The Evolution of Video Games
Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 9:57 pm
Video games. Everyone knows about them, many people love them, and a fair portion hate them. Despite these opposing viewpoints, it is readily apparent from the media and the general social structure of current American society that video games are a large aspect of life for many people. Why is it then, that video games seem to have improved in many areas, but fallen in so many others? I know not all of you will agree with me, but here are my views on the video game industry.
I began playing video games at the early age of 4 years old. This was back in the days before Pentiums, Shader model 3.0, and generally all the technical achievements we have today. Back then, in 1994, my father had recently purchased the classic DOS game, Doom II, and I quickly became addicted to the run and gun gameplay, and not suprisingly, became emotionally attatched to the incredible BFG. Back then, games were relatively simple in terms of gameplay, level design, graphics, and most aspects, but they held one of the most crucial design plans of any form of entertainment. They were pure, unadulterated fun. I became fascinated with video games, and continued playing more and more. I received a playstation, which proved to be many hundreds of hours of entertainment due to well produced games like Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, and many others.
Let’s fast-forward to the current generation, and the one that just passed. Video games now are full of high production value, fantastic storylines, generally killer graphics and sound design, and a lot of innovative gameplay. Sounds great on paper right? Well, I will not dispute that there are quite a few extremely high quality games today that are ripe with enjoyment. Why then, do I believe that we have taken some steps backward? The answer is simple…
A lot of games today have lost the charm that made them memorable. Games today fall under many categories, varying anywhere from family-friendly puzzle games, to intensely violent and crowd dividing shooters such as Grand Theft Auto. In this range, you can find many enjoyable games such as Gears of War, Halo, Supreme Commander, and Mass Effect. But then, among these you can find a vast quantity of games that are politely described as “horrid” by even the kindest of critics. While I’m certain that there were these awful games back in the time of Doom, it seems that there is a much larger pool of them availiable to the consumer.
Now, I can’t degrade just those games without going after some of the current “hits” of this generation. Example, let’s take a look at the Halo series, by far one of the most popular trilogy out there. On the surface, Halo is a game with an intriguing storyline, generally intense gameplay, and good graphics. However, once I took a long, hard look into the series, I found a considerable amount of flaws that bring the game into the “generic” catergory. We can start with the storyline.
Looking at it as a basic, here it is: Mankind has achieved first contact with an alien race, and was met with ferocity and the threat of extermination. The battle for survival takes place on foreign installations and eventually on Earth. A singular hero unites the Earth force and wins the war.
When you compare that to many other games on the market, it is very close to what you can find in a bunch of sci-fi shooter fare. That said, Halo does execute the storyline very well, but it’s still generic. Same can be said for the graphics and sound, which despite popular consent, are simply average for their systems. (An Mc that looks like plastic? C’mon Halo 3.)
Now, onto the crucial aspect of any game…gameplay. Halo does often achieve the all-important part of gameplay. It is fun, sometimes its very fun, but it is not consistent in this. The documentaries stated that Halo achieved “30 seconds of fun again and again.” I do not believe the series actually did this. Don’t get me wrong, the epic battles against Scarabs are cemented in my mind, but then there were tragic downturns against generally weak enemies that didn’t know whether to shoot or to hide, which instantly meant their demise. And then we come to the aspect of innovation, which Halo is surely not. Halo is the same basic gameplay so evident in almost all other shooters: Run around, kill lots of guys, have lots of weapons, have melee, get vehicles, the whole deal. Not innovative.
So is the game enjoyable? Yes. Is it memorable? Partially. Is it all it could be? Definitely not. The Halo series is one of the better ones out there, but it is not the holy grail of gaming goodness that so many out there find it to be. Moving on.
