THE FUTURE OF GAMES

emil.y otm.

i get that there has to be a pool of experimental maverick developers out there making mind-bending little games for a relatively small audience.

but yes, there does seem to be a sense of risk aversion with the bigger developers. gamers are likely to blame too: Many were very quick to dismiss Death Stranding as a boring "walking simulator" and go back to COD or what have you.

As the "better" games get top-notch writing, top-notch graphics, top notch scores and voice acting, they become closer and closer to actual movies, yet the gameplay itself doesn't seem to be evolving at the same pace.

YES. This. It's great that these qualitative steps are being taken, and I'm not saying I want big-budget experimental games, but we should be at a stage where games are more than linear playable movies.

and replicating quotidian acts (like brushing your teeth, say) seems more novelty or distraction than a particular advance

100. These are novel, but they add nothing to the game. They certainly don't make it more realistic or enjoyable. There's a thing in RDR2 where you carry out chores around the campsite (literally moving bails of hay from one place to another) which is neither fun nor challenging. You get a bit of stat increase, but what's the point?

That said, I liked how you could go for a crap in Death Stranding and how they turned your waste into piss missiles.

If there were to be a big development, I think there's a lot to be done with time, for example. You see it on a relatively modest scale already, and maybe there is more than that out there, but I like the idea of time progressing within a game even when you're not playing it - NPCs dying/disappearing, plants growing, things being built, and so on. Just the idea that every time you return to the game, even if it is telling a story, or "on rails" or solving a puzzle or whatever, the game you're playing is fundamentally different every time you play it. Not in a random rogue-like sense but in an AI-directed generative-with-purpose sense. Like, I'm almost done the second "Ori." What if, in the week or so between plays, a new character has popped up somewhere, or a new roadblock has developed, or some other challenging element now needs to be addressed before I reach the end? That seems to be the sort of thing more powerful machines and chips could bring about. Again, assuming it doesn't exist already.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, February 1, 2021 2:26 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think Twitch & YouTube & other streaming platforms will have a more pronounced influence on video games in the short-term future

xpost It would also encourage "events" and large-scale real-time interaction, a la, I dunno, what they apparently do or have done in "Fortnite" and other games like that? I've blown a couple of minds relaying that "Red Dead Redemption 2" was apparently the highest grossing weekend entertainment release of all time, but of course, the average person doesn't know that as well as they know what, say, the number one movie in the world is. But if RDR2 is the starting point - that is to say, a massive release nonetheless and counterintuitively not quite as well known as the rest of consumed pop culture (music, movies, etc.) - imagine the incentives for a studio developing and fostering a huge, even bigger constantly changing game community. Like a blockbuster movie that just keeps ... blockbusting. Not that the game play would necessarily be any better, but tif the quality stayed high, like several seasons of an esteemed TV series, the world of that gameplay could be more interesting and immersive than ever before, especially as more and more people (potentially) are drawn to it as a monocultural event (which, covid and quarantines aside, are few and far between these days). And again, maybe something this exists already?

Of course, knowing the world we live in it would inevitably become an ungovernable dystopian cesspool like everything else.

xp its definitely already had a huge impact on what sorts of multiplayer games publishers are funding the past few years

xps to DL: gamers are risk averse too, because games cost money, and typically a lot more than a movie ticket/album/modest concert ticket. It's possible that the economics of game pass and the like could help foster innovation as it becomes possible to cheaply sample lots of different experiences.

I for sure would definitely try a lot more weird/niche games that way