Computer games, love 'em or hate 'em they're here to stay. And they're certainly not unique in attracting bad press or having quite a few hasty bans or laws slapped on them. What perhaps is unique though is the total disparity of the medium, the completly uncontrolled industry is almost like a 12 year old who's found some great money making secret and doesn't know what to do with his idea.
Games began back in the mists of time with such simple classics as Space Invaders, Defender, Pac Man and their ilk. These games were simple in their mechanics - both on the software and hardware side. You were restricted to two dimensions, there was no complex story nor any means of telling one, the characters and places were simply there as a medium for the events. These were games in the strictest sense of the word, there were clear rules and these rules were difficult to break simply because there was no way around them.
Fast forward to today and the term game is something of a misnomer. Our entertainment has vast worlds, characters that can rival a human being in empathy and intelligence, we have machines that can render the equivalent of our world in the blink of an eye. And yet, we don't have any unity.
For a second, let's look at the world of film. Just like the world of games it sprang up from a modest background, with simple theatres intended to entertain the masses. Nobody expected any complex stories, all they expected was a man falling off a bike. And yet cinema today encompasses a wide variety of media and styles. We have blockbuster movies, carefully investigated to appeal to all demographics, we have indie films with plotlines and characters that are intended to explore the medium, we have short films and epics, we have every conceivable method of filming them and all totally interchangable. You can buy a camcorder and know that what you film can be used in anything from a home video to a number one cinema masterpiece.
By contrast the games industry seems largly focused on the blockbuster side of things. Whilst there are several indie developers, the ability of these people to break into the industry and gain mass appeal is totally hampered by a lack of desire by the larger companies. No modern day equivalent of Miramax exists, and as such we may never see the gaming equivalent of Clerks.
But it doesn't end there. These days if you want to watch a film, you buy either a DVD player or a VCR. You know for sure that the DVD player, whether a Sony or a Sanyo will play that DVD in its entireity. The only differences will be the quality of the playback. When you buy a console or a PC you are making an allegiance to that side. Games on an Xbox will not play on a PS2, and so on and so on. If you were an independant developer, would you feel comfortable only releasing your game on a single console due to budget reasons?
So what does the industry need to do?
Well here's my idea;
1) Adopt a universal standard for gaming.
All consoles are the same. Open up a standardised system whereby an Xbox and a PS3 will share a similar internal construction (similar to using X86 across all PCs). The quality and speed of the components will be kept to the choice of the maker, with a minimum standard set every year. Looking at the graphics on the Xbox360 and PS3, it's blatantly obvious that we're almost at the pinnacle of graphics quality. If games could copy the PC in their ability to scale down quality depending on the hardware available you could guarantee a minimum level of quality. Certain features could be limited to certain hardware in a similar manner to the expansion packs on the N64, but even these packs would use a universal system and you would have a choice of manufacturer. On the PC side the same components would be used, in truth why not just build PCs and consoles from the same parts? A console is a PC without a proper OS, so what's to stop people from doing this? You could swap between your system OS and your gaming OS at will. Each being perfectly suited to the task at hand.
2) Expand the idea of Steam and XBox live to a new level and help Indie developers
Steam and Xbox Live are the future of gaming. They're a scary prospect for developers and certainly a big change to the conventional way of thinking. But they work in favour of the developers and that can only a be good thing for creativity. If you could guarantee that your game would run on any system, and knew that there was a service available to sell your game you've automatically removed the usual barriers. This service could operate on commision and sell games from indie developers at cut down rates. In the same way you'll buy a cheap DVD with a film you're not really sure about, you could buy a cheap game and get something that's not a pre packed blockbuster.
The interactive entertainment industry is the greatest industry we've seen in the past 100 years. For the first time it places people not only behind the camera, but also in front of it. We're no longer spectators on someone else's story, we're finally participants. But in order to survive, this industry needs to understand it's audience.
Games began back in the mists of time with such simple classics as Space Invaders, Defender, Pac Man and their ilk. These games were simple in their mechanics - both on the software and hardware side. You were restricted to two dimensions, there was no complex story nor any means of telling one, the characters and places were simply there as a medium for the events. These were games in the strictest sense of the word, there were clear rules and these rules were difficult to break simply because there was no way around them.
Fast forward to today and the term game is something of a misnomer. Our entertainment has vast worlds, characters that can rival a human being in empathy and intelligence, we have machines that can render the equivalent of our world in the blink of an eye. And yet, we don't have any unity.
For a second, let's look at the world of film. Just like the world of games it sprang up from a modest background, with simple theatres intended to entertain the masses. Nobody expected any complex stories, all they expected was a man falling off a bike. And yet cinema today encompasses a wide variety of media and styles. We have blockbuster movies, carefully investigated to appeal to all demographics, we have indie films with plotlines and characters that are intended to explore the medium, we have short films and epics, we have every conceivable method of filming them and all totally interchangable. You can buy a camcorder and know that what you film can be used in anything from a home video to a number one cinema masterpiece.
By contrast the games industry seems largly focused on the blockbuster side of things. Whilst there are several indie developers, the ability of these people to break into the industry and gain mass appeal is totally hampered by a lack of desire by the larger companies. No modern day equivalent of Miramax exists, and as such we may never see the gaming equivalent of Clerks.
But it doesn't end there. These days if you want to watch a film, you buy either a DVD player or a VCR. You know for sure that the DVD player, whether a Sony or a Sanyo will play that DVD in its entireity. The only differences will be the quality of the playback. When you buy a console or a PC you are making an allegiance to that side. Games on an Xbox will not play on a PS2, and so on and so on. If you were an independant developer, would you feel comfortable only releasing your game on a single console due to budget reasons?
So what does the industry need to do?
Well here's my idea;
1) Adopt a universal standard for gaming.
All consoles are the same. Open up a standardised system whereby an Xbox and a PS3 will share a similar internal construction (similar to using X86 across all PCs). The quality and speed of the components will be kept to the choice of the maker, with a minimum standard set every year. Looking at the graphics on the Xbox360 and PS3, it's blatantly obvious that we're almost at the pinnacle of graphics quality. If games could copy the PC in their ability to scale down quality depending on the hardware available you could guarantee a minimum level of quality. Certain features could be limited to certain hardware in a similar manner to the expansion packs on the N64, but even these packs would use a universal system and you would have a choice of manufacturer. On the PC side the same components would be used, in truth why not just build PCs and consoles from the same parts? A console is a PC without a proper OS, so what's to stop people from doing this? You could swap between your system OS and your gaming OS at will. Each being perfectly suited to the task at hand.
2) Expand the idea of Steam and XBox live to a new level and help Indie developers
Steam and Xbox Live are the future of gaming. They're a scary prospect for developers and certainly a big change to the conventional way of thinking. But they work in favour of the developers and that can only a be good thing for creativity. If you could guarantee that your game would run on any system, and knew that there was a service available to sell your game you've automatically removed the usual barriers. This service could operate on commision and sell games from indie developers at cut down rates. In the same way you'll buy a cheap DVD with a film you're not really sure about, you could buy a cheap game and get something that's not a pre packed blockbuster.
The interactive entertainment industry is the greatest industry we've seen in the past 100 years. For the first time it places people not only behind the camera, but also in front of it. We're no longer spectators on someone else's story, we're finally participants. But in order to survive, this industry needs to understand it's audience.
