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Armchair Arcade -> Forums -> General Discussion

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It's gotta be a sin...

Moderators: Bill Loguidice, David Torre, crcasey, Mark1970, deshrill

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dirt

Mon Feb 09 2004, 08:54AM

Registered Member #140
Joined: Tue Jan 27 2004, 04:31AM
Location: scotland
posts 7

I bought a Saturn and watched it briefly flare and die, ditto the Dreamcast.I swore then that I wouldn't buy another console, but along comes the GBA and bang! 3d gaming on the go!(doom, duke nukem, v-rally etc).Along with some of my all time faves(golden axe, ecco, donkey kong, mario cart et al).This has re-kindled my love of all things game related.
The GBA rocks! Alongside my NeoGeo Pocket Color and GameGear, it's a worthy distraction.

Bill Loguidice

Mon Feb 09 2004, 08:57AM

Armchair Arcade Co-Founder and Editor

Location: Central New Jersey, USA
posts 4817

Matt Barton wrote: ...
Do you have a GBA? I've been trying to decide whether to buy one or not. Do you find yourself using it a lot? To be honest, I don't play as many games as I like to think I do. I spend most of my freetime talking about them!

Yes, I have a GBA and a GBA SP. Obviously I recommend the SP, since that's the model you can actually see. Certainly it's home to quite a bit of solid 2D and isometric gaming. I play it a lot in spurts, for instance when I was playing and beat Eye of the Beholder, or was on a tear in Super Mario Kart, or played Karnaaj Rally a lot. Right now, the game I'm going to get to at some point is Return of the King, which is a bit like Diablo. Unfortunatley I've been so busy with other things, that even my GBA SP hasn't received that much play time. If only the games were a bit cheaper, I'd probably get more (I usually feel compelled to get something for the three consoles), but I have a pretty decent selection of games...

Bill Loguidice - Armchair Arcade Editor
www.billandchristina.com (includes videogame & computer collection)
www.mythcore.com (creative development company)
www.armchairarcade.com (soliciting articles NOW!)

Bill Loguidice

Mon Feb 09 2004, 09:29AM

Armchair Arcade Co-Founder and Editor

Location: Central New Jersey, USA
posts 4817

dirt wrote: ...
I bought a Saturn and watched it briefly flare and die, ditto the Dreamcast.I swore then that I wouldn't buy another console, but along comes the GBA and bang! 3d gaming on the go!(doom, duke nukem, v-rally etc).Along with some of my all time faves(golden axe, ecco, donkey kong, mario cart et al).This has re-kindled my love of all things game related.
The GBA rocks! Alongside my NeoGeo Pocket Color and GameGear, it's a worthy distraction.

After I gave up on the endless PC upgrade cycle and moved on from the Genesis and SNES, I owned a Saturn, PS1 and N64. While I had some fun, the "spark" was definitely gone from my gaming interest. When I got my Xbox, and eventually a PS2 and GameCube, that spark came back. It's funny how some people respond to different generations of systems better than others...

majortom

Thu Feb 12 2004, 11:27PM

Registered Member #49
Joined: Sat Jan 17 2004, 07:04PM
posts 223

Notice: This poorly assembled rant addresses the previous posts in chronological order, according to author’s whim.

Enjoy.

Games have gotten better from a certain point of view…
How? How about the enhanced myriad of options / play choices given from the get – go or to be unlocked? What about this trend of multi – faceted games? I think that’s a good thing. The introduction of new play mechanics such as increased attention toward physics within FPS’s, etc. .

Buck – Gotta’ love the bright dungeon created by arcades, cabinets, the old fogeys barely cutting even on the place, watching with lit cigarettes as you made your way over black alternating current cords; snaking their way across cheap carpet. Bleeps, blips, pcm and synthesized soundtracks echoing all life, you trembling with your buck - .25 in quarters…or tokens (Aladdin’s Castle at Battlefield Mall!), as you anticipated the moment, just seconds away, when you would shove the first silver piece in to that black and red (quarters only, 25c) slot, and try your luck at standing up to a machine programmed to shoot you down….another world, oh yes, though games today still try to present that other-worldly effect, it is most certainly not as enveloping as the community game – cave once offered to the public….
The comparisons of seeing a musical or concert as opposed to listening to a cd is a close but barely correlative experience to games then and now, in my humble opinion. I’m not going to even try to quantify that statement now….

Yes, today’s software offerings are (generally speaking) “better” than our old games, but something has been lost along the way – our youth, let’s not even try to rationalize or place our fingers upon any other cause…

Dragon’s Lair (action – reaction games) AREN’T GAMES, they are shortcut formulae, case closed. No offense to fans of. Perhaps, technically, they do provide the “perfect balance” but without the finer points of an “actual game” they become a crude and imperfect shadow of what true games are.

Hmm…Halo……Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective….h…a…looo…..or….Sherlock…OH CR*P….have we lost our heads?!!
Halo, for whatever reason, was INVOLVING, poor Sherlock attempted that, but never came close to gaining it…
Anger for Sherlock, relief with Halo.

I’ve one thing to say about Xbox, one way or another, it has proven to become the Dreamcast’s logical successor for the homebrew / hobbyist enclave and the fact that it is so incredibly powerful + hardrive means emulation goodness for all “adult gamers”.

Matt touches upon the “big crappy three”, with a thriving microbrew industry in comparing the game industry to beers (a handy comparison if ever there was one, and one I do certainly enjoy… * hic *) but I see the comparison as this:
Poor game creators = big three crappy beer makers
Thriving quality microbrew industry = homebrew games, app.’s, mod,’s, etc….

