Can games...really get any better than they are now?

[Urgh76]

Unfortunately there is only one level higher............. MIND CONTROLLED GAMING!!!!!!!!!

 

[Chaos Theory]

one day all games will look like Blizzard Cinematics.

 

[k3v1n]

yes, yes they could, they could, for example, have good graphics AND an intelligent AI and not only one feature(plus a good storyline but that's personal opinion)

and yes, yes they can, that's why they're adding(proper) motion sensors.

 

[Flames66]

Yes. Stop focussing on the graphics. focus on gameplay, story, AI or pretty anything other than graphics.

 

[MR T3D]

there can always be more polygons and physics-objects.
and we can always have games look similar to this gen's best, but with splitscreen.

 

[NickCaligo42]

i agree with what you say about dungeon keeper there. i still remember trying to juggle the creatures to stop them killing each other and wondering where my dark mistresses were and discovering they were in the torture room indulging in BDSM :-|

Yeah, and how many games since then can you think of like that?

Yes. Stop focussing on the graphics. focus on gameplay, story, AI or pretty anything other than graphics.

To be honest, game developers don't FOCUS on graphics. The guy who programs the graphics engine, the guy who does the physics engine, the guys who work on the AI, the guy who writes the story, and the guy who plans the core gameplay AND the guys who design it on a level-by-level basis are all completely different people, as are all the artists and animators. Blaming the computer graphics programmers and the artists for lousy gameplay is like blaming the CG artists who worked on Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen for Michael Bay's directing. They're just doing their job as best they can. It isn't their fault that their lead depends so heavily on them to make up for his shortcomings.

The fact is that graphics march on because the graphics technology we use in games today has been around for years in the film industry, and it's just easy to adapt to games when computer technology, every so often, catches up with it. It's the easiest upgrade you can possibly do. Smart AI? Much harder; it actually requires some engineering and problem-solving, and you know programmers are lazy or else they wouldn't come up with bogus keywords like [cout] and [int]. Better gameplay? Well, that's an easy phrase to throw around, but what exactly does that entail? Did you ever stop to think of what goes into designing a game as opposed to programming it? Actually stopping to consider the balance of mechanics and gameplay elements and variables? Actually ask yourself what the Plasmids do for Bioshock, or what the invention system does for Bioshock, or what role each weapon and each system really has in Devil May Cry, or things like that? Have you ever asked yourself why Diablo is a great game while Too Human is a piss-poor imitation and tried to actually come up with an answer?

Well, a lot of game designers don't. There's some good ones, but most of them, I can tell you, are either checking things off on a list or receiving a hand-me-down IP and just trying to do the best they can with what's already been defined as part of the series, all too often under stringent and misguided mandates from their publisher, like "make it more casual-friendly."

Trust me when I say this: you have nothing to blame in a game with weak, shallow, or generic gameplay apart from good old fashioned incompetence and shortsightedness. The typical development lead today is someone who lucked into a job at a game company during an unstable period in the industry, had a cushy job, and kept it. A few of them were even hired based on exactly ONE Unreal Tournament map in their portfolio and nothing else to suggest an interest in designing games. You would be shocked at just how unqualified some of them were when they were hired and still are.

Well, in the field of design anyway. If there's one thing they can do well--better than most who can design--it's coordinate, produce, and ship.

 

[achilleas.k]

To be honest, game developers don't FOCUS on graphics. The guy who programs the graphics engine, the guy who does the physics engine, the guys who work on the AI, the guy who writes the story, and the guy who plans the core gameplay AND the guys who design it on a level-by-level basis are all completely different people, as are all the artists and animators. Blaming the computer graphics programmers and the artists for lousy gameplay is like blaming the CG artists who worked on Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen for Michael Bay's directing. They're just doing their job as best they can. It isn't their fault that their lead depends so heavily on them to make up for his shortcomings.

Well, yes and no. Game developers don't work on the graphics or story, but they are responsible for it. A development team for a game is, not surprisingly, a team. They all follow orders from a dude higher up that sets the standards. If Mr. Higher Up is content with the story provided by Mr. Story Guy, then Mr. Story wont bother making a better one. If Mr. Higher Up is content with enemies that don't run into walls but they're as thick as a brick, Mr. AI Programmer will just code enemies that avoid walls and shoot in your general direction. Mr. Higher Up wants to sell and Mr. Higher up chooses where to invest the money. Cheap animators make cheap animations, and cheap AI programmers make dumb AI. For Mr. Up, a game is just like any other product where you get to maximise your profit and minimize your costs. So saying that Mr. Up isn't to blame for a piss-poor AI/story/innovation isn't entirely true, when Mr. Up is the person who wants to market graphics instead of innovation. This is true for most jobs sadly. Even if you're full of excitement about making something great, beyond what is requested, there's so far you can go before you start losing that appetite to create when all your hard work goes unappreciated because no one asked you to do it in the first place.

The fact is that graphics march on because the graphics technology we use in games today has been around for years in the film industry, and it's just easy to adapt to games when computer technology, every so often, catches up with it. It's the easiest upgrade you can possibly do. Smart AI? Much harder; it actually requires some engineering and problem-solving, and you know programmers are lazy or else they wouldn't come up with bogus keywords like [cout] and [int].

