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A New Golden Age of Gaming? 56

Posted by Zonk from the sans-short-shorts-superman-i-hope dept.
Calathea writes "The BBC has an interview with 'Elite' legend David Braben where he talks about the next generation of games that will herald a golden age and equates them with Hollywood of the 30s." From the article: "A similar transition happened in the early 1930s in the film industry. In the 1920s, films were almost pure spectacle, and that spectacle became ever more extreme to keep the audiences coming back - cars skidded around towns, people dangled and fell from buildings, cars were forever being smashed to pieces on railway crossings. The stories were light-weight justifications for linking the dramatic moments together ... But it opened the door for the golden age of film, where Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd gave way to Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles in the 1930s. With hindsight the contrast is immense, and I think we are on the cusp of a similar change in the games industry."
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A New Golden Age of Gaming? More

A New Golden Age of Gaming?

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  • Not sure I want a "golden age" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DamienMcKenna ( 181101 ) <damienNO@SPAMmc-kenna.com> on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @01:34PM (#14393861)
    If this [imdb.com] is what comes after the golden age, I'm not sure I want that to happen.

  • The Golden Age has come and gone. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MaWeiTao ( 908546 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @01:34PM (#14393862)
    I'd argue that the golden age in gaming, comparable to the movies of the 30's, was the NES-era. The NES opened up gaming in ways that was unheard of before and Nintendo's dominance of the market remains unrivaled today. The current gaming era more closely resembles the movie industry today, with bloated budgets and the emphasis on special effects over substance and style.

    It's not like you can predict a golden age anyway. You can only objectively define a golden age in hindsight long after that era is over.

    • Re:The Golden Age has come and gone. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No way, the 16-bit era was the golden age, both in 16-bit consoles and the computers of the age. Before there was not enough processing power to do many things, after that 3D was more important than gameplay or story.
    • I'd argue that you are looking at the past with rose colored glasses. I grew up with NES too and loved it. But Nintendo still exists and is making great games. There are now other consoles (that as much as slashdotters hate to admit) have great games as well. Gaming is no longer a niche for kids in their basement. While some games are just about the graphics, there are tons of great games done in different styles with plenty of substance.

      I agree about not being able to predict a golden age. But if yo
    • >> It's not like you can predict a golden age anyway.

      Yes you can, you just need 2 Great People in the same city.
  • Braben prefers to keep monetizing [eliteclub.co.uk] works like Elite. I'm more of an Ian Bell [clara.net] fan, if only because he has the balls to make the original Elite free [clara.net].
    • Elite is mostly obsolete by now, anyway. Even as someone who does not insist on highly polished graphics, I find it no longer adequate. Apart from that, it has some cool features but also annoying bugs.

      For newer versions of the Elite theme, consider the following:
      -Freelancer
      -X3 (beware of Starforce)
      -Vega Strike http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]. This one is open source, and while it is still somewhat incomplete, I find it quite promising.
  • I haven't read the article yet, and I am not going to dispute his point, BUT one should realize that the summary compares silent film stars to directors of largely talking pictures. Silent film is almost an entirely diferent media than film with a synced audio track.
    • Maybe the author is suggesting that we simply unplug the audio cables from the back of our televisions.

      Though that would make it difficult to follow the storyline of Super Monkey Ball.
    • Not entirly, if you have seen any of the early talkies you would realize that they were all music and dance numbers for the first few years. I remember seeing one in which was on rotating giant staircase that would have cost millions to build in todays money which simply had no plot reason other than the wow factor.. kinda like matrix 2&3 :)

  • I don't necesarily disagree (Score:3, Insightful)

    by the computer guy nex ( 916959 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @01:42PM (#14393943)
    People consider the 'classic' era of great games has come and gone. The reality is games were so simple then that a great one could really stand out. There wasn't much to compare besides pure gameplay.

    Now games are judged on Dolby 5.1 sound, 1080i graphics, broadband online abilities, and gameplay. It is harder for a great game to stand out because there are so many different elements to master that appeal to so many different people. Add this to the fact that the gaming industry is booming creating massive competition and things get really blurry.

    If we aren't in a golden age, oh well. Madden 2006 on 360 may not have the best gameplay of any football game (I think it does) but the surround sound and native wisdescreen HDTV graphics makes an amazing gaming experience.
    • Madden 2006 on 360 may not have the best gameplay of any football game (I think it does) but the surround sound and native wisdescreen HDTV graphics makes an amazing gaming experience.

      EA's exclusive NFL license (very rough translation: don't look for McNabb, Brady or Vick elsewhere) helps too.

