Gaming Shout Thread

[Maf]

Well, that’s kind of what I mean. The absolute best character action game to ever be made you’ll never see

Except I think that about all kinds of games and stuff. Not even specific franchises but, what will games look like 100 years from now? Not talking about graphics - although those, too.
 

But what will open world games be like. What will platformers be like. What will shooters be like. What will the next genres be? You mean I get to put all this time and investment in to a thing and still never see the best of it. What a rip!

[one-armed dwarf]

In a hundred years time owning a 4090 will be considered a criminal act cause of its impact to the climate as decreed by the 'prevent Britain from going underwater bill', or it will be appropriated by the cyborg bandits to graft onto their skulls so they can mine elon-coin in the post apocalypse

 

Ain't nobody going to be playing Mario, you can count on this

[Maf]

I know you’re joking, but that is exactly my point 

 

What will they be playing? I want to know 

[mfnick]

Well Burnout 3 is 20 years old and no arcade racer has beaten it. I don’t see that ever changing either so doesn’t matter what they’re playing in the future. 

[DANGERMAN]

Maf might be right and gaming will really kick on, but I think the definition of what a game is is well defined within us at this point. That's going to change for the generation coming up, the generation after that, and so on, but we have a specific idea of what games are. Those games are likely behind us, so I think it's probably fair to say that gaming won't get any better for us. 

 

It would be interesting, and possibly depressing, to see what games are in 200 years, but that's assuming society still functions to the point we can have new video games 

[Maf]

I’m kind of baffled by the responses to this thought. It’s like you guys look at games from Pong to now and go well it’s all down hill from here lol 

 

Like video games ever went backwards within the last 50 years. Like America had one crash and then they bounced back better than ever. 

 

It’s like a Karl Pilkington thing “Why bother making new stuff we don’t need it”

 

Also a game definition will change, that’s the exciting part, but it’ll still be games. Even if it’s unrecognisable and people play them with computer chips in their mind in some panaroma VR hologram it’ll still be a game. The idea that games are defined by us right now and it’ll never get better - I just wow. If I felt like that I don’t know why I would bother playing games if it’s never going to be better than what I’ve already seen. I would find things that actually excite me 
 

This post comes off as antagonistic and I don’t mean it to be so sorry. I never expect people to agree with me but I never expected people to be like video games are done close the book lol

[Maryokutai]

That's not really what most of us (or at least I) am saying, it just feels like the current form* of a videogame has matured to the point where improvements are mostly incremental and hamstrung by financial constraints. As a film example, Arrival of a Train (the 'Pong of cinema') eventually lead to Lord of the Rings, but there will never be something like LotR ever again.

 

*it's obviously hard to imagine where it could go from here, because nobody was thinking of VR headsets when they were playing Tetris on the Game Boy in 1889. But looking at the current state of affairs I wonder where all that money would suddenly come from to make games a reality that go beyond just rendering pretty visuals on a 2D plane, which is already pushing the limits of what money and manpower can achieve. You'd probably need to create some post-capitalist utopia where everyone can do whatever they want and food just gets delivered for free at your door three times a day for that to happen.

 

Or maybe nature just designed us in a way to not drive ourselves crazy by thinking about what we miss in the endless times ahead and forgot to put that program into your brain.

[one-armed dwarf]

The actual closest thing to an 'optimistic' answer here is that games are going to be more driven by LLMs. In fact if we're talking about Elder Scrolls, I'm betting that will be the thing with that game, NPCs which are reactive to anything you say to them and procedurally driven content in a similar vein to Daggerfall, and that'll become a more common thing.