I'm not sure what you mean about the cout and int keywords here. The point about movie and game graphics technology isn't as straightforward as you suggest here either. Making CGI for a movie is a whole different story when you can take a month to render a high quality animation as opposed to real-time rendering for a game. The technology that goes into rendering real-time shadows in games that look realistic is very different and much smarter than the methods used in movies where you can actually take the time to trace light sources to produce realistic shadows and lighting effects. It's not so much about technology catching up, or game programmers learning movie secrets, as it is about game programmers figuring out ways to turn offline methods into real-time counterparts.
As for the AI, the stuff that goes into (and comes out of) "real" AI research has (to my knowledge) never come into contact with games. While there are good examples of really smart AI in games, it's usually hacks, shortcuts and very narrow (in the sense that they are of limited function) examples of smart programming. The problem here is that, while game worlds are expanding and becoming much more flexible and open ended, the old AI techniques are falling behind. I actually met a group of AI researchers over the summer at a convention that are trying to get new, flexible AI techniques into computer games. The problem here is that developers see big changes like this as high risk decisions. They don't want to invest time and money in getting their programmers to learn new stuff that might not work out, especially when the existing stuff seems to be working out great.

Better gameplay? Well, that's an easy phrase to throw around, but what exactly does that entail? Did you ever stop to think of what goes into designing a game as opposed to programming it? Actually stopping to consider the balance of mechanics and gameplay elements and variables? Actually ask yourself what the Plasmids do for Bioshock, or what the invention system does for Bioshock, or what role each weapon and each system really has in Devil May Cry, or things like that? Have you ever asked yourself why Diablo is a great game while Too Human is a piss-poor imitation and tried to actually come up with an answer?

Couldn't agree more with this part. It's much easier to appreciate the amount of work that goes into a game with more complex mechanics and a better design overall. I cannot begin to imagine the amount of work that goes into Bioware's games with all the conversation pieces and ways to affect quest outcomes. On the other hand, I can understand 100% how "easy" it is to design a straightforward, linear, FPS with scripted events around every corner. I know this is sort of opposite of what you said, that the design and ideas are more important than the implementation. That understanding how everything you throw into a game world interacts and drives the story is what makes a game great. What I ended up saying is that impressive mechanics under the hood are sometimes not so apparent. (EDIT: I totally lost my train of thought here and sidetracked onto a completely different topic didn't I?)

Well, a lot of game designers don't. There's some good ones, but most of them, I can tell you, are either checking things off on a list or receiving a hand-me-down IP and just trying to do the best they can with what's already been defined as part of the series, all too often under stringent and misguided mandates from their publisher, like "make it more casual-friendly."

Trust me when I say this: you have nothing to blame in a game with weak, shallow, or generic gameplay apart from good old fashioned incompetence and shortsightedness. The typical development lead today is someone who lucked into a job at a game company during an unstable period in the industry, had a cushy job, and kept it. A few of them were even hired based on exactly ONE Unreal Tournament map in their portfolio and nothing else to suggest an interest in designing games. You would be shocked at just how unqualified some of them were when they were hired and still are.

Well, in the field of design anyway. If there's one thing they can do well--better than most who can design--it's coordinate, produce, and ship.

All I can say is "Yup".

ENDNOTE: This great wall of awesome text is not meant as an attack of any sort on your post NickCaligo. I just found some very interesting and informative points I felt like agreeing and disagreeing with, and others I just wanted to expand on. Apologies for the length, but I am feeling very wordy tonight.

 

[Dogstile]

Sure they can, I'm waiting for the day where i can play an fps while actually using my body to move around.

 

[Ericb]

We need more experiments, more unorthodox approaches to design.

There's lots to improve on. To be honest, most games these days are really shallow and there's lots of interactions we just flat-out haven't explored.

Graphically better? Probably.

Technically or artistically better? Hell yes!

Seriously, graphics isn't the only thing in a game.

Photorealistic graphics suck, the shadows look blurry and random, the water looks just like water, the surfaces are unspectacular etc etc. We don't need photorealistic graphics, we need beautiful graphics.

Yes. Stop focussing on the graphics. focus on gameplay, story, AI or pretty anything other than graphics.

I write enough as it is. Just read these quotes. They know what they are talking about.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Snip

Oh, well-met, sir. I stand corrected, informed, and impressed. Many thanks for the reply!

 

[Julianking93]

I guess the next step would be holograms and virtual reality, but other than that it really can't get much better and I'd prefer if games stay as consoles instead of bullshit motion sensors.

 

[achilleas.k]

Snip

Oh, well-met, sir. I stand corrected, informed, and impressed. Many thanks for the reply!

Made some short edits after re-reading it. The second part of your post, about design, is VERY true!