    • Re:I don't necesarily disagree (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @01:58PM (#14394135)
      So what you're saying is that we're coming to the point where style wins over substance...

      Wonderful. Gaming has made it to pop-culture status. The signal to noise ratio is about to get a lot worse.

      Of course I guess this also means that Madden games are now essentially the equivalent of a Brittney Spears album.
    • The reality is games were so simple then that a great one could really stand out. There wasn't much to compare besides pure gameplay.

      Given the fact that gameplay is really what matters the most in games 90% of the time, is that such a bad thing?


  • The stories were light-weight justifications for linking the dramatic moments together ... But it opened the door for the golden age of film

    So what he says is that games are now so bad that they can only get better in the future?

    • He's saying that technology is reaching the level at which it will no longer matter, and so games will soon have to be weighed based on the quality of their content. Plus, as the gaming generation ages, their tastes will become more discriminating. Blood, tits, and guns are mainstream because the audience is primarily teenaged boys.

  • Yes.. but movies didn't suffer from seque-itis! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @01:52PM (#14394061)
    Movies were original then.

    We're stuck with gems like:
    "Run-Down-the-Hallway-and-Shoot-It-Part-Six"
    "Suburban-WhiteBoys-Pretending-They're-from-da-Ghe tto-Part-Eleven"
    "Not-Enough-Guts-to-Join-the-Army-but-Enough-to-Pl ay-Soldier-Here-At-Home-Part-Five."

    If by "Golden Age" he means games worth pissing on, then yeah, I'd say MS & Sony are bringing it on..

  • What about the crash? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @01:56PM (#14394113)
    I thought the groupthink was that we're heading for a gaming crash.
    • We might be. I'm guessing the next gaming crash will happen when an end-of-cycle title on an older system looks and plays better than a next-gen title. Oh.. shit... wait... yea, almost there.

      Oh well, if history repeats that means Nintendo(or an upstart) and PCs usher in another golden age within a year or so. And it shall last for 10 years, and be declared good, and all shall play that era's games on the next electronics company turned console company's handheld in another 10 years, for there shall be n
  • If someone made an online multiplayer Elite for the PS2, my social life would be devastated.

    Why aren't there any Elite-like games for PS2?

  • Just PR (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spaceman40 ( 565797 ) <blinks&acm,org> on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @02:01PM (#14394174) Homepage Journal
    The article is just PR for a game called "The Outsider." Don't bother.

  • Making More Passive Games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xenolith ( 538304 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @02:09PM (#14394268) Homepage
    This article seems to become a commercial at the end for this guys game. The author thinks the key to next gen games are more interaction. Maybe. I would like to see someone make a 3D "game" that is nearly totally passive. It is no longer a game, but a piece of cinema. You may make a few choices, for instance to change the ending or to make something less violent. You may get the option to watch the drama or comedy unfold from "spectator mode", so you can view the action from different angles and distances. Or you can view it from predetermined camera views, your option.
    • Dude, where were you 5-8 years ago? That type of game has been and gone.
    • Many of those games came out at the start of the CD-ROM age. They called 'em interactive movies and they were as boring as they sound.

      The closest game I've played that's fun and matches with what you describe is Indigo Prophecy (Farenheit outside of the US)
      • You mis-understand. Let's see if I can rephrase. Think of Half-Life 2, except you are lead by the hand.

        I wasn't thinking using actual movie imagery or photos. I was thinking of using a 3D engine for this. As these engines get closer to photo-realism, this type of movie would be unique experience, if done right.

    • Actually, now that you mention it, that would be kind of neat.

      At first, I thought: "Passive game? That's just like a movie without the flesh -- boooooring"

      But then I thought: What if you have a little world which you can explore, where multiple stories unfold simultaneously. And you're like a ghost, flying around, following people, eavesdropping on them, seeing what they're doing, watching the stories of your choice unfold. Night-time comes, your character of choice goes to sleep, what do you do for 7 hours
    • Yeah, would be interesting to see more of that type of game, especially know where we have 3d capabilites that can actually produce extremly good looking graphics and are no longer limited to pre-filmed stuff. While the 'interactive movie' genre had many bad games, things like WingCommander3/4, The Last Express or Fahrenheit/IndigoProphecy show pretty well that such type of game can work if done right. Even 'The Sims' is kind of an interactive movie, only that it isn't prescripted, but one creates it while
    • Try playing Xenosaga.
    • This is exactly how the majority of hentai games progress. I wouldn't exactly hail them as part of the Golden Age of Gaming. Not that there is anything wrong with hentai games...
  • The new "Golden Age" of gaming is when the detail is so high we can't tell the difference between live video and the graphics (generated in real time) we see on the screen.

