When the next great jump in capability hits, what could games do they can't now?

[Golgatha]

Destructible environments with realistic physics and better AI. Graphics will look better, but the art styles will be very similar to present day. I think we'll have 4k resolution displays and probably 3D without glasses 15 years from now as well.

I want a 3D Rampage type game where you can take your avatar on a stroll through New York and destroy at will with realistic physics and a proper AI response to the devastation.

 

[Texashiker]

This

Gaming is going backwards,.

The next great leap in gaming will mean going back to the time when games did not suck so bad.

Just about every game released in the past 6 - 8 months has recieved terrible reviews. Look at homefront, brink and duke nukem forever as examples.

There used to be a time (mid - late 1990s), when developers produced a quality game back-to-back. Look at diablo, diablo II, C&C, C&C red alert, quake, doom, half-life,,,,, as examples.

If developers want to move forward, first they are going to have to go backwards. Instead of releasing games with 5 hours playing time, developers need to make games with 30, 40 or even 100 hours playing time.

Today, its like companies want to throw crap to the consumer and expect us to buy it.

How about making a quality product, and selling it for a reasonable price.

 

[gorcorps]

They'll keep chipping away at lighting and textures, but at some point they need to really focus on physics and proper destructible environments. Decent AI would be nice too, but that will be gradual.

 

[zinfamous]

the next big jump would be a regression: compromising stupid and pointless eye candy for good, honest story telling and character development.

really, though--what games like LA Noire, Sims, to some degree Spore, and other such games are striving to do--create high-end AI and interactive elements and worlds that change and evolve based on your actions--a persistent, multi-user universe that truly strives to emulate personal interaction as closely as possible.

it's obvious that more and more gamers and texters and "social media" addicts really don't want to socialize with real people, anyway. it's the next big thing.

 

[reallyscrued]

I disagree with a lot of this "the majority of games are shitty now-a-days" argument. I think the feelings that gamers are having are due to the paradox of choice.

I think it's interesting to note that the average teenage gamer doesn't give two shits about 90s gaming, even after they've tried the golden titles. You might think that's very predictable, but I posit that it shouldn't be so. That same average teenage gamer will almost always readily agree that movies of the previous decade and the one before that were of higher caliber than the majority of what Hollywood produces now, but the same can't be said for games in their opinion. Obviously I'm generalizing and if anyone disagrees with me, they are entitled to their opinion and I won't try very hard to change it, this is all very subjective.

In the end, I suggest we all take our rose colored glasses off. I truly believe nostalgia clouds a lot of people's minds when it comes to topics like this. Let me give you an example. I just started playing The Witcher 2 (I haven't dipped my feet into the first). I immediately found it annoying to play for a single reason, when you slay an enemy, you aren't given the option to loot their weapon, armor, whatever else. I thought The Witcher 2 would be a re-imaging of this game I used to love called "Darkstone", basically a Diablo (2) clone, where it was all hack and slash and loot for cash. I popped in Darkstone to cure my sudden itch to play it, and I realized something after an hour...I hated the looting system. I always had to choose to leave things behind or I'd find myself sitting there with my inventory open for long periods of time trying to figure out which item I'd want to keep. I never realized how annoying "that" was, but back then, I had nothing else to play, I paid for that game as a teen with my own money, so I learned to like it.

I think gamers of the 90s have just assumed that games would steadily be more and more fun as graphics and complexity increased. That's just setting yourself up for disappointment. As visual capabilities and complexity increases, there are just more and more aspects of the game fans can point out they don't like. Everyone's a critic.

What will games be able to do when the next big jump hits? Ray-tracing, smooth frame rates, six different kinds of sampling eliminating jagged lines and blurry textures, stable online infrastructure, motion controls and voice commands.

But you won't like it. Because you will expect it to be 'more fun' than booting up your machine to run your floppy of Doom95. It won't be.

