper limit of upgradability.

    Sure, it will be a factor when the consoles are new and only a handful of people have HD-TVs, but these new TVs are the wave of the future, right? Isn't EVERYONE supposed to go out and buy a new one? Within a couple of years, a LOT more people will have HD-TV. You can't expect the hardware vendors to not include HD ability when it is right on the horizon of becoming mainstream. Heck, this could very well push more people to get that HD-TV set, so they can take advantage of new console features.
    • You could buy a hell of a gaming rig (pre-made, not even bargain hunting for components) for the cot of an HDTV at today's prices.
      • I'm not sure why people continue to perpetuate this myth, but picture tube HDTV's can be had for $500-$600 now. If you want something bigger CRT projection TVs can can be found for under $1500. Buying a HDTV doesn't mean having to buy the the most expensive option available (Plasma/LCD/DLP). I bought a 30" widescreen Toshiba HDTV nearly two years ago and only paid around $850 for it.
  • From Article: I get the sinking feeling that the Standard Definition mode of new games will simply be a boiled down, interpolated, and narrowed port of the High Definition original version. I just don't see how they are going to be able to negotiate the differences between these two customer types--the technology differences are simply too vast.

    Simple. Their plan is to kill SD as a serious impediment to a pc or three in every home. It just might work as Microsoft has plenty of collaborators wanting t

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @04:05PM (#12456891)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • half life start (Score:3, Insightful)

    by truffle ( 37924 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @04:05PM (#12456897) Homepage

    The start to half life 2 is actually very novice gamer friendly.

    You start out just wandering around. The only thing that's missing to make it very friendly is an in game explanation that W-A-S-D are your movement keys, but presumedly the manual does that (I didn't read the manual). In fact your early game game experience is entirely running around in a 3d space, which is pretty easy even if you have no shooter experience.

    (great storyline happens)

    You eventually get to a couple jumping puzzles. Here we're got one new gameplay concept - jumping, and it's introduced in a tense setting but where you have all the time you need.

    By the time you get into combat you've been playing for half an hour, and I believe it tells you how to "fire" (swing your crobar).

    It's a little while before you get a gun.

    In short half life 2 is very gamer friendly, starting off with extremely simple gameplay and introducing one new gameplay element at a time. You just don't notice it because the game rocks so much, you don't really think about how the game isn't a frag fest from frame 1.

    • Re:half life start (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PylonHead ( 61401 )
      This is very true. It's actually quite ironic that the original poster used this as an example, since I thought of this as the perfect game to introduce my boyfriend to a FPS.

      If you set the game to "easy" then enemy attacks do almost no damage to your character. Even so, my boyfriend died several times as he stumbed around in 3d space.

      It's funny how much we take for granted after playing so many games. Areas that I could scan in a fraction of a second and identify all the exits, he would have to carefu
    • In short half life 2 is very gamer friendly, starting off with extremely simple gameplay and introducing one new gameplay element at a time. You just don't notice it because the game rocks so much, you don't really think about how the game isn't a frag fest from frame 1.

      I've been decompiling some of the HL2 maps (in order to learn how various things are done), and I've noticed there's often a lot of very subtle scripting which quietly helps the player along.

      As a rough example - relatively early in the ga
  • I understand the point of HD possibly giving an edge to SD, but isn't that why there are player rankings?

    Younger players also have an edge in that they can log more hours playing, learning every specific detail about levels, items, etc. If the HD vs. SD difference is large enough, then won't the rankings clear that up automatically?

    The only real problem I see with that if you wanted to play with a specific friend, and one of you was HD while the other was SD . . . but then isn't that the same as play


  • From TFA:

    For example, I really took it as a compliment when Valve simply threw me into the fray when I began the game.


    Just exactly how did Valve 'throw you into the fray'??? You walked around for about 20 minutes (longer if you stopped to view the scenery), during which you were a.) UNARMED, and b.) IN-FUCKING-VULNERABLE. How exactly is this 'throwing you into the fray'???

    *sigh*

  • Talk about singing a worn-out tune (Score:4, Informative)

    by blincoln ( 592401 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @04:42PM (#12457374) Homepage Journal
    "Blah blah, back when I got into [scene] it was so much better and more exclusive. Everyone was hardcore and there was none of this watered-down-for-the-mainstream crap."