 

But it will mean getting used to weird things like NPCs having completely synthesised voices, video games might not have real voice actors. Troy Baker might end up being the last Troy Baker. There's also going to be lots of games where the AI-driven slop is going to be super obvious, maybe that gets fixed in time, who knows. But I predict an erasure of authorship in games, starting with sidequests but I bet it'll bleed into main scenario design as well. That'll probably save money on having to hire writers and quest designers, so uh that could fix the budget issue. Just fire even more people

 

Younger people today really like games with emergent worlds and asynchronous multiplayer, and obviously GAAS. So that as well

[Maf]

21 minutes ago, Maryokutai said:

That's not really what most of us (or at least I) am saying, it just feels like the current form* of a videogame has matured to the point where improvements are mostly incremental and hamstrung by financial constraints. As a film example, Arrival of a Train (the 'Pong of cinema') eventually lead to Lord of the Rings, but there will never be something like LotR ever again.

 

*it's obviously hard to imagine where it could go from here, because nobody was thinking of VR headsets when they were playing Tetris on the Game Boy in 1889. But looking at the current state of affairs I wonder where all that money would suddenly come from to make games a reality that go beyond just rendering pretty visuals on a 2D plane, which is already pushing the limits of what money and manpower can achieve. You'd probably need to create some post-capitalist utopia where everyone can do whatever they want and food just gets delivered for free at your door three times a day for that to happen.

 

Or maybe nature just designed us in a way to not drive ourselves crazy by thinking about what we miss in the endless times ahead and forgot to put that program into your brain.

Financial constraints is a huge problem in every industry right now. What is it called greedflation? I’m not going to pretend to know but I’ve heard that. But specifically in entertainment a lot of it is reconfiguring itself after Covid. There was smooth and now there’s rough. 

 

But then you know the US had a full on video game crash in the 80’s and they still bounced back. The industry makes too much money for a lack of money to kill it or stop it, if that makes sense

 

And in terms of incremental updates to technology, I mean Hellblade 2 came out this week. How good the game is aside, it speaks for itself, I think 

 

Even beyond just the technology, though here’s this

 

 

I watched this some time ago. I’m on my iPad so can’t time stamp but if you go to about 16;30this is also part of it. You just never know what’s around the corner. There’s always amazing shit coming.

[Maryokutai]

Hellblade 2 works as both a pro and against for the argument though. Does it look basically perfect without any 'videogame-y' artefacts like clipping, aliasing, pop-in while also simultaneously being the most visually impressive thing out there? Sure. But why is it a straight, linear corridor with gameplay systems so light that it makes Super Mario Bros. look like an immersive sim? I think if anything it proves that compromises are the driving factor now, not technology. At least until the horror scenario from dwarf's post becomes a reality.

 

Can't listen to the video right now, I'll try to check it out later.

[Maf]

Oh, I’m sorry Mary this isn’t aimed at you but something else I just thought of

 

Another first this week was a console game finally got frame gen. Slightly rough, but when frame gen takes off that could be a tremendous change for consoles, and I think will really close the gap between this huge leap PC’s have made over consoles in the past 5 years or so.

 

A performance related revelation was not what I was thinking about as something I would miss when I’m dead. But the idea of compromise just made me think games consoles are probably on the brink of a shake up once again

 

I respect you all so I’m not trying to sit here and play tennis with you but, man I think games are amazing, they’ve never stopped being amazing, I don’t think they will ever stop being amazing. I just sometimes think it’s a bit sad I won’t see the most amazing ones 

[HandsomeDead]

I think developments in technology will probably result in things that we may not even consider video games.  Like take the Holodeck from Star Trek.  Is that a futuristic video game or is it LARPing with digital assistance?  There's even a sentiment where games like Hellblade 2 isn't sufficiently video game enough so will there be a split, like there is a split in film and TV. 

 

I dunno, I think I'm happier to have been around for the birth of a medium rather than know what'll happen in 200 years.  I don't know if I'd even be into games as much if I didn't go through that and was 20 years younger.  Impossible to say for sure but I wonder.

[DANGERMAN]

It's probably telling, to some extent, that we've had VR (twice), motion controls, voice controls, and none have outlasted a normal game controller or keyboard and mouse. Touch screens are the only other input of note, and that requires specific games to be made for it. 