 

[zinfamous]

I disagree with a lot of this "the majority of games are shitty now-a-days" argument. I think the feelings that gamers are having are due to the paradox of choice.

I think it's interesting to note that the average teenage gamer doesn't give two shits about 90s gaming, even after they've tried the golden titles. You might think that's very predictable, but I posit that it shouldn't be so. That same average teenage gamer will almost always readily agree that movies of the previous decade and the one before that were of higher caliber than the majority of what Hollywood produces now, but the same can't be said for games in their opinion. Obviously I'm generalizing and if anyone disagrees with me, they are entitled to their opinion and I won't try very hard to change it, this is all very subjective.

In the end, I suggest we all take our rose colored glasses off. I truly believe nostalgia clouds a lot of people's minds when it comes to topics like this. Let me give you an example. I just started playing The Witcher 2 (I haven't dipped my feet into the first). I immediately found it annoying to play for a single reason, when you slay an enemy, you aren't given the option to loot their weapon, armor, whatever else. I thought The Witcher 2 would be a re-imaging of this game I used to love called "Darkstone", basically a Diablo (2) clone, where it was all hack and slash and loot for cash. I popped in Darkstone to cure my sudden itch to play it, and I realized something after an hour...I hated the looting system. I always had to choose to leave things behind or I'd find myself sitting there with my inventory open for long periods of time trying to figure out which item I'd want to keep. I never realized how annoying "that" was, but back then, I had nothing else to play, I paid for that game as a teen with my own money, so I learned to like it.

I think gamers of the 90s have just assumed that games would steadily be more and more fun as graphics and complexity increased. That's just setting yourself up for disappointment. As visual capabilities and complexity increases, there are just more and more aspects of the game fans can point out they don't like. Everyone's a critic.

What will games be able to do when the next big jump hits? Ray-tracing, smooth frame rates, six different kinds of sampling eliminating jagged lines and blurry textures, stable online infrastructure, motion controls and voice commands.

But you won't like it. Because you will expect it to be 'more fun' than booting up your machine to run your floppy of Doom95. It won't be.

you're talking about graphic and mechanic improvements. who gives a shit? tweaking little stupid details for graphics is meaningless. complete, fucking, meaningless. maybe you work for EA?

nothing evolutionary or revolutionary in this suggestion.

how about real concepts?

a game that does...something else?


let's start simple and ridiculous, just so you understand the topic: a game that fellates you.

think about it.

:hmm:

 

[skace]

Reallyscrued, totally wrong. Most movie watchers enjoy what they grew up on, exactly the same as music listeners and gamers. You can find examples from all 3 categories that go both ways however. However, neither music nor movies have changed as quickly as games, which explains why it is that much more difficult to go backwards.

Having said that, I've seen plenty of threads where someone suggested planescape torment or another classic to someone who had never played it and that person ended up loving the shit out of it. On the other side of things, it SHOULD be difficult to go back to Diablo 2 and Quake. Quake, for instance, is mainly a multiplayer game that barely has a community anymore. Certainly tough to play a multiplayer game by yourself or only with people from brazil. In addition, those that remain make it difficult for newcomers due to skill disparity. And Diablo2 is a fixed resolution game that barely looks viewable on modern monitors.

Things like fixed resolution 2D games really hurt these days, which is funny because back in the day Diablo 2 used to be demo'd on full size television sets at best buy and it looked better than it does on lcds these days. Go figure.

 

[Texashiker]

I disagree with a lot of this "the majority of games are shitty now-a-days" argument. I think the feelings that gamers are having are due to the paradox of choice.

In the past 5 years, I can only think of a few games that have brought something new to the table.

Fallout 3, fallout new vegas, team fortress 2, fortress forever and the left 4 dead series. Those are the only games that really stand out as being something new and different. I picked up fallout new vegas a week ago and am really liking it.

All of the call of duty series are the same thing over and over.

Instead of getting new ideas out to the public, developers are recycling stuff. Take a look at brink and homefront, just like the call of duty series.

