As technology and people’s exposure to so much more of the world becomes more imminent, the next generation of games have to keep up and follow along with the rest of the media. With the arrival of next generation hardware, we were given highly realistic and believable surroundings. This undoubtedly sparked our imagination, but was there a specific reason for this? Games in terms of plot don’t hugely differ from own to another. There are goodies and badies, you against another, in order to succeed you must be the best at what ever task it is that is in your way.
Gameplay allows us to do things we could not normally do. It is escapism, and all areas of a game must work together to make it successful. Industry wants to sell and starting with Pong, the selling point was it was new and technological for its time. Ping pong could now be played on screen and you had to beat your opponent in order to succeed. The look was minimal purely due to the available technology at this time. Comparing computer games with traditional board games is often done, but for what reason. Board games are constrained and rule bound, there is a certain way to play and a certain way to win. With game play or ‘play’, especially with modern hardware, there are so many different ways to play, the world is yours to explore and in your own way and on your own terms.
Next generation games allow play instead of just taking part in a game. You are the main attraction in whatever world you desire to be a part of. Ranging from different types of playing style to the interactivity that different platforms have to offer. The task of designing is a team effort resulting in pages and pages of story idea’s, character, genre, environment style, play type etc. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2156/game_design_theory__practice_.php
These however, sometimes back fire, (hyperlink above explains) overload of ideas and cramming the entire game is too constrained, (almost like the rules of a board game) Designing a game, especially in the early stages is all about concept, the main idea and theme, which from that further development in production will shape the story line and other key aspects of the game. The genre inspires all visual and indeed plot aspects of the game, and would require research into past games that are the same genre. No matter how much a game claims to be new and innovative there will always be some past game,that was used for research purposes. It’s unavoidable, you need to know what your competitors are promising and see what you can do that’s different, and that’s all the games industry is, ‘One-up’ manship. From the dawn of computer games like Pong, to the present, there has always been one company, one game genre at some point that was above the rest. Games will continue to try and get better until nothing more can be done.
Impossible right? Where the future is heading for games is very uncertain, I’m sure when people first got to experience Pong they never thought the virtual and physical would eventually be one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VKptjKW83Q
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