 

There's something to be said for the universal nature of the control methods we have now, things might not look all that different in 50 years. Maybe if we ever get to the point where games just exist as their own thing outside of a console or pc 

 

That's not to say they never will obvs, just something I thought noteworthy 

[Nag]

Neural links.... 👍

[Maf]

Playstation put out a thing last week about the future of controllers

 

 

Pure fiction. It strikes me as when car companies make concept cars, except this is even more make believe. But I don’t see a reason to think controllers have stopped evolving, even if for now they fit the games

[DANGERMAN]

I don't think they've stopped evolving, that's not what I'm saying, I'm saying there's a reason we still have them all these years later. The PS5 controller is basically a more complicated version of what we had on the NES and Master System

 

Also the PS5 controller costs about what a Master System 2 console cost 

[Maryokutai]

Controllers like these would eliminate any kind of game that requires a certain amount of precision though. Controllers will definitely continue to evolve in some shape or form, but you'll always need a way to give the player tactile feedback. Maybe that'll happen via gloves that send electric pulses to your fingertips at some point, but I find myself looking at the cost factor again and question why someone would do that when they can just manufacture a plastic button.

[Cyberpunk]

On 28/05/2024 at 22:15, DANGERMAN said:

I don't think they've stopped evolving, that's not what I'm saying, I'm saying there's a reason we still have them all these years later. The PS5 controller is basically a more complicated version of what we had on the NES and Master System

 

Also the PS5 controller costs about what a Master System 2 console cost 

 

The thing with game controllers is this. Once the layout is accepted, it becomes a default. Nintendo did this with the NES, and everyone said "that's good enough", so it was copied. Every now and again, someone tries something different. If that different idea works better, it's adopted, and it's usually dropped if it isn't. Even ideas that work might not catch on. My example being two of Nintendo's controller ideas. First, the Gamecube controller. It's regularly heralded as one of the best ever made, and is still used regularly for Super Smash Bros tourneys, but has fell out of use in the mainstream. Second Nintendo example is the Wii-mote. Everyone and their aunty has tried these. Most liked them a lot. Sony and Microsoft tried to jump on the band wagon with motion controls of their own. But the Wii had it's day, and most gamers thought that standing and waving your arms about to play games can get a bit silly. And we all want to play sat down in comfort, disturbing as few people as possible. Great ideas that have fallen by the wayside. 

 

Now the gaming default is a D-Pad, four face buttons, two analogue sticks, two bumpers, and two triggers. And that gets most stuff done in a game. It took a while to get to that point. Nintendo did most of the donkey work with it. BUmper buttons on the SNES. Rumble and an analogue stick on the N64, etc. I'm still primarily a PC gamer, but I use an Xbox style gamepad on every game, with the exception of first person shooters, because only an animal or a heathen plays those without a mouse and keyboard, lol. 

[Cyberpunk]

Just wanted to say that while I was away dealing with mental health, and actual heath stuff, my Linx Gaming tablet died on me. I'd sideloaded Windows 11 onto it, but that wasn't the cause. It's built in hard soldered SSD died, making it a big paper weight essentially. 

 

I sold the gamepad part of it on eBay as a working spare, and ditched the rest. I was quite upset as systems like this aren't being made now, what with the ROG Ally, and the like about. Yes I could run it with a USB hard drive, but I might as well just use a laptop at that point.

[Cyberpunk]

I was wondering if anyone has tried the google Play Game Beta yet? Basically, if you've been invited, and you have Hardware Virtualisation enabled on your PC, you can download and play Google Play Android games on your PC.

 

I know running Android games on a windows PC isn't a new thing, but this works surprisingly well. They've integrated gamepad support on touch screen games, and the few I've tried out of curiosity ran fine. 

 

I'm not a huge fan of mobile gaming, so I won't put a lot of time into this. Microtransactions and pay to win set my teeth on edge, but there's been a few mobile games I've liked over the years.  Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast, and Mighty Doom being two of them.