To me, a good game should bring something new to the table. And very few developers are making anything "new" these days.

 

[wuliheron]

The next great leap will be games that directly stimulate the pleasure centers of your brain. No crude wires or anything, just a simple dunce cap you wear while playing. Score and the game rewards you. Of course, some will opt for games like pong where they can stimulate themselves nonstop, while others will choose more sporadic stimulation and the marketers will carefully collect and analyze all the data and pass it on to the government.

 

[darkxshade]

What I'm hoping for is a real time MMOFPS where there are no limits to the number of simultaneous players on either side. In this MMO, instead of limitations of 32v32 or whatever, it would be hundreds to thousands of players on each side. Man, how epic would it be to experience D-day and WWII in such a scale.

 

[Texashiker]

What I'm hoping for is a real time MMOFPS where there are no limits to the number of simultaneous players on either side. In this MMO, instead of limitations of 32v32 or whatever, it would be hundreds to thousands of players on each side. Man, how epic would it be to experience D-day and WWII in such a scale.

The player limitation is a limitation of the program and the server hardware.

These are just rough numbers used as an example.

Lets say that each player slots takes up 100 megs of memory on the server. To have a 32 player machine, your going to need at least 4 gigs of memory on the server - 3.2 gigs for the players and 800 megs for the server OS.

If the hosting provider has servers with 12 gigs of memory, they can lease out 3 game servers on 1 physical machine. Now lets say that the physical server cost $2,000.

To get past the 32 player limit, the hosting provider would have to run clusters of servers with load balancing - some people might call this a cloud.

Part of the issue is money, what company wants to dedicate hundreds of servers so that people can play with thousands of people at the same time? In the end the cost has to be passed down to the consumer. If you want to play a game that can host 1,000 people, the provider is going to need to have servers that handle the load.

Back in the late 1990s when memory was expensive, there were lots of articles posted about setting up quake and quake II servers. Some of the articles talked about how how much memory the players took up on the server, cpu recommendations, and how to squeeze the most out of the servers. Today, instead of setting up your own server, you lease a slot on a server from somewhere like gameservers.com.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

We can already have thousands of players per side. World War 2 Online does that and I suspect the Planetside Next, Tribes Universe, Trion Worlds Defiance, Dust 514 and lots of others will do it too. The limitation is that you can't have thousands of players in the same small area. Nor would you really want to. The appeal of a MMOFPS is not that you get thousands of players in the same little city fighting(though a few hundred would be nice), but it's the fact that you have near-complete freedom on where and how to attack, including sitting out in the middle of nowhere miles from the nearest city in your jet scanning for enemies. I say near complete because even if you can have a couple hundred in the same city area fighting, the game will still need to discourage more and more people piling in.

 

[paperfist]

This



The next great leap in gaming will mean going back to the time when games did not suck so bad.

Just about every game released in the past 6 - 8 months has recieved terrible reviews. Look at homefront, brink and duke nukem forever as examples.

There used to be a time (mid - late 1990s), when developers produced a quality game back-to-back. Look at diablo, diablo II, C&C, C&C red alert, quake, doom, half-life,,,,, as examples.

If developers want to move forward, first they are going to have to go backwards. Instead of releasing games with 5 hours playing time, developers need to make games with 30, 40 or even 100 hours playing time.

Today, its like companies want to throw crap to the consumer and expect us to buy it.

How about making a quality product, and selling it for a reasonable price.

That's what I'm for, something with some meat in it, something new in it. Graphics are at the point where they are pretty appealing, but content is down, down, down. Heck even the DLC is subpar.

I think companies are trying to dumb games down so we'll either get accustom to it or because the audience is becoming 'dumber' and by that I don't mean stupid, they just don't want something complex.

 

[paperfist]

That would be a good argument, except if a developer ever sacrificed graphical quality to develop a 'good' storyline, a whole new, different bunch of people will probably be up in arms about how PC gaming is dying and progress is slowing, how it 'obviously' shows the effect of consolification, and how their graphics cards will last forever because nobody seems to improve graphics quality anymore. The only difference between this guy and all these other people is that he's complaining about the gameplay rather than the graphics.