Now, in order to do this properly, I’m going to talk about a game that is not even close to Halo in terms of gameplay or style, but achieved what Halo could not. Spyro the Dragon. A kiddie type game? Yes, but it managed to keep the player constantly immersed in the Dragon World. From its wildly imaginative levels (Supercharge was/is amazing) to its stylized and impressive graphics, Spyro was incredible on so many levels. And when it came to gameplay, it managed something that is incredibly difficult: It made extremely repetitive fighting and “coin-collection” fun. Really fun at that. This is mostly in part to the game finding the perfect combination of quality gameplay mechanics placed into incredibly different and well designed levels. Because of this, Spyro the Dragon will always hold a higher place in my heart than…shall we say…Halo.
Another point: What happened to difficulty in video games? And don’t give me that stuff like Halo on Legendary, or Call of Duty on Veteran, that’s not what I’m talking about. Back in the old days, we didn’t have checkpoints, quicksave, nothing. We had large scale levels, a beginning and an end to that level, and that was it. Period. If you died, your ass got sent to the beginning and you had to do it again. Then there were games like Mario, where you had a set amount of lives, and if you lost, you were sent WAY back to try to win. Is that fair? I think so, but not by today’s standards apparently. In fact, some games have gone so far as to eliminate penalty of death completely. For example, Prey, a good game on its own respects, completely destroyed all concept of difficulty by simply having a “revive point” after you were killed and when you regenerated, you were thrown straight back exactly where you were, with no change. That completely put me off the game when I experienced that. The days where in-game deaths actually mean something are virtually gone. Today, you can find innumerable checkpoints, respawn points (fine in multiplayer, not in singleplayer), and the biggest disgrace to difficulty in video games, quicksaving. Yes, the ability to save your progress anywhere and any time you want, whether that’s after every big battle, or after killing a headcrab in Half-Life. While I can see the benefits of quicksave, as it can save frustration in the larger areas of games, it is a feature that has swiftly overtaken gamers as a requirement, and it again pushes difficulty back, meaning that if you die, you certainly can just go right back 30 seconds and try again. I think if we’re going to have something like this, we should eliminate quicksave entirely, and just have checkpoints at the parts of games that make sense (i.e. after a large battle, beginning/completing a puzzle, etc.)
Then of course, there are bosses, or should I say, the lack of. When it came to bosses, the old games had them all. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Final Fantasy, the list goes on. Every single one of those had incredible, epic boss fights that kept your adrenaline going, the excitement on a high scale, and a huge strategical aspect of gameplay where you had to think about what you were doing to win. Now, when you look at bosses today (if you can find a game that has one), it really is a disgrace. I’ll take Crysis as an example for this. The bosses in Crysis are not bosses, period. They are simply large scale battles against the same foes you have been fighting, with either larger numbers, or slightly stronger weapons to give the implication you are fighting a stronger enemy. But no, that’s not how it works. Instead, a gigantic mothership is tossed at you, with cannons the size of airplanes, and it is such a pathetic excuse for an enemy that the minor guys crawling around you prove to be much more of a threat. And of course, to compound this, the strategical element of eliminating a boss such as this has been removed, by simply having you shoot a few specific areas, and then the game decides to grant you a superweapon that takes the boss down in 2 or 3 shots. Back in the days of Half-Life, you had no superweapons. You had to rely on your environment and your own personal skill to get the best of these monstrosities. Some games stay true and have difficult bosses (Shadow of Collosus anyone?), but the vast majority are a gross disappointment (Gears of War).