    I've give it two more generations before we see this... (PS5 and XBOX4)

    Of course this might entail that we've reach the computational power of the singularity. Actually, I think when a games physics engine includes the Heisenberg uncertainty principal then we can say we've reach the golden age of gaming.

  • Perhaps it has already begun (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Slime-dogg ( 120473 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @02:27PM (#14394427) Journal

    Future games just have to take a cue from Deus Ex, the first one (not the second one). You could have a repitition of maps, with different figures in different places, the advancement of the main character, and with a good story to bind them all together, these things become a very entertaining item.

    Think "Rear Window."

  • While the tech for gaming might be getting better and better, there is the problem of expense. It costs a ton to make textures, etc. as we all know. That means titles are more of a financial risk. Which leads to... Focus Groups! Every publisher will be trying out new games on a room full of teens in a Southern California mall and "refining" the game based on the results.

    Unless, of course, they are doing that now...
    • Everything used to be filmed on set with huge studios constantly being under construction. They needed sets to get all the light focused on the scene so the cameras could film it. In fact all the equipment used needed a large area to work in.

      But know with digital camera's it has become far far easier to just shoot on location. Saving huge amounts of money in not having to have a studio and set building costs while at the same time being more realistic.

      So how does this relate to games?

      Morrowind was an ope

  • Film != Games (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @02:59PM (#14394714) Homepage
    Braben makes the oh-so-common mistake of comparing the development of film to games. But while there are certainly patterns to the development of a media format, their very format changes their maturation. Radio and TV developed very differently than film, for a variety of reasons. Likewise, so will (and have) games.

    Perhaps the greatest weakness of Braben's argument for a "golden age" is that the type of games he believes will populate this golden age already exist. He writes that "[the] game character's objectives are defined rather than the overarching story narrative, to allow the story to unfold in response to the player's actions." He derides his own game, Elite, by saying it only hinted at this freedom. But I can think of other older games, like Pirates! or Ultima or Starflight or even Simcity, where the player does exactly what Braben suggests will happen in his next game.

    Secondly, Braben chastises recent games for putting the player on "pre-defined railway-lines." Ok. Sounds good. But then the harbinger of this new age, his own The Outsider, apparently has its own railway-line: "This is a thriller where the player begins by being accused of a terrible crime but can respond in many different ways, from getting revenge, to proving his innocence, to joining the secret organisation that came after him." Seems like I was presented with similar choices in games like Elite or Pirates. So there are branches in the railway, but it's still a railway. What made GTA so fun for many was the player often created their own objectives. Maybe this was to kill as many innocents, or explore every nook and cranny, or make the boat jump onto land. But Braben has already up a set number of objectives. Ok, so there are 4 rather than one. Big whoop. So what makes this game better? Apparently, the very thing Braben prophesies against: graphical enhancements.

    Elite certainly gives Braben some credence, and if The Outsider is anything like Elite it will probably be quite fun. But if it's open-endedness he's after, he needs to stop superimposing film onto the very different medium of the video game.

  • I was thinking about this the other day... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @03:35PM (#14395056) Journal
    I was thinking about games and their relative merits the other day. I think what really screwed up gaming for the last few years was, more than any other single thing, the transition to 3D.

    3D programming is enormously more difficult than the old 2D variety. It takes an order of magnitude more programming skill and computer power to to animate and move things in 3D. But people *really like* 3D, and stopped buying 2D games.

    So everyone made the transition, whether they were ready or not. This resulted in subpar games, because most of the development effort went into simply getting the 3D engines working.

    As an example, look at the huge amount of gameplay that's in the Baldur's Gate series. By using a 2D engine, they were able to cram a game of immense proportions into just a few CDs. Instead of having to model and texture hundreds of critters in 3D, they could use 2D sprites instead. Result: very probably the finest RPG ever created.

    At this point, the pain of the 3D transition is easing off. There are many more programmers and artists that understand it, and have optimized their workflow to support it. The canonical example is probably Civ4. Civ4 is a fully 3D game in all respects, but it offers all the power and flexibility of the old 2D games... plus a bunch of stuff you can easily do only in 3D. For the first time, we have a 3D game that trades off absolutely nothing. And it's tremendous fun.

    Another example would probably be WoW, which is an incredibly deep and fun experience. There's so much content there that it compares very well with the Baldur's Gate series. There are some story issues with the world not really being malleable to individual characters, but the total experience is world-class. 500+ hours of gameplay is pretty much standard in WoW.... where with Baldur's Gate 2, even if you replay it several times, you're usually looking at no more than 100 or so.