That's the point though, would you honestly be disappointing if the next CoD looked like the last? So to maniacalpha1-1 point you take that base of graphics and add something new to the table, give us some content. We've gone from SP that lastest at least 15 hours to 3-5. We've gone from BFG guns to uh BFG guns

So devs don't need to throw a ton of gold bars at graphics so they should be focusing on story lines, but instead they focus on dumification. "Hey, lets take out player servers, they won't miss that", "How about no SDKs, then they can't make mods so we can sell our DLC", etc.

I bet half the people on this board would pay $60 in a heart beat to play Medal of Honor:Allied Assault again if they fixed the bugs, kept the game play and tweaked the graphics again. It would outsell the new Medal of Honor game. You can see it with the new Civ V. Half hate it even though it's got DX11 graphics above what Civ IV had. The problem with the game is they messed with mechanics and game play so much that it's now too simplified to be enjoyable and engaging. So Firaxis put the bulk of their money in a gaming engine and didn't bother to flesh out the rest of the game.

 

[Texashiker]

I think companies are trying to dumb games down

I think its the developers that are getting dumber.

Kids that were raised on super nintendo side scrollers are now grown and getting jobs in game development. The problem is, most gamers today do not want side scrollers. Its as if the developers have lost their imagination.

Look at what id software did with doom. And now look at brink, homefront and duke nukem forever. Its as if developers can not come up with an original idea in the past 10 years.

Take 2 groups of developers:

Group A was raised watching sci-fi movies from the 1960s and 1970s.

Group B was raised on console side stroller games.

Which group do you think will be able to come up with the better idea for games?

I think people in their 30s and 40s will have better ideas then some 20 year old right out of college.

 

[reallyscrued]

you're talking about graphic and mechanic improvements. who gives a shit? tweaking little stupid details for graphics is meaningless. complete, fucking, meaningless. maybe you work for EA?

nothing evolutionary or revolutionary in this suggestion.

how about real concepts?

a game that does...something else?


let's start simple and ridiculous, just so you understand the topic: a game that fellates you.

think about it.

:hmm:

Reallyscrued, totally wrong. Most movie watchers enjoy what they grew up on, exactly the same as music listeners and gamers. You can find examples from all 3 categories that go both ways however. However, neither music nor movies have changed as quickly as games, which explains why it is that much more difficult to go backwards.

Having said that, I've seen plenty of threads where someone suggested planescape torment or another classic to someone who had never played it and that person ended up loving the shit out of it. On the other side of things, it SHOULD be difficult to go back to Diablo 2 and Quake. Quake, for instance, is mainly a multiplayer game that barely has a community anymore. Certainly tough to play a multiplayer game by yourself or only with people from brazil. In addition, those that remain make it difficult for newcomers due to skill disparity. And Diablo2 is a fixed resolution game that barely looks viewable on modern monitors.

Things like fixed resolution 2D games really hurt these days, which is funny because back in the day Diablo 2 used to be demo'd on full size television sets at best buy and it looked better than it does on lcds these days. Go figure.

Like I said in my second paragraph, I knew I was going to get flak for that post and I won't argue my point a great deal because it will turn into a 'no it isnt/yes it is!' type argument. I just wanted to throw out there that people who request games to be fellating them (not sure if slightly serious, zinfamous) have unrealistic expectations from the second that they load the game. Technology hasn't progressed enough to give you a pole polishing during a video game, although I hear Japan's the place to be if you want to be the first to try out such a thing.

 

[Cerb]

Yeah. Of course. How could I have missed the way we had games that looked this good, or this good, or even this good in the 90s? Do you know why I can? Because this is what games looked like in the 90s. And this, and this.

Only one of those current screenshots looks even OK. Soften and DoF FTL.