 

[NickCaligo42]

As for the AI, the stuff that goes into (and comes out of) "real" AI research has (to my knowledge) never come into contact with games. While there are good examples of really smart AI in games, it's usually hacks, shortcuts and very narrow (in the sense that they are of limited function) examples of smart programming. The problem here is that, while game worlds are expanding and becoming much more flexible and open ended, the old AI techniques are falling behind. I actually met a group of AI researchers over the summer at a convention that are trying to get new, flexible AI techniques into computer games. The problem here is that developers see big changes like this as high risk decisions. They don't want to invest time and money in getting their programmers to learn new stuff that might not work out, especially when the existing stuff seems to be working out great.

This is actually what I was referring to. The "keywords" I was talking about being typical programming terms, "cout" meaning "C: out" and "int" meaning "integer;" I was trying to say in a really indirect way that programmers are inherently lazy--especially in the gaming world--and will tend not to pursue more advanced methods of doing things when they don't have to. In general simpler AI is better anyway. The hotshot programmer in my old class tried to implement some fairly advanced, dynamic AI in a side-scrolling platformer we made once and it ended up being more annoying than anything else. It would've been better if he'd just used simple enemies like in the Castlevania or Mega Man games, which tend to stand in place or move back and forth in set areas and attack at certain intervals rather than follow the player around or anything of that sort. It's less a matter of what's more advanced and more a matter of what's more believable, fair, and generally comfortable for players to interact with.

While I do realise what your main point is here, there's more to the story than just that. A development team for a game is, not surprisingly, a team. They all follow orders from a dude higher up that sets the standards. If Mr. Higher Up is content with the story provided by Mr. Story Guy, then Mr. Story wont bother making a better one. If Mr. Higher Up is content with enemies that don't run into walls but they're as thick as a brick, Mr. AI Programmer will just code enemies that avoid walls and shoot in your general direction. Mr. Higher Up wants to sell and Mr. Higher up chooses where to invest the money. Cheap animators make cheap animations, and cheap AI programmers make dumb AI. For Mr. Up, a game is just like any other product where you get to maximise your profit and minimize your costs. So saying that Mr. Up isn't to blame for a piss-poor AI/story/innovation isn't entirely true, when Mr. Up is the person who wants to market graphics instead of innovation. This is true for most jobs sadly. Even if you're full of excitement about making something great, beyond what is requested, there's so far you can go before you start losing that appetite to create when all your hard work goes unappreciated because no one asked you to do it in the first place.

Ah, wouldn't it be a perfect world if everyone were self-motivated. I'll agree, though, that bad management and direction is a problem, but I was more trying to suggest that Mr. Artist wasn't to blame for Mr. Up's mistakes, not the other way around. The specific Mr. Up you seem to be poking at sounds more like the typical publisher than any designer I know of, though--a marketing or business person in charge of a whole company rather than a designer with direct responsibility for management over a team. It isn't unimaginable that designers can take that mentality as well--Flash game developers tend to be especially caught up in this rat race--but more often than not I find that designers in mainstream game companies tend to be very proud of even the most marginal innovations as if they're revolutionary developments in the gaming world.

Now I'VE gone a bit off-topic.

Still, you are right. In spite of peoples' enthusiasm in this industry motivation isn't always what it should be, and I can name more than a few undergrad projects where I was in charge of art direction or design and got no feedback from my classmates, or if I did it would be "we're not using that," to which I'd reply, "okay, what do you propose we do, then?" "I don't know, just not that." I'd like to think that in a professional setting the feedback channels would be a bit better-developed than that, but that is at best probably optimistic thinking.

Will add more in edit as I go through your post more thoroughly.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Not until we get to the point where I can play a virtual reality version of Counter-Strike will they reach the point where they cannot get any better. I'm not talking about motion controls that they're doing now because I am not digging the whole Project Natal thing or anything like it because that means I'll have to make myself look like an idiot in front of the screen when I'm trying to play my games. Sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and play Bad Company without having to stand in front of a camera.

 

[Jazzyluv2]

games overall, are improving. But, gamers overall, are declining.

The best games for me are still Quake and starcraft... ive clocked more hours into them in the past year than anything else. Really, single player games have evolved, multiplayer games are at a stand still, not able to pass the oldies (CS, Quake, and Starcraft)

 

[achilleas.k]

The hotshot programmer in my old class tried to implement some fairly advanced, dynamic AI in a side-scrolling platformer we made once and it ended up being more annoying than anything else. It would've been better if he'd just used simple enemies like in the Castlevania or Mega Man games, which tend to stand in place or move back and forth in set areas and attack at certain intervals rather than follow the player around or anything of that sort. It's less a matter of what's more advanced and more a matter of what's more believable, fair, and generally comfortable for players to interact with.

Reminds me of something I did in my robotics class as an undergrad. We had to program a robot to pick up and sort 4 types of rubbish in a small arena. Everyone was trying to get AI techniques in their program while my team just had some really simple rules with a bunch of fail-safes, e.g., simple spot an object, speed towards it for a few seconds, if nothing comes into contact with the sensor inside the claw (the target object missed the claw) just stop and start searching again VS complex spot an object, make sure it's an object, move slowly towards it while making sure the object is still there and you're heading straight towards it, correcting trajectory accordingly etc.
We won second place

Paraphrasing Mr. Einstein: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

 

[Hansonite]

I actually think about this a lot. Like what it would be like to actually be in the game itself and having the world surround you. Intense