GameCrashers Radio Ep.46 – Video Games in 2030
The future is now. Zvarri from On the Crapper reviews joins us to talk a little bit about how we’d like to see our favorite hobby evolve well past E3 2010 and the years to follow…all the way into 2030 (and maybe beyond).
The Rundown:
Game of the Week: Red Dead Redemption, Split/Second, and some other strange games
Discussion Topic: Video Games in 2030
Listener Comments
Shout Outs
Preview of upcoming episodes:
Special Guests: Alex Neuse of Gaijin Games and Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Games
Music Breaks
Valkyrie Profile
Vagrant Story
Surprised no one mentioned particle rendering. As technology improves and can process more objects at once, we should see improvements in the realism of both physics and particle rendering. Maybe by 2030 we’ll have even moved away from polygons and into rendering entire worlds based on particles. Porous textures wouldn’t be a trick of bump mapping. Light, shadow, smoke, fire and water would all look more organic. If you had an entire object made of particles instead of polygons, it could respond to changes in the world more effectively, such as a plaster wall affected by gunfire.
So maybe a lot of “more of the same,” but perhaps rendering technology in 20 years will bring graphical effects on the level of Lord of the Rings to home consoles in real time. After all, it took Silicon Graphics supercomputers to cough out the effects in The Lawnmower Man back in the 90s. Nowadays, that’s practically a screensaver.
I doubt we’ll be seeing screenless direct-to-brain technology by then. I doubt I’d really want it anyway, and I believe we’re all due our flying cars before then.
And as for what I’d *like* to see in 2030, I’d love to see more variety in games. Right now, a tightly-directed game can have a plot and scripted action sequences similar to a great movie, but these make the game too linear and usually too short. A longer game usually gets longer by focusing on a single mechanic (an excellent cover/shooting system) and padding it out every chance it gets.
I’m loving the atmosphere and open world created for Red Dead Redemption, and all the little side quests you can do. The story itself is also excellent. But the story *missions* are pretty much bullshit, as you gun down a gang posse a hundred strong, move up to the next rock, and shoot a hundred more. Where does Bill Williamson GET all these guys? Final Fantasy XIII, really, does the same thing. It’s a 2-3 hour story stretched out to 40 hours through repetitive creature fights with little connection to the narrative.
But that’s a limitation of game development. You can either create a system and a few assets (shooting mechanics and a handful of bad guys) and keep reusing them, or you can create a very directed, shorter, linear experience. Perhaps through streamlining of development, or improvements in random content generation, we can make it easier for bigger games to also have more variety.