My last talking point will be about player to player interaction in video games. Back in the days of Counter-Strike (the original), the audience was generally limited to the age the game was intended for, which meant discussion and taticts were civil, occasionally aggravating, and often intelligent. Yes, we have that today, but not on the same level. Recently, most specifically with the advent of Xbox Live, a massive onslaught of 9-15 year olds have swamped the video games originally intended to be played only by ages 17 and older. I am honestly disgusted to see these players online. Let’s halt here, because I’m sure your first thought is: “Listen to the hypocrite. Complaining about young players when he played Doom 2 at the age of 4. Fuck this guy.” Stop right there, because that is not the implication here. Yes, I began playing when I was young, but I always treated the game, and those who I played it with, with respect. I rarely gloated, I always shared, and I was in it for a good time. These days, it has become a spread of the truly elite players who respect the game and the players, to the vast base of pre-pubescant children who think replacing every single word of a sentence with curse words and self gratification is the how to find true enjoyment in a game. Most of us have had the experience in some of our favorite video games where someone else will score a very generic kill on you, and then you have to listen to something like this: “OH MY FUCKING GOD DUDE YOU SUCK SO BAD DID YOU SEE THAT I FUCKING OWNED YOUR FUCKING ASS FUCKTARD!!! GIVE UP BECAUSE I WILL BEAT YOUR ASS DOWN.” And then there are the more subtle approaches: “Hey dudes, let me get the *insert best weapon in the map* because I’m so awesome with it that we’ll totally beat them, k dudes?” and then you end up getting teamkilled because you didn’t listen, grabbed the weapon, and they didn’t like that very much. In all honesty, this behavior is beyond disgrace, it is a sacrilige to those who play games for the right reason…to enjoy them and to enjoy it with others.
Now, like I said in the beginning, I said that not everyone will agree with me. If you’ve gotten to this point, then I have to assume you are either generally interested, or abysmally bored, so lets see if we can strike a balance. I’ll conclude by saying that yes, there are games today that are brilliant feats of engineering, writing, and artistry, and there is a veritable display of pieces of junk floating around as well. The biggest step back the gaming community has taken is the token of making games almost universally acessible. While a good marketing strategy, this has destroyed the luster that the games of old have, by removing the difficult portions, upping the visual flair, and by flooding the multiplayer portions of the game with overindulged, spoiled brats who think there is nothing more entertaining than being the biggest jackass on the field who supposedly has the biggest skill, but is really nothing more than a child who places more importance on getting the most kills than developing the more essential development skills in life, such as teamwork, problem solving, and learning to accept failure.
If you made it this far, I thank you for reading this, and from my own exhaustion, I'm going to bed.
-Jean-Luc Fortier
I began playing video games at the early age of 4 years old. This was back in the days before Pentiums, Shader model 3.0, and generally all the technical achievements we have today. Back then, in 1994, my father had recently purchased the classic DOS game, Doom II, and I quickly became addicted to the run and gun gameplay, and not suprisingly, became emotionally attatched to the incredible BFG. Back then, games were relatively simple in terms of gameplay, level design, graphics, and most aspects, but they held one of the most crucial design plans of any form of entertainment. They were pure, unadulterated fun. I became fascinated with video games, and continued playing more and more. I received a playstation, which proved to be many hundreds of hours of entertainment due to well produced games like Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, and many others.
Let’s fast-forward to the current generation, and the one that just passed. Video games now are full of high production value, fantastic storylines, generally killer graphics and sound design, and a lot of innovative gameplay. Sounds great on paper right? Well, I will not dispute that there are quite a few extremely high quality games today that are ripe with enjoyment. Why then, do I believe that we have taken some steps backward? The answer is simple…
A lot of games today have lost the charm that made them memorable. Games today fall under many categories, varying anywhere from family-friendly puzzle games, to intensely violent and crowd dividing shooters such as Grand Theft Auto. In this range, you can find many enjoyable games such as Gears of War, Halo, Supreme Commander, and Mass Effect. But then, among these you can find a vast quantity of games that are politely described as “horrid” by even the kindest of critics. While I’m certain that there were these awful games back in the time of Doom, it seems that there is a much larger pool of them availiable to the consumer.
Now, I can’t degrade just those games without going after some of the current “hits” of this generation. Example, let’s take a look at the Halo series, by far one of the most popular trilogy out there. On the surface, Halo is a game with an intriguing storyline, generally intense gameplay, and good graphics. However, once I took a long, hard look into the series, I found a considerable amount of flaws that bring the game into the “generic” catergory. We can start with the storyline.
