It's all in my imagination!

What are the significant developments facing gaming at the beginning of the 21^st Century? What pressures does the industry face?

The new millenium. it doesnt seem as long as that since sony released the first 128-bit console that would later become the most succesful console of the eara and become sonys number1 sold creation (so far). playstation 2 could play not only CD-rom but it can also traverse the once, next gen format "DVD-rom" and also play audio files and dvd movies. playstation 2 was the first console to over-shadow pcs in graphics capability thus it was increasingly difficult to create titles in the early 00's that lived up to the potential of the ps2 and 1 year later the requirements of titles were upped with the new and more powerful (nitendo) GameCube and (microsoft) Xbox. All three formats had different specs such as the xbox with its inbuilt hard drive and fully supporting HDTV or Game Cubes optical mini discs. all these platforms and differences made gaming choices a little more difficult to make. im a die hard playstation fan but i cant deny that i have both the gamecube and xbox at hand for resident evil or halo, after all who cares how hard it is to swich between platforms - I want my game! - such as resident evil 4 moving from GameCube to playstation had ome tweaks to it; a total of 5,000 polygons less in the playstation version than the GameCube.

Alot of the pressure faced by the games industry is the vast need for new and updated titles for current formats, for example there are over 8000 titles for the playstation2 in circulation around the world and more in the piline every year. consider also that xbox, gamecube, dreamcast, psp, etc have their own personal titles, applicable to just that particular platform and you have an almost unimaginable amount of titles out there. t be honest it makes me wonder weather i can call my self a hard-core gamer.

From thegaming super powersthat gave us playstation 2, Xbox and GameCube comes the next gens; ps3, Xbox 360 and nintendo wii. the next generation of console power is right on our doorstep and with it the games market is pushing world wide instead of the smaller managble europian and american markets.

What do you want from gaming in the future? What games would you like to play? How will you play them? This is a chance to dream!

Id like to play crysis because its the first next gen game that ive seen with amazing A.I. a story, and some nice eye-candy. when a person walks through a bush the leaves are moved almost as if you are touching them - finally a main character that actualy exists - and the noise that is made is differant depending on the speed in wich you run thorugh them. crysis is 1 step closer to what i want to see coming to light in the future and i will have hours enjoying it after i get myself in debt trying to make my pc powerful enuf to play it on the lowest possible settings.

Future gaming is a wide area to cover because games today are slowly but surly becoming photorealistic and meeting the needs of most people, with the ecseption of the few games that lack valid story-lines or game play. the future is here with the much antiscipated crysis (crytek) (bit of eye candy for you) the future of gaming a id like to see it is more graphical content A.I and story. todays games tend to have 1 or 2 of these but most rear around just that and always end up having somethng missing. for example oblivion is nice looking and quite large...my god even the A.I isnt so bad but can i break through a window and see what is going on inside, no i cant. a house in most games today are just over hyped loading points and/or obsticles. i want to be able to interact with everythng i see similar as oblivion but expanded upon it. picking up set objects that - by the way are the same in every building in the game (another point) - are thrown or just repositioned in the vein attempt at a funny screen shot isnt what id liketo see. i want objects that break depending on my characters strength or cars to to dent exactly where i put all my characters body weight. Realism would be nice too. having the same objects conviniantly placed in every house is a little bit boring. peoples houses and surroundings should reflect their personalities and therefore my character could change their personality hence changing the world around me. making someone scared of me could inherantly make an npc a recluse (hair grows long, house gets untidy, doesnt speak to people, eventualy may die a lonley death) or an npc could fall in love with my character and have fresh roses on her table, greet every1 with a smile. A.I. shouldnt just stop at hiding behind a tree or running up to start a conversation, personalities that evolve and change would enhance game play far beyond normal gaming boundaries.

Photo realism in games today is getting closer and closer as every ten years technology gets 10 x smaller and 10 x faster. a game that a person can feel is real rather than just see is real would make all the differance. If every texture was felt or weather was experienced, a person should feel rather than begin to slouch over a rendered 2d image of his character beating up a zombie with a pitch fork (mental note: that actualy sounds fun!).

In the near future (im dreaming) id like some hardwear that will allow me to feel and see things that i explained a little while ago. such as a body suit that makes you feel everythng your character feels, almost like you arnt just an extention of your character you are! the character. this would make a person feel remorse over getting their character killed or genrally fhave a more emotional attatchment to their character, after all you are feeling what they feel (a little bit of pain never hurt anyone)

Id like to play crysis because its the first next gen game that ive seen with amazing A.I. a story, and some nice eye-candy. when a person walks through a bush the leaves are moved almost as if you are touching them - finally a main character that actualy exists - and the noise that is made is differant depending on the speed in wich you run thorugh them. crysis is 1 step closer to what i want to see coming to light in the future and i will have hours enjoying it after i get myself in debt trying to make my pc powerful enuf to play it on the lowest possible settings.

"E.T. didnt kill gaming, it only killed atari"

the 80s started video games off with a little character known as pac man or puck man to japanese gamers. pac man was the first game ever to have a leading character with its own name and many other games followed suite but failed misrebly.