Buck brings up an interesting point with his question of a technological ceiling on games. I can answer quite confidently that we shall certainly reach a plateau, people today seem to have totally bought into the theory that man is evolving, but truly, it is only our compoundance of knowledge and continuance of education that allows us the spoils of our day, eventually, all technology will plateau without outside assistance. Man is limited and will inevitably reach his boundaries and with him, his creations.

Finally, the 32 – 64 bit wars nearly killed my enthusiasm for gaming, I nearly thought I would “grow out of it” (like my parents wishfully predicated) after low textures in 3d Ps1 games, endless Fmv crap on 3do and lame Saturn offerings. The few bright lights I saw during this period took form in (of course) Castlevania S.O.T.N. (ps1), split screen Duke Nuke’em (N64), and NiGHTS: Into Dreams (Saturn)….now, I have new hope with this current generation of games and explore the new worlds offered, but I haunt sites such as www.the-underdogs.org for old games I must have missed that still light the spark, the fire of gaming, a torch given to all would – be gamers by some shadowy Prometheus of this new electronic age.

"So I make my way over to Tibet...and I set myself up as a hoofer."

"A what?"

"A hoofer, y'know, a caddy. So who do you think they give me but the Dalai Llama himself! The grace, the flowing robes, everything.....so at the end, he's gonna' stiff me! And I say, hey! What about a li'l somethin', you know, for the effort? And he says, oh, there won't be any money, but when you die, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me...which is nice.

-Bill Murray "Carl the Greenskeeper"; Caddyshack

Matt Barton

Fri Feb 13 2004, 07:16AM

Location: Tampa, Florida
posts 2680

Interesting thoughts, majortom. I've been thinking lately that maybe we've all got it wrong about the future of gaming; so often, the future is right in front of us, but we can't see it. "The next step" is too simple, too obvious, too banal--it's too easy to get carried by the technological hurricane and too hard to fight the belief that the future of gaming lies in new technology rather than new ideas.

I can't help but shiver when I think about how far gaming has "progressed" technologically, but stalled ideologically. We're still playing Space War! in one form or another; the idea of a realistic simulation of a fantastic situation has not left us. The basic idea is this: A total "experience" package that removes a person from quitodian life and hurls him/her into a "virtual" plane that bears enough symbolic familiarity to either the "real" world or the "blurred together" virtual world created by other games. Most of us have the idea that the more the game world acts like the real world, the better games will be. Others think this is nonsense; who cares about the real world? As long as games follow from the games before them, and players can recognize/adapt to the new interfaces and options, that's good enough.

I'm beginning to wonder if gamers really want or need "total immersion." I'd have to say the majority of computer gamers do not experience games this way; they open up solitaire or one of the many shockwave titles and play them during working hours. For instance, a worker may be creating a database while playing a game of Yahoo! chess. I think we may be seeing the future of gaming in those little applets available in some of the IM programs--the "challenge a friend to a game of X." The new player will probably want to chat with friends while playing two or three games at once and listening to an internet radio station or personal mp3 list.

Of course, there will always be those seeking total immersion. I see it as movie goers vs. tv watchers. The cinema expects a "total immersion," that is, undivided attention upon the screen. The audience is expected to lose itself in the virtual world created by the film.

The TV audience is much different. There, we have "punctuated equilibrium" of attention; content is delivered rapidly, intermittenly, and often so broken up with commercials that it's impossible for an audience to follow a truly complex storyline (Imagine watching a film like Memento on television). When we watch TV, it's common for us to also talk on the phone; we can have friends over. Television is setup in such a way that we can "casually" view it; there is nothing there requiring rapt, sustained, and undivided attention.

Now, what we see is a huge variety of games that operate like films rather than television. We keep expecting the great innovation to be in a total-immersive experience; we haven't given up the VR dream. It's far more likely, though, that the majority of tomorrow's gamers will come to gaming through "casual" playing; small, unfocused games that cater to frequent pausing and require little attention.

I'm thinking here of games that will all but play themselves; interaction will be possible but ultimately optional; it is up to the player to decide how closely to interact with the game, just as it is up to the TV audience to decide how much attention and sustained interest any particular segment of a program is worth. The game will probably fight strong, focused, and sustained attention by breaking up the gameplay with commercials, video segments, or some other off-putting technique to restore the player to "casual" mode.

What do you think?

Matt Barton

majortom

Fri Feb 13 2004, 08:57AM

Registered Member #49
Joined: Sat Jan 17 2004, 07:04PM
posts 223

Though you made a lot of really great points(100% agreement), Matt, you hit the nail on the head with that last paragraph, sometimes I think that's exactly where "casual" or "mainstream" gaming is leading us.

*ack!*

...back when I had to share a computer with my little brothers (somewhere in the mid - 90's) I could have done very bad things to stuffed dummies dealing with the stress of not being able to use the computer because they were playing a game of solitaire (of all things).
Get a pack of freakin' cards!
It is frightening to see people using computers to only automate small, simple steps people used to have to go through to accomplish tasks. This has led to less valued experiences. How many people quit a game of cpu solitaire after a few cl.icks, as opposed to those that had to shuffle the deck and set it up, manually? How many people take the time to actually say something important and cohesive in an email, as opposed to the person who wrote a snail mail letter and had to buy a stamp?
E.g.;LOL c u L8tr.
The most dangerous problem I see with all these shortcuts is that it seems to be "dumbing down" people, instead of enabling them. This is correspondent with gaming. Some games set you free, others are mind - numbing head wasters.
Now I understand we ALL need a little cognitive junk food, but what balance is the industry considering, if any?

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