When the Pixels Hit the Fan – What comes after graphics?

It’s an inevitability. Graphics have always been integral to the games industry because they allow the player to access the game in an inviting way, all the way up to the stage where they’ve become gratuitous eye candy. There is no doubting that people like graphics since there seems to be this latent part of the human mind that enjoys shiny things. But what will happen when these shiny things just refuse to get shiner? If games become realistic to the point of being indistinguishable from the real world, will people simply grow wearisome of the real world’s dull surface and being wearing cellophane over their eyes to jazz things up? This is where thing seem to hit a hypothetical roadblock, and people will realise that they’ve been praising mere superficiality.

Graphics in games have improved monumentally in the last twenty years. Taking into account something like Doom in contrast with Crysis is truly stunning when you imagine that this progress has been made only in the last 14 years, so it comes as a bit of a shock when you start to think about where this is heading in the next 14. But all things considered, games in their core development cycles will continue in much the same way they have been since that first ambitious attempt back in 1958, maybe they’ll learn a few lessons and become more ambitious, but games will still be games because the majority of the gaming audience really is content with that standards that have been established in contemporary game design, and even occasionally charmed by some leap of innovation that was probably outsold by Guns McBiceps IX… I will not relive this rant again… So in this light, we are now faced with a new series of possibilities that transcend the factor of game design principles. The main topic that arose out of a similar conversation I was having with a friend of mine, quite some time ago that inspired me to write this,(I actually wrote a similar essay that went nowhere about a year ago) is the point of user interactivity.

Now as I remember, we never actually arose to a sound conclusion since most of our ideas where really just products of sleep deprivation and a solid marathon of video games, but we did bring up some valid points that shed some light on the subject.

Put it this way, the industry in tandem with hardware developers, will always continue to develop in order to cater to the ever increasing demands of the public and developers’ alike, which leads to a multitude of interesting questions and scenarios that could unfold when games cannot potentially become any more visually stunning. So developers get confident and start trying new thing in the name of innovation. First and foremost is the Wii. The Wii was massively successful and massively silly and proof that they weren’t too disheartened from such experiments as such as the Powerglove or the IToy. I bought a Wii, I consider myself an open minded person, yet it has been gathering dust on my shelf for two years. Hardware wise, the Wii got off onto a decent start by incorporating quality accelerometer hardware into the handsets, and (far) later introducing genuine motion sensitivity (where the device has spatial awareness), and I admire this ambition of Nintendo’s behalf, but I can’t help but feel that they destroyed the want, and necessity for solely motion controlled games by accompanying it with a mediocre linup of games, with only a handful of gems, to sustain what essentially became a gimmick.

Personally, I think the Wii was nonetheless important because it demonstrated the power of this style of system, coming out of a rigid tradition of sticks and buttons, but in contrast it really only replaced button mashing with stick waggling. Regardless of its place, I think it has paved the way for other attempts at this enhanced control scheme business with such upcoming projects as such as Natal and the Playstation eye. But let’s put present behind us for a while, and think about this situation of gamers, connoisseurs of the finer game.

Personally, I am not that excited about this, maybe it’s because I play games to relax, and exercise to exercise, but I don’t really want to have to sway around to the tune of an eyebrow controlled breakout clone in order to fulfil both at once. I commend innovation, but as somebody who values solid core gameplay mechanics and story over a lot of other components of a game, the prospect of additional complications to this scenario are only peripherally interesting, both to the game designer and gamer sides of me. Now raise your hand if you play games to relax, for a bit of friendly competition, or both? I’m going to assume that is all of you, otherwise I doubt you’d be on the internet, reading about games. Now, keep your hand raised if you think that having to break immersion by engaging in a ridiculous series of bodily manoeuvres would break immersion, and probably would not involve the kinds of games you’d play anyway? First of all, you probably look quite ridiculous raising your arm in front of the computer screen, but nonetheless, I can’t help but agree. I just don’t see myself, or a lot of hardcore gamers removing themselves from the environments they’ve so grown used to in order to enter the domain that is usually reserved for the casual gamers (with the exception of the DS, I’m pretty certain that everybody owns of the those). In fact, while my train of thought is yet to have derailed itself, I’d like to briefly talk about the DS.

The DS was, and still is monstrously successful, and just as awesome, you know why? Because it is a bit like the Pixar of the casual gaming world, they make quality family games instead of tumbling into the unforgivable depths of mediocre party games. In addition to this, the DS has a large group of dedicated developers who are working hard to stretch their ideas of game design rather than adapting to a particularly radical hardware innovation. In fact, the thought just struck me that maybe the DS has such quality games is because it is not inviting the necessity of gimmicky games, rather it allows developers to make their own choices as to how they would like to utilise the hardware.

It seems like the situation has reached an interesting point because the industry definitely has the potential to advance in the fields of enhanced interactivity with the game, but perhaps it will only ever cater to the casual market until they can built convincing virtual reality and try to hide the fact that the government is actually using them to steal our IQ points to developing an even harder impossible quiz with even more references to Shoop DaWoop. Clearly the totalitarian political agendas of the future have their priorities straight.

But in all seriousness, I really do believe that games will continue in much the way they have been forever, one side focusing on the interests of the audience who cares about their games, and the much more casual audience who perhaps wants to extend the experience in a more family environment. I do feel sorry for the people caught between, regardless; we will be there for you.

Miles Newton – The Machination, Creative Director