I want things that look good, and attempts at realism don't. The most detail in the universe won't make up for blank spaces (seriously, cover everything that isn't ground with outward-facing polys on all sides, people!), texture and model misalignment (check out the Crysis DX11 patch shots), NPCs that move like puppets, the all-too-common neck seems, badly-stretching skin, and idiocy like DoF. Game devs need to embrace aesthetics more abstractly, and screw realism.

Also, physics and AI. We've had learning training bots for awhile, so why not build on that? Give the AIs reasonably simple decision trees, but allow learning to change the weight of choices based on the player and situation. For physics, everyone probably needs to go license and use Crytek's stuff, because 3rd-party physics engines seem to be sitting still, while they've got awesome goodness going on.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

here's a question. I know what a game like Sims 3 can do, but what kind of thing would make sense for that kind of game that can't currently be done but could for whatever Sims comes in 2021?

When will we arrive at the point where we log into our computer and it displays a Sims-like world, and we walk over to our home office to access programs like Word, or we walk into a teleporter to launch games, etc. LOL.

 

[reallyscrued]

I think its the developers that are getting dumber.

Look at what id software did with doom. And now look at brink, homefront and duke nukem forever. Its as if developers can not come up with an original idea in the past 10 years.

Just curious, in what ways would you change modern shooters? What original idea do you think is being untapped?

 

[Red Storm]

The next great jump in multiplayer gaming will be the removal of (perceptible) lag.

We have a long ways to go.

The next great jump in Singleplayer will be a much more advanced AI that reacts like a human would.

 

[Texashiker]

Just curious, in what ways would you change modern shooters? What original idea do you think is being untapped?

Doom + left 4 dead
Fallout + Doom
Fallout + left 4 dead
L4D + call of Duty
Counter strike + L4d
Counter-strike + Doom
Mero2033 + counter-strike
Metro2033 + L4D

Personally, I think team based games like the L4D series are just now getting tapped into. Take something like counter-strike, and instead of terrorist, use either demons or zombies.

Where are the zombie horror style games?

Where are the games like Doom, where a portal to hell has opened and demons are flooding the world.

If you wanted to do something larger, what about team based games based on the Fallout series?

How about something like world of warcraft VS counter-strike styled players?

How about Metro2033 meets left 4 dead. Small teams of survivors have to get across the wasteland and tunnels.

The whole post-nuclear war world, in a cooperative style gameplay has not even been touched.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Only one of those current screenshots looks even OK. Soften and DoF FTL.

So...you are saying that the Crysis screenshot looks...worse, somehow, than the Doom one? Surely not?

I want things that look good, and attempts at realism don't. The most detail in the universe won't make up for blank spaces (seriously, cover everything that isn't ground with outward-facing polys on all sides, people!), texture and model misalignment (check out the Crysis DX11 patch shots), NPCs that move like puppets, the all-too-common neck seems, badly-stretching skin, and idiocy like DoF. Game devs need to embrace aesthetics more abstractly, and screw realism.

So you like the Source Engine-style graphics? That's fine. But I don't think it's disputable to say that the CryEngine is a lot more realistic. That's like saying in the 90s that you don't like Myst's attempt at realism, therefore we should stick with Asteroids-style graphics.

Also, physics and AI. We've had learning training bots for awhile, so why not build on that? Give the AIs reasonably simple decision trees, but allow learning to change the weight of choices based on the player and situation. For physics, everyone probably needs to go license and use Crytek's stuff, because 3rd-party physics engines seem to be sitting still, while they've got awesome goodness going on.

No idea, sorry.

That's the point though, would you honestly be disappointing if the next CoD looked like the last? So to maniacalpha1-1 point you take that base of graphics and add something new to the table, give us some content. We've gone from SP that lastest at least 15 hours to 3-5. We've gone from BFG guns to uh BFG guns

I've never played any CoD game, ever.