    I think, at this point, 3D has been mastered sufficiently that they can start, once again, writing Truly Great Games. 2005 was a good example of some of the stuff that's coming.... there were some phenomenal games this year. Hardly any of them were mainstream... Civ4 being the major exception. Darwinia, Space Rangers 2, Fate... just some awesome games this year. (I'm in a hurry here or I'd list some more examples... there were a TON of great games in 2005.)

    I think, ultimately, that this author is exactly right. The next Golden Age is coming.... 2005 to 2010 will have games you'd have killed for if you grew up in the 70s and 80s, like us old folks. :)
     
    • Something tells me you don't have a lot of game programming experience.

      However, I invite you to find your Baldur's Gate 1 CDs and count them.

      Don't worry, i did it for you. 5 CDs. That's how much space those 2D graphics took. All this for a game with less locations than many console RPGs.

      At its simplest level, 2D is easier to work with than 3D and takes up less space. But the moment you start thinking big, 3D wins. Instead of drawing every frame of an animation - then drawing it again for another random back
      • Actually, Baldur's Gate does use 3D. Much of the artwork for the backgrounds and the characters was modelled in 3D and "pre-" rendered into sprites. Of course a lot of the programming requirements of writing a full and functional 3D engine are reduced by this technique, it doesn't necessarily make the artists lives much easier. To be clear Baldur's Gate as was its more arcady cousin Diablo were both very monumental efforts at their time as far as computer art is concerned. But in those days 3D was more
      • But the moment you start thinking big, 3D wins
        Not necessarily. Look what has happened to the Castlevania franchise once it went 3D. Huge decrease in playability. I've played CV I, II, III, Chronicles, Dracula X, Symphony of the Night, Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow, and Lament of Innocence and my personal opinion is that the only bad games in the series are those that run on a 3D engine. Some things just don't work in a 3D gaming enviornment. Another example would be the Guil
        • I just thought of another series that was greatly hampered by a 3D gaming engine: the Rockman/Megaman series. Great games until you get to Rockman X7. What a terrible game. I guess what I'm trying to point out is that there are quite a few games that work much better in a 2D enviornment (particularly platform games).
        • I wasn't suggesting that 3D guaranteed better gameplay, was talking from a pure technical standpoint. I'd venture the notion that it's possible to write a good or bad 2D game, and a good or bad 3D game. It's all about choosing the right medium for the job at hand. Many of my favourite games are 2D (united in Castlevania-fandom?).

          That doesn't change what I said though.
          • Okay, that makes much more sense. When you say things like, "When you think in the big picture, 3D wins out" or whatever you said, it's incredibly misleading. It sounds like you are saying 3D does the job best every time no matter what type of game is being worked on.

            Thumbs up for Castlevania fans!
  • The press just won't "get it" about games. Even game developers don't seem to get it. I saw the topic list for some game conference and one of them bemoaned the lack of innovation in gaming.

    These articles follow this format: 1) Person states, "there is no innovation in gaming." 2) Audience nods because everybody likes to agree with negative criticism. 3) Same person then states, "here is my answer."

    It's the standard format to force people to listen to your stupid thesis.

    But really, we mustn't ignore the big
    • >> so TFA is just some lucky writer who found a gullible editor to promote his stupid game.

      TFA is David Braben, creator of Elite. Years from now, after procedural modelling of virtual worlds becomes the standard not the exception, Elite will be looked back upon as the breakthrough first example of how to generate massive worlds.

      Ideas from Elite will be mentioned and discussed in lecture theatres 20 years from now.
  • It's something that exists only in the past, never in the present. It's not something that can be seen coming, because it won't even be recognized when it's here. When it does get here, it will be criticized and ridiculed until it's reduced to smouldering ashes. Some could say the Atari 2600 was the golden age because it freed us from pong. Others will say NES because it freed us from the likes of the 2600. Still others will say the 360, PS3 or Revolution because they've taken it a step further.

    But the det
  • This is entirely impossible given the current bean-counter-controlled game publishing/development system. Until the next-gen consoles are "cracked" and can run third-party, independant developer code easily, a "golden age" like we experienced in the 80's/90's can't happen.

    Gaming is controlled by risk-averse corporate goons without souls. The only place you're likely to see innovation is on open computer platforms (and "open" here means any platform that has readily available development tools, where peopl
  • ... I think we're more likely on the cusp of more John Madden, Need For Speed, NFL, Splinter Cell, LMA Manager and Colin McRae Rally sequels than the video gaming equivalent of Citizen Kane.

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