“If you only knew what I’ve seen with your eyes.”
The future: flying cars, clear plastic raincoats, Japanese
stuff everywhere, reploids gouging out peoples’ eyes and dreaming of electric
sheep, midgets. We’ve seen many visions of the future through books and movies
and none of those really feature any of what video games will be like in those
far off, dreamy days (unless maybe you count the virtual sex headset of
Demolition Man )…
I’m fresh off of the demo of Devil May Cry 4 I downloaded
into my PS3. First off, let me say that it’s pretty awesome. There’s nothing
new in the game play I hadn’t experienced in the previous DMC installments.
Grant you it’s the first level, but still, nothin’ new. Regardless, the visual
are eye-popping, and if you dug the play experience of the other DMC games,
you’d damn well better get this one.
That said; it certainly made me think. I only own one game
on the PS3…at least, only one on a disc. I have two games I downloaded onto the
system from Sony’s network. Now I grant you that by today’s standards, those
two games are pretty simple, but how long did it take to install that first
level of Devil May Cry? Maybe an hour, and during that time, I could play other
games while it was loading up the content. Online games, that seems to be the
direction of the future.
This generation of game consoles is incredibly exciting, leaps
and bounds beyond its predecessor in both power and in scope. The successes of
the current platforms will re-shape the game industry in a manner that no other
generation has. You have the Wii rockin’ balls with its motion sensitive play
action, which will undoubtedly be incorporated into every system hereafter to
some degree. For the first time since the Atari, games are more than just
staring at the screen, solitary, mashing buttons. Outside of Duckhunt and DDR,
the last 30 years of games have boiled down to “I’m hitting the X button over
and over again.” The PS3 and 360 will decide the formatting and progression of
power the home consoles will follow in future releases, more premium
entertainment centers than simple game devices.
One thing all three of these systems have in common is
online capability. It’s a must. And after playing a powerful download like
Devil May Cry 4’s demo, I got to thinking, who’s to say I won’t be able to just
download the whole thing in a few years? Big as the game is, with standardized
drivers on the PS3 and 360, you could probably pull the entire program into
your system from the developer’s servers in a matter of hours over a high speed
connection. High power, high tech games available at the press of a button.
It seems to make sense. MIT did a study about video game
myths back in 2004 and found that 90% of boys and 40% of girls are ‘gamers’ or
play on a regular basis. The dark horse in all of this, and the group that
makes The Sims one of the most played game franchises in the US,
is housewives. AOL’s data , also from 2004 suggests that women play online games
50% more often than men. Women are bridging into gaming because they enjoy the
social environment of online play. They can hit their home PC, crack open Sims
or some Mahjong, and talk to new and interesting people while they play. That
very same social appeal is what’s moved World of Warcraft up to their recent 10
Million subscriber mark.
So do I think the future of games is nothing but a series of
MMORPG’s? Of course not, though with the trend towards immersive games such as
WoW and Grand Theft Auto, it seems obvious that that format of game will always
be a staple. But I do think that with the increasing desire for social
interaction while playing endless hours of video games, and the desire of
developers to market towards females as opposed to the already saturated male
market, we’re going to see a lot more 
playable, multiplayer games start storming the market, both on PC and on
console. Years ago, this wouldn’t be feasible marketing. We just wouldn’t have
had the storage space or power available on a home system to make a ‘next gen’
level game into a downloadable package. But after playing the demo today, I’m
thinking that now we do.
Could this be the future? Female oriented, downloadable, motion capture games? God I hope so.
So, where does everyone think the next generation is going?
It could be that in seven years time, we’ve got new systems out, they all utilize
motion control, and you don’t even have to purchase discs to play the games (You
could probably find some on a limited basis, if you lived in the boonies and
still had dial-up or something.) Plug in the system, suck games onto it
wirelessly, and go. You’d need no more than a TV and some electricity. And who
knows, maybe one of these days that aspect will be gone too, and we’ll just
beam the damn things into your mind.
So maybe some people don’t see the same future that I do.
But that’s the thing: these new systems open up a
even the PSX’s addition of 3-D couldn’t conjure. For 30 years, it’s been a
relatively simple joy, gaming. But now it seems like the flood gates are wide
open. What do you want to see?
"You mean you have to use your hands? This game is lame."
