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DanJW

BBC News; Uncanny Valley roundup.

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Ugh, I hate it when people don't count the Wii as "next gen", like everything it can do was available 10 years ago or something

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I find it horrible when people assume that next-gen hinges on the hardware, whereas the hardware has only a supportive role in making next-gen more feasible. As I've stated before however, in my strong opinion next-gen is a design philosophy about creating new and more immersive experiences. Hardware *can* help with that, but in theory it has nothing to do with better graphics or advanced physics or anything. Those are only tools. In theory you can build a 'next gen' game on the MSX. It's all about the philosophy.

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I find it horrible when people assume that next-gen hinges on the hardware, whereas the hardware has only a supportive role in making next-gen more feasible. As I've stated before however, in my strong opinion next-gen is a design philosophy about creating new and more immersive experiences. Hardware *can* help with that, but in theory it has nothing to do with better graphics or advanced physics or anything. Those are only tools. In theory you can build a 'next gen' game on the MSX. It's all about the philosophy.

I totally agree. Mostly. I agree and disagree. I think thank in a big way, next-generation games hinge on next-generation hardware. But I don't think next-gen hardware can be defined as hardware that "renders a realistic character at 4000 fps". I agree totally that next gen is about new experiences, beyond superficial graphical upgrades, that change the way in which games are played in a way that would have been unobtainable in previous generations. I think there's a difference between an innovative game that could have been developed for the MSX and one that couldn't have. Crysis is (I hope going to turn out to be) a next generation title not only because it looks incredible but because the power of modern technology can permit a game like Crysis to give the player such a deep and believable influence on the environment (and still have amazing graphics). Wii changed the way people played games, and a Wii game is next generation because the precision of it's motion control scheme could not have been conceived on previous generation systems.

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There's a massive amount of agreement that "next gen" has to mean something new and more sophisticated in terms of mechanics rather than just more elaborate aesthetics (For instance, this interview with Quantic Dream).

It's a lot of talk, and i like it, but I don't have much hope in it. It's happening because:

  • Game development costs: Way up.
  • Profits: Not so far up.
  • Wii and DS: Slagged off as gimmicky at first, now absolutely trouncing every other platform.
  • Publishers: Setting up huge and hyped "casual" arms.
  • Absolutely fucking *massive* vacuum around the term "interactive entertainment".

It should be really clear that most of the people talking about the need for new and innovative gameplay see it as a financial opportunity/imperative more than an opportunity to actually expand the medium. It's not that there's no crossover, just that most of the people saying this stuff are on schedules, have teams to pay and publishers to placate. They can't take the Jonathan Blow approach: sit around being a bit poor while deeply philosophising on the nature of things to see how new and interesting games might be constructed around them.

Everyone developing a game with a commercial agenda and a whit of marketing sense is going to tell you why their game is revolutionary and unprecedented. They're all going to pull that old chestnut about convincing AI out of their ass.

When that kind of talk is generalised and applied to entire generation of hardware, I find it less convincing, not more :grin:

We've really only just entered a new 5 year cycle. More innovative gameplay has a greater chance of being created at the end of a console cycle when developers are more familiar and confident with the tech they're using. To put it another way, new tech drives games back to simple gameplay and lower amounts of content (So of course we bloody end up with MotorStorm, Resistance, Wii sports, Red Steel, and Perfect Dark Zero).

Games let people prod, poke and explore systems for as long as they like, which inevitably means they can be pushed until they show cracks. Making an infallible game would be like having to film every shot of a movie from every conceivable angle in one take, without once showing the crew or equipment. To be as emotionally compelling and convincing as a stellar film, games have to be systemically convincing, which is a much harder set of problems than composing camera shots and audio. Of course the next lot of games are going to be breakable and often laughable stabs at convincing worlds.

That's not to say they won't be an incredible amount of fun, and I'm really happy that innovation in games is on the table and being discussed so widely. But the hype about innovation is by far outpacing it's difficulty.

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I like what you said.

Yeah, I agree with Nachimir. The exciting philosophies in game design are there, but I see them as general trends, untied to any particular generation of technology. Each hardware generation is, let's be frank, nothing more than a step up in magnitude of processing and rendering power (Wii has successfully bucked the trend somewhat, but it's step is there, only smaller in that direction. It makes up for it in a step up in controller processing power).

So yes the extra power may help realise some ideas, but those ideas are not intrinsically part of the hardware generation. Anyone that says it is, does so for marketing reasons. "This years's theme is physics/social networks/crowd AI/the letter Z and the number $60/whatever". Just spin.

For instance, something niggles at me when people call Crysis 'Next Gen'. It's because PC gaming doesn't have generations as such. It has much smaller incremental improvements as everyone upgrades or splashes out on a new PC. If you like you can say that a new generation starts around about when the processor speed doubles, but it's just an arbitrary choice.

And that's it - all hardware generations are abitrary. Even the console ones, although they are chosen by the iteration of consoles which naturally coincide to compete with each other ("Next-gen starts when we say so"... HAH!). In the long term, developments in game design span generations, not concide with them. I can garuntee that the trends that are begun in this generation will not get anywhere near their potential until the next one, in 2011 or whatever.

Here's an interesting thing: human minds hate analogue. We put numbers on dials. We crave threasholds. When does a ball of foetal cells become a living human? Is it now? now? now? We can't grasp one thing fading into another, and label some points on the curve as more important than other points.

Luckily, curves do their own thing even without our labels.

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Dan, that last bit, about the analogue thinking, was particularly insightful; it surprised me and I thank you for it.

:tup:

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Dan, that last bit, about the analogue thinking, was particularly insightful; it surprised me and I thank you for it.

:tup:

Indeed :)

I like what you said.

Thanks. I cleaned it up a little and turned it into a blog post, and looks like it might get turned into an article for somewhere or other.

Made a pic for it I wanted to share:

http://func-auton.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/dunceAI.jpg

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Spoiler-free or -ful?

There are a couple of tiny details in there, involving interaction with certain entities, which you may not want to read. But here's a safe extract:

]BioShock has actually exploited the Uncanny Valley by only rendering in full detail the things that are actually uncanny. Everything else gets stylized to the point that we don't have a bad reaction.

That's basically the crux of the article, so no real need to visit Game|Life if you don't want to risk spoilers.

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Game|Life

I like this name because it has internet characters in it.

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