Looking at it as a basic, here it is: Mankind has achieved first contact with an alien race, and was met with ferocity and the threat of extermination. The battle for survival takes place on foreign installations and eventually on Earth. A singular hero unites the Earth force and wins the war.
When you compare that to many other games on the market, it is very close to what you can find in a bunch of sci-fi shooter fare. That said, Halo does execute the storyline very well, but it’s still generic. Same can be said for the graphics and sound, which despite popular consent, are simply average for their systems. (An Mc that looks like plastic? C’mon Halo 3.)
Now, onto the crucial aspect of any game…gameplay. Halo does often achieve the all-important part of gameplay. It is fun, sometimes its very fun, but it is not consistent in this. The documentaries stated that Halo achieved “30 seconds of fun again and again.” I do not believe the series actually did this. Don’t get me wrong, the epic battles against Scarabs are cemented in my mind, but then there were tragic downturns against generally weak enemies that didn’t know whether to shoot or to hide, which instantly meant their demise. And then we come to the aspect of innovation, which Halo is surely not. Halo is the same basic gameplay so evident in almost all other shooters: Run around, kill lots of guys, have lots of weapons, have melee, get vehicles, the whole deal. Not innovative.
So is the game enjoyable? Yes. Is it memorable? Partially. Is it all it could be? Definitely not. The Halo series is one of the better ones out there, but it is not the holy grail of gaming goodness that so many out there find it to be. Moving on.
Now, in order to do this properly, I’m going to talk about a game that is not even close to Halo in terms of gameplay or style, but achieved what Halo could not. Spyro the Dragon. A kiddie type game? Yes, but it managed to keep the player constantly immersed in the Dragon World. From its wildly imaginative levels (Supercharge was/is amazing) to its stylized and impressive graphics, Spyro was incredible on so many levels. And when it came to gameplay, it managed something that is incredibly difficult: It made extremely repetitive fighting and “coin-collection” fun. Really fun at that. This is mostly in part to the game finding the perfect combination of quality gameplay mechanics placed into incredibly different and well designed levels. Because of this, Spyro the Dragon will always hold a higher place in my heart than…shall we say…Halo.
Another point: What happened to difficulty in video games? And don’t give me that stuff like Halo on Legendary, or Call of Duty on Veteran, that’s not what I’m talking about. Back in the old days, we didn’t have checkpoints, quicksave, nothing. We had large scale levels, a beginning and an end to that level, and that was it. Period. If you died, your ass got sent to the beginning and you had to do it again. Then there were games like Mario, where you had a set amount of lives, and if you lost, you were sent WAY back to try to win. Is that fair? I think so, but not by today’s standards apparently. In fact, some games have gone so far as to eliminate penalty of death completely. For example, Prey, a good game on its own respects, completely destroyed all concept of difficulty by simply having a “revive point” after you were killed and when you regenerated, you were thrown straight back exactly where you were, with no change. That completely put me off the game when I experienced that. The days where in-game deaths actually mean something are virtually gone. Today, you can find innumerable checkpoints, respawn points (fine in multiplayer, not in singleplayer), and the biggest disgrace to difficulty in video games, quicksaving. Yes, the ability to save your progress anywhere and any time you want, whether that’s after every big battle, or after killing a headcrab in Half-Life. While I can see the benefits of quicksave, as it can save frustration in the larger areas of games, it is a feature that has swiftly overtaken gamers as a requirement, and it again pushes difficulty back, meaning that if you die, you certainly can just go right back 30 seconds and try again. I think if we’re going to have something like this, we should eliminate quicksave entirely, and just have checkpoints at the parts of games that make sense (i.e. after a large battle, beginning/completing a puzzle, etc.)