    It works for any subculture or hobby. Usually it comes from people who are too young to realize that there were always superficial aspects to whatever it is they're so concerned with, and that in 5-10 years they're going to wonder why they cared so much.
    • "Blah blah, back when I got into [scene] it was so much better and more exclusive. Everyone was hardcore and there was none of this watered-down-for-the-mainstream crap." It works for any subculture or hobby. Usually it comes from people who are too young to realize that there were always superficial aspects to whatever it is they're so concerned with, and that in 5-10 years they're going to wonder why they cared so much.

      Actually, you can't dismiss everything like that automatically. There are many in
    • What do you expect from someone who works for Monster Cable?
      Read his first hook up article to see how he started with AV gear to see how he got to the point of posting this article.

      Some of his articles do make some decent points, but he is a slave to his job and cant seem to actually be objective on anything touching on that. I almost think his PA articles are just adverts for Monster gear sometimes.

  • Dumbing Down (Score:4, Insightful)

    by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @05:05PM (#12457639)
    I think it's more helpful to think of video games seriously in terms of genres, and take it from there, when speaking about the dumbing down of video games.

    It's also helpful to consider that this argument has all been done before, in other media, again and again. Particularly in cinema. To resurrect a very old debate, there are those who said, and those who still argue that Star Wars constituted a dumbing down of sci-fi. Others, and I included, will contend that Star Wars does not "dumb down" serious futurist sci-fi or any genre of hard science-fiction at all, because it was never any of those things to begin with and doesn't aim at their market. Rather, Star Wars takes heroic tropes and conventions of children's literature and elements of every film genre out there, and makes of them a high quality film in a number of those genres. But to say it dumbs down sci-fi is to say it dumbs down something it isn't. To look at a fantasy hero saga in space and say it dumbs down science fiction makes about as much sense as saying that graphic novels 'dumb down' rennaissance principles of portraiture, or that modern electronica 'dumbs down' Baroque notions of musical composition or that 20th century urban architects 'dumb down' the aesthetics of greco-roman sculpture.

    And the same thing is true of games and their aesthetics, in general. There have always been largely mindless video game genres, and there will always be largely mindless video game genres. Space Invaders, Pong and Demon Attack really didn't particularly inform my view of the world around me, I have to say. And there have furthermore always been games with simpler gameplay, instead favouring story, or simpler story, instead favouring action, and anywhere in between. What you'll find varies from genre to genre like night and day. What's wrong, therefore, is pointing to (just picking one of an infinite set of examples) Action Adventure genre games of the present and while pointing to them stating that they are dumbing down the D&D Dungeon Crawls of the past. There's no sense in it. Let the genres be. And finally, there will always be bad games, mediocre games, and games which simply say and do nothing of particular consequence for gaming in general. If anything, there are far, far fewer bad games today than once there were simply because budgets are too high to allow as many small titles.

    I'm as orthodox a PC gamer as can be, so much so that I find myself immediately frustrated by the mere fact of not being able to easily hack and mod a console game, but I refuse to believe that console games are dumbing down gaming in general simply because when I see a simpler action game, based on an original PC RPG or RTS license, reinterpreted for console with simpler mechanics, I don't critique it as a PC RTS or PC RPG. I critique it as an action game, which has long been moreso the domain of the console than the PC. It doesn't say to me "games are getting dumber." It says to me "nothing new under the sun."
    • I'm as orthodox a PC gamer as can be, so much so that I find myself immediately frustrated by the mere fact of not being able to easily hack and mod a console game, but I refuse to believe that console games are dumbing down gaming in general simply because when I see a simpler action game, based on an original PC RPG or RTS license, reinterpreted for console with simpler mechanics, I don't critique it as a PC RTS or PC RPG. I critique it as an action game, which has long been moreso the domain of the conso
  • I don't believe the playing field is as level as Storm Shadow seems to believe. The TV already is of varying quality. TV size isn't the change HD will be, but someone playing on a 50" big screen is going to have a distinct advantage over someone playing on his old mono 15" tv. My guess is the imminent change of broadcast TV to HD, will do more to level the field than widen it. There is going to be a big wave of TV upgrades coming in the near future and the price for a tube small HDTVs isn't substantiall

  • happens all the time.

    the one i remember enjoying the most was that openGL quake1 let you see through some walls when underwater looking out, whereas looking from above down was shaded. software renderers had it opaque both ways. except for having to come up for air, a gl'er in the waters was frikkin dangerous.