So devs don't need to throw a ton of gold bars at graphics so they should be focusing on story lines, but instead they focus on dumification. "Hey, lets take out player servers, they won't miss that", "How about no SDKs, then they can't make mods so we can sell our DLC", etc.

I agree that reducing moddability and taking out the ability for players to host their own servers is a dumb thing to do. But in terms of supporting your original argument? No cigar.

I bet half the people on this board would pay $60 in a heart beat to play Medal of Honor:Allied Assault again if they fixed the bugs, kept the game play and tweaked the graphics again. It would outsell the new Medal of Honor game. You can see it with the new Civ V. Half hate it even though it's got DX11 graphics above what Civ IV had. The problem with the game is they messed with mechanics and game play so much that it's now too simplified to be enjoyable and engaging. So Firaxis put the bulk of their money in a gaming engine and didn't bother to flesh out the rest of the game.

Personally I thought Crysis was a much better game than MOHAA. I have both games, and guess which I've played more?

As for Civ, I never got into Civ III and IV for two reasons: because it had too steep a learning curve and because its graphics were too crap to justify that steep curve. Haven't tried Civ V yet, but I'm guessing it will suit me better.

 

[JSt0rm]

this with above crysis graphic levels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NszGurDUlHc

 

[zinfamous]

Like I said in my second paragraph, I knew I was going to get flak for that post and I won't argue my point a great deal because it will turn into a 'no it isnt/yes it is!' type argument. I just wanted to throw out there that people who request games to be fellating them (not sure if slightly serious, zinfamous) have unrealistic expectations from the second that they load the game. Technology hasn't progressed enough to give you a pole polishing during a video game, although I hear Japan's the place to be if you want to be the first to try out such a thing.

oh yea, I was certainly not serious about that, and was being overly caustic.

my point is that graphic/physics/technical improvements are no leap forward in games.

something different, truly different, involves how one plays, actual mechanics, what a game--like a great book or movie--reveals about the individual user, about the audience, about society.

In fact, pretty much all games in the history of gaming are, in the end, completely useless and of no real consequence in the grander scheme of things. cheap, visceral entertainment. nothing more.


How about a game that provides a real impact? I know this is a vague suggestion, but I'm sure many can gather what I'm suggesting here. Something with a real impacting storyline, something actually relevant, something that actually makes you think about the world in which you live. I think advanced AI (yes, a technical improvement, sure) where game characters react to the palyers actions and decisions in a more consistent, realistic way, where options are nearly limitless. Here, the technical improvement is a mean to the real change--a game mechanic that leaves you no choice but to make your decisions in-game a bit more serious, perhaps, with some sort of "real" consequences?

 

[Cerb]

So...you are saying that the Crysis screenshot looks...worse, somehow, than the Doom one? Surely not?

No, what I'm saying is that it's the only one of the new set that actually looks good, period. A bunch of extra polygons, textures, and lighting, only goes so far, and blurring is a regression.

So you like the Source Engine-style graphics? That's fine. But I don't think it's disputable to say that the CryEngine is a lot more realistic. That's like saying in the 90s that you don't like Myst's attempt at realism, therefore we should stick with Asteroids-style graphics.

No, and I also would not agree that CryEngine looks more realistic. Nothing yet comes anywhere close to looking realistic. When it comes to graphics, it's >90% the content, not the low-level programmers. It entirely breaks the illusion when I walk around and find a rock, or part of a brick building, with visibly missing polygons, or serious shape or texture alignment problems. This should not happen, and is 100% preventable. It breaks the illusion when a "realistic" face stretches out skin with hair on it in a way that not only shows off that it's just a texture, but also where it doesn't move properly. FI, when you open your mouth, some of the skin under your jaw will move to being beside your jaw. Likewise, textures around joints stretch the way that the polygons move, rather than anything remotely resembling skin. Practically no games today have animations that don't look like puppets, either, breaking the illusion. I think being stuck on trying for realism is borderline idiotic, wastes time and effort, and does very little, if anything, as far as making a good game.