Then of course, there are bosses, or should I say, the lack of. When it came to bosses, the old games had them all. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Final Fantasy, the list goes on. Every single one of those had incredible, epic boss fights that kept your adrenaline going, the excitement on a high scale, and a huge strategical aspect of gameplay where you had to think about what you were doing to win. Now, when you look at bosses today (if you can find a game that has one), it really is a disgrace. I’ll take Crysis as an example for this. The bosses in Crysis are not bosses, period. They are simply large scale battles against the same foes you have been fighting, with either larger numbers, or slightly stronger weapons to give the implication you are fighting a stronger enemy. But no, that’s not how it works. Instead, a gigantic mothership is tossed at you, with cannons the size of airplanes, and it is such a pathetic excuse for an enemy that the minor guys crawling around you prove to be much more of a threat. And of course, to compound this, the strategical element of eliminating a boss such as this has been removed, by simply having you shoot a few specific areas, and then the game decides to grant you a superweapon that takes the boss down in 2 or 3 shots. Back in the days of Half-Life, you had no superweapons. You had to rely on your environment and your own personal skill to get the best of these monstrosities. Some games stay true and have difficult bosses (Shadow of Collosus anyone?), but the vast majority are a gross disappointment (Gears of War).
My last talking point will be about player to player interaction in video games. Back in the days of Counter-Strike (the original), the audience was generally limited to the age the game was intended for, which meant discussion and taticts were civil, occasionally aggravating, and often intelligent. Yes, we have that today, but not on the same level. Recently, most specifically with the advent of Xbox Live, a massive onslaught of 9-15 year olds have swamped the video games originally intended to be played only by ages 17 and older. I am honestly disgusted to see these players online. Let’s halt here, because I’m sure your first thought is: “Listen to the hypocrite. Complaining about young players when he played Doom 2 at the age of 4. Fuck this guy.” Stop right there, because that is not the implication here. Yes, I began playing when I was young, but I always treated the game, and those who I played it with, with respect. I rarely gloated, I always shared, and I was in it for a good time. These days, it has become a spread of the truly elite players who respect the game and the players, to the vast base of pre-pubescant children who think replacing every single word of a sentence with curse words and self gratification is the how to find true enjoyment in a game. Most of us have had the experience in some of our favorite video games where someone else will score a very generic kill on you, and then you have to listen to something like this: “OH MY FUCKING GOD DUDE YOU SUCK SO BAD DID YOU SEE THAT I FUCKING OWNED YOUR FUCKING ASS FUCKTARD!!! GIVE UP BECAUSE I WILL BEAT YOUR ASS DOWN.” And then there are the more subtle approaches: “Hey dudes, let me get the *insert best weapon in the map* because I’m so awesome with it that we’ll totally beat them, k dudes?” and then you end up getting teamkilled because you didn’t listen, grabbed the weapon, and they didn’t like that very much. In all honesty, this behavior is beyond disgrace, it is a sacrilige to those who play games for the right reason…to enjoy them and to enjoy it with others.
Now, like I said in the beginning, I said that not everyone will agree with me. If you’ve gotten to this point, then I have to assume you are either generally interested, or abysmally bored, so lets see if we can strike a balance. I’ll conclude by saying that yes, there are games today that are brilliant feats of engineering, writing, and artistry, and there is a veritable display of pieces of junk floating around as well. The biggest step back the gaming community has taken is the token of making games almost universally acessible. While a good marketing strategy, this has destroyed the luster that the games of old have, by removing the difficult portions, upping the visual flair, and by flooding the multiplayer portions of the game with overindulged, spoiled brats who think there is nothing more entertaining than being the biggest jackass on the field who supposedly has the biggest skill, but is really nothing more than a child who places more importance on getting the most kills than developing the more essential development skills in life, such as teamwork, problem solving, and learning to accept failure.
If you made it this far, I thank you for reading this, and from my own exhaustion, I'm going to bed.
-Jean-Luc Fortier