Ataris E.T. considered the cause of the crash of 1983?
in 1983 the next milestone in the gaming world was its down fall. the game industry dug itself a grave of poor quality game and jumped in head first . some people say that E.T. was 1 of the games that started the crash of 83 but there are forcfall veiws on the crash of 83 being a lie.
i beleive that the games crash of 83 was point of veiw blown out of proportion. many games were still on the market in the early 1980s and people still bought them. there wer games throughout the early 1980s and the games market was still progressing at that time.
"E.T. didnt kill gaming, it only killed atari!" anon

A major boost in gaming happend in 1983, the first 2 player game was designed by a woman. "M.U.L.E." it would be a further 20 years before man caught up and made this idea mainstream - and i thought men ruled the gaming industry - swiftly putting that aside. nintendo brought the gaming industry out of its dark years with the "NES" or japanese name "famicom". the 8bit system was the the beginning of higher res gaming, over 60 million consoles were sold world wide. it reigns supreme as the most sold console ever.




a major milestone in gaming history struck in 1985 with the development of a game generally called tetris. tetris was created by Alexey Pazihitnov, in 1985, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow during the soviet union. tetris was designed with another russian game in mind "pentominoes". (tetra is greak for four and is used in tetris because all the shapes have 4 sections.) you can find tetris on almost any platform in some shape or form.

in the mid 1980s sega decided it was time to join the hardware gaming war with the sega master system as a direct competitor of the nes but failed to take a valid part in the japanese and european market even though it was a more technically advanced peice of hardware, its failiure may have been a result of its mascot - prior to the 1990s sonic - "alex the kid".




in the late 80s a new generation of gaming style came to being....simulators. people wanted to do real things but in a fantasy world such as sim city and sim farm. this started a new genre of games and kept the games industry rolling into the future for a short period of time.
1989 was a fabulous year for gaming as not only sim games were brought to lightbut also the aptly named "god games" developed by Peter Molyneus, such as populous. the gamer took control of the inhabitants of a world and had complete control over them -finally a game you can have fun with - other games developed by peter molyneus are "dungeon keeper" and "black and white"
sega finally fought back with their new and first 16bit console the sega genesis and with there 100million marketting campaign plus the add ons to allow the gamer to play master system games it couldnt fail. it didnt. it stormed the market the likes that had never been seen. GO sega! with the exception to the hand held console known as the gameboy this is the end of that golden age of gaming...teh 1980s!

hmmm. who decided to make computers fun? and what was their background?

the first game ever devised on computers was tic tac toe, whcih is almost 10 years older than "Space War", created in 1952 created by a PHD studant, studying a degree in computer and human interaction, A.S. Douglas. an argument could be made that Douglas may not have been the first person to want computers to be fun but the first person to catch onto the idea. http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~edsac/ follow the link to dl the latest verson of A.S. Douglas' game.

the first computer game i had, was a Commodore 64. i loved the retro cassettes. i had a box filled to the brim with cassette tapes. most i had never played so there was always somthng knew. the first game i remember playing from start to finish - after my patients grew - was crash bandicoot. sitting on the living room floor on christmas day with my brand new playstation was 1 of the most memorable experiences but a only a few years later i found a game that i would soon grow to love, Resident Evil. from the first time i played RE i knew id found my favourite genre, survival horrors came and went through many years of excessive gaming, such as parasite eve, alone in the dark and ofcourse resident evil. failing any new releases of survival horrors i attained a PC for the first time in the late 1990s and bought myself a copy of "Baldur's Gate" i soon fell in love with roll playing games and from this point on i considered my PC as my first and formost gaming system. (i later became addicted to FFXI and lost all conscept of time)

the most recent game i have been playing is final fantasy XI but ive been weaning myself off it to play oblivion and to sit and wait for resident evil 5 on ps3 and resident evil biohazard chronicles on the nintendo wii.

Sorry for being so late

whos writing and how do you perceive them to be?

i had a quick scan through the links and found yors...mr Powel. as you have put it to the invisible audience id like to comment on farcrys use of gun gore set in a lush green paradise. farcry in my oppinion was a way of throwing you into a gaming world in which you were forced to use site sound and instinct to resolve any given predicament. granted the over the top foliage was irritating for wanna-be snipers but this is what you would expect to see in a tropical island. plant life taking over forcing man to use all his sences and abilities just to make that long wated kill shot or fire-fight more satisfying.
farcry was only a starting point or ruf scetch for ubisoft as there up coming game - crysis - is what i can comfortably assume will be there master peice. depth perception and color variation as pointed out that was lacking in farcry, crysis will set a knew bench mark for the next generation of FPS. http://news.spong.com/article/9833?cb=209 (link to lovly screenies of crysis) this link has a few comments that explain the need for AI as well as graphical content. i agree to an extent that graphics are only a section of a game but im bias to a bit of eye candy over an intelligent enemy that can anicipate my every move. I will just have to wait and see for myself if crysis is all i hope and expect it to be.

hmm i went a lil ways off the question. mr. P. is obviously a keen gamer and doesnt need me to to say so. his comments are obviously well thort considered and personal. I'd comment more on this blog but id probebly type far to much. Love your ideas Mr P. blog on.

does blogging strike you as objective or more personal?

i cant help but feel that posting blogs to a large audience is a long shot away from handing in a tatty peice of paper to a school teacher in absolute confidence as i can assume we all have. it is a step above writing to a grade rather than an actual audience, i mean i want to get my thorts out there instead of scrawling things i dnt understand just to impress.

how often do they write, what do they write about?

micheal mosts in quite an irratic way but always has somthing fresh to say about anythng and everythg. (not just games)

how do i see myself using a blog?

this blog is rather late as ive had trouble setting my account up but i can see myself getting into the spirit of things as i intend to have my next blog posted quick sharpish.

do i feel comfortable writing to an invisable audience?

i feel as if everythng i am writing will get judged but im willing to accept critisism as it comes. i can deffinatly see blogging as my personal format for my ideas.

If only i had thought of this earlier

thank gawd for blogging. i dont know how id have coped with essays for another three years. if only i had thort of this earlier. thank you tinternet.