  • Damn young wippersnappers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chris_Jefferson ( 581445 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @05:58PM (#12458177) Homepage
    Of course, I remember when people used to be hardcore, before all games had "save anywhere, any time you like", and these fancy 3d graphics. It's always the same, people always think that the time they started doing something with the pinicle, and it's been downhill since then.
  • I'm a video game enthusiest, but my taste in games is more "casual." I have very little patience for games that require a high level of mastery. Some games are good enough that I eventually get a high level of mastery, but it has to be fun to get there.

    There are many gamers like me that like simpler games, but we aren't the problem. Neither are the people just getting into gaming, or the people that do not have a lot of time to devote to games. Games can be simple and fun, yet challenging. Look at games li
  • This is so simple. The console knows what it's rendering and can report that to Live. People outputting HD play against HD. SD plays against SD. Problem solved!

    What I want to know is will xbox 360 support keyboards, mice and monitors? That will kill PC gaming. I know MS is saying 720p, but what if it can output 1920x1080 progressive on a monitor or very high-end TV? The PC gaming market will crash and burn because plenty of people tired of paying for a new video card every two years, a new CPU/mobo/RAM/HD every three, and a new power supply every four. That's $700-1400 every 5 year console cycle. Yes PC games have better graphics in the last couple years, but to too many people it won't be worth it.

    Microsoft wants to own the computing world, but PC gaming is a large part of what sells CPU's. They may not want to harm the market like that. However, Sony and Nintendo have lots of reasons to step in and do this.
    • I don't know, that point about scarcity would have made a lot of sense to me a couple years ago back in high school, but now I'm a gainfully employed adult with a salary. Getting a new computer every four years doesn't scare me in the least -- in fact, its practically mandatory anyhow, and not just for gaming, and the expense per hour of use is so low as to be laughable (figuring on one $1600 new midline Dell every four years, that works out to be somewhere on the order of a quarter an hour -- I can't do A
    • Aha, you seem to agree with me. I suggest you check out this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php ?t=310547 [straightdope.com] I think you'll enjoy it.
      • Yeah we agree. And the top third of the comments are from people utterly failing to think. Next time you need to spell things out better. Obviously computers will continue to sell, but people can save $500 by getting a mid-range PC and a console. Or if the xbox360 has a version of Office, these nay-sayers are really gonna freak. It's also pathetic how many of them believe PC gaming will continue when half of the market defects. I'm being generous too suggesting half of PC Gamers buy $500 video cards i
    • Yeah, so them people will just stick a Linux box inbetween their net connection and their xbox and toggle the bit that says what resolution...but who really cares. If you are that serious about gaming, you will play in tournaments where you know it is all fair.

      Whenever someone says that x will kill y, I immediately think that person is a moron. Did video really kill the radio star? So keyboards and mice (which you can already get for the current consoles) are going to kill PC gaming? I'm sorry, but a l
      • It's not just FPS's, it's also strategy and RTS's, and Diablo-like games, and sim city type games, all of which are easier to play with a mouse, though they exist to a lesser extent already on consoles. You don't think market forces can create a simplified keyboard/mouse all-in-one solution to sit on our laps?

        Do you know that a hit console game sells several millions of copies, while only the biggest hit PC games sell more than one million? It's currently hard to make a profit with a PC game. What if th
  • Here I am, using a 24" widescreen monitor at 1900x1200 resolution, powered by a 6800GT and 1 gig of ram, using a logitech mx1000 laser mouse and I still get the shit kicked out of me at counterstrike by people playing on 486s with 14" monitors. The exact same amount of shit kicked out of me when I was playing with a geforce 2 mx and a crappy 15" monitor.

    Ok, I'm exagerating about the 486s but you get my point: Skill is everything, the edge you get from the best hardware is negligible, period.
  • The article is worried about the dumbing down of future games, but it's been like this for a few years now. Most new games use their first level as a tutorial, and you can't skip it, some even do it throughout the entire game. For example, do you know how annoying it is to try and play through the first level of Gunvalkyrie (2002) and have the game stop every 10 seconds to tell you how the controls work even though you've already played it 100 times before? I'm tired of games thinking they need to hold my h

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