The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything! In video games.

[Anarchemitis]

42!

Seriously, where do you think the video game industry is headed next? I'm not talking about Virtual Reality. The direction other than profits in the last 10 years have mostly been pushing the envelope of standards in processing and graphics. Let's imagine that [hypothetically] right now is the pinnacle of graphics and computer processing demands:
Where do we go from here?

 

[sammyfreak]

I want to se much more customisable storylines, not just in the Bioware "choose between storypath A or B" but a much more interesting string of events.

Lets say you are Fantasy Hero X fighting against enemy Y in city Z.

You charge into a building that you plan to use to flank the enemy, in this building find a scared man holding a sword. What do you do? He is probably is defending his family and seems very afraid of you. Do you ignore him and risk getting attacked? Do you just simply push him to the ground? Or do you kill him? Maybe later in the game his kids will come seeking revenge or his neighbour might hear that you spared him and help you later on.

All your choices will have short term effect, but they might also affect the long run, even the little ones. The main problem with this idea is that is takes massive amounts of writing and voices acting. Creating the code for it wouldn?t be to hard, just take the current moral choice systems and add a few layers. No, the limit for this is time and money witch is something the videogame industry is getting more and more of.

All the new things that technology adds to gaming cant make the developers forget what made games good in the first hand. Games like Crysis quickly get forgotten even if they had the best graphics and physics at the time if their story, atmosphere and general "fun" level aren?t high.

 

[Brian Name]

Advertising in games, both online and offline, becoming a major source of income for the industry. We've started to see this already, yeah, but its the one thing I'm pretty sure will become commonplace in videogames in the future.

 

[PurpleRain]

I want to say three words: Half Life 3.

 

[sammyfreak]

I want to say three words: Half Life 3.

I believe Valve promissed that episode three will be the last game in the franchise.

Besides, Valve is more then capable to make a fresher and possibly better game series.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Lets say you are Fantasy Hero X fighting against enemy Y in city Z.

You charge into a building that you plan to use to flank the enemy, in this building find a scared man holding a sword. What do you do? He is probably is defending his family and seems very afraid of you. Do you ignore him and risk getting attacked? Do you just simply push him to the ground? Or do you kill him? Maybe later in the game his kids will come seeking revenge or his neighbour might hear that you spared him and help you later on.

You are Peter Molyneux, and I claim my £5.

The problem with this is that it requires the game to track a truly immense number of variables and event flags, and you'll eventually find that they start conflicting, and it's probably quite hard to make them pay off in anything resembling a dynamic fasion without feeling very artificial. It's all very well saying "So this guy's kids come to seek revenge", but where and when do they do it? Players will generally be out and about doing stuff, and usually in places where they're only surviving because of their vast power disparity with the rest of the world.

And it takes more hardware power than you'd expect. This kind of thing was what Fable was imagined as, but the hardware simply wasn't up to it.

 

[The Potato Lord]

Self programming games......if only.

 

[sammyfreak]

Lets say you are Fantasy Hero X fighting against enemy Y in city Z.

You charge into a building that you plan to use to flank the enemy, in this building find a scared man holding a sword. What do you do? He is probably is defending his family and seems very afraid of you. Do you ignore him and risk getting attacked? Do you just simply push him to the ground? Or do you kill him? Maybe later in the game his kids will come seeking revenge or his neighbour might hear that you spared him and help you later on.

You are Peter Molyneux, and I claim my £5.

The problem with this is that it requires the game to track a truly immense number of variables and event flags, and you'll eventually find that they start conflicting, and it's probably quite hard to make them pay off in anything resembling a dynamic fasion without feeling very artificial. It's all very well saying "So this guy's kids come to seek revenge", but where and when do they do it? Players will generally be out and about doing stuff, and usually in places where they're only surviving because of their vast power disparity with the rest of the world.

And it takes more hardware power than you'd expect. This kind of thing was what Fable was imagined as, but the hardware simply wasn't up to it.

I vaugely noted that until now it hasent been possible for some of those but this time around we have a few large and talented gaming companies that can invest the time and money into making these games. Blizzard for example could spend the ridiculus amount of money needed to produce games like this. I guess the problem would be that sutch games dont have the biggest market and therefor might be a poor investment.

The ultimate game for me would be a "perfect Fable", but just since the first game dident deliver because of time/technology/design flaws doesnt mean that its impossible to succed. But both innovation and improvement to old concepts is positive for the industry as a whole. Besides, could we have imagined the pyhsics of HL:2 and Crysis 8 years ago?

Perhaps my dream-game vision isent as close to reality as i would hope, but i do hope that in a few years games with sutch a authentic feel to them will start popping up.

 

[Larenxis]

I was explaining to a friend of mine how multi-player Portal would work. It was pretty great.

I think people like using new hardware. Perhaps a DDR mat combined with motion sensors for you hands would be popular?

 

[John Galt]

Perhaps a video game that had a sentient AI? It'd be nice having a game where characters developed in a more human fashion, not just because of basic choices in the game and whatnot.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Dear John Galt: computers have yet to reach autonomy. Do you think the first application of which will be video games? I think not. For now we'll have to rely on NPC scripting and such. Futhermore, If we actually had AI players capable of human intelligence, almost all the challenge would be taken out of online multiplayer and a game feature would die.

 

[sammyfreak]

Besides, both the Matrix and Mass Effect has tought us the dangers of AI!

 

[SpiderLotus]

If we had intelligent AI in the computer, than the game would be "Defend Your Apartment From Sentient Doom Box: Now in 3-D"


Also, I agree with Larenxis. Look up Para Para Paradise. It's a hand motion sensing game that involves dancing to the most cancerously perky J-pop songs ever. Never really got over the soundtrack but the technology is there.
Someone needs to make a custom 100 panel DDR pad and get to programming "Ballroom Dance Dance Revolution"

 

[Larenxis]

Someone needs to make a custom 100 panel DDR pad and get to programming "Ballroom Dance Dance Revolution"

You are godly, you know that?

 

[sammyfreak]

Someone needs to make a custom 100 panel DDR pad and get to programming "Ballroom Dance Dance Revolution"

Someone find a golden chariot for this man.

 

[Necrohydra]

Someone needs to make a custom 100 panel DDR pad and get to programming "Ballroom Dance Dance Revolution"

Would these panels be as large ast traditional DDR pads, or smaller? They'd have to be able to be broken apart, otherwise you'd never be able to get it out of a room. And the sensitivity; you wouldn't want to have to stop on each pad to get it sensed....

...why am I thinking about this seriously?

 

[Narcunknown]

I want to se much more customisable storylines, not just in the Bioware "choose between storypath A or B" but a much more interesting string of events.

Lets say you are Fantasy Hero X fighting against enemy Y in city Z.

You charge into a building that you plan to use to flank the enemy, in this building find a scared man holding a sword. What do you do? He is probably is defending his family and seems very afraid of you. Do you ignore him and risk getting attacked? Do you just simply push him to the ground? Or do you kill him? Maybe later in the game his kids will come seeking revenge or his neighbour might hear that you spared him and help you later on.

All your choices will have short term effect, but they might also affect the long run, even the little ones. The main problem with this idea is that is takes massive amounts of writing and voices acting. Creating the code for it wouldn?t be to hard, just take the current moral choice systems and add a few layers. No, the limit for this is time and money witch is something the videogame industry is getting more and more of.

All the new things that technology adds to gaming cant make the developers forget what made games good in the first hand. Games like Crysis quickly get forgotten even if they had the best graphics and physics at the time if their story, atmosphere and general "fun" level aren?t high.

like chrono trigger 'cept much more violant

 

[Scobie]

DELETED