Idle Innovation/Speculation/Masturbation

[dartmonkey]

Now that Next-Gen is This-Gen, it's difficult to argue that it's not just Last-Gen with a new shirt. I can't pin down anything to define the new wave. Kinect still doesn't work too well and the voice stuff is patchy. When the first one came out I assumed it would augment the controller experience and allow players to lean around corners with their head, issue orders to squadmates via hand gestures, etc. Nope. Nintendo have yet to demonstrate anything to make their gamepad more than a bell/whistle. There's potential there but they've shown nothing and bungled the marketing. Sony seem happy to just throw RAM at the problem, which seems to be working well enough for them, at least financially.

Oculus looks interesting, but it isolates you so much I think it'll have a slow start, especially with the masses. There'll be shock stories in tabloids about houses being robbed while the owner had his face in a Rift, toddlers wandering out into the street while their parents..., etc.

 

Anyway, this thread is for ideas - innovations you think we should have seen by now, or potential additions or tweaks to existing tech. They don't have to be revolutionary or CHANGE VIDEO GAMES. I'm just having difficulty remembering the last rumble pak or shoulder button. Maybe the biometric pulse pad will fit the bill, but until that turns up I've got a couple of smaller examples:

 

 

I saw/heard the following video YEARS ago and thought it was an area video games had yet to explore. It still is, but it seems it would be a natural fit for Oculus. The video must be listened to WITH HEADPHONES.

 

 

This stuff is made for horror but the potential for directional info relayed via sound is massive across the board and remains relatively untapped (to my knowledge, although maybe something's passed me by). Hearing doors open in stealth games, footsteps, enemy fire, NPCs barking orders or 'PSSSSST'ing you from some hiding place, fighters approaching from .35, Cortana whispering seductively inside your helmet. You could really simulate the claustrophobia of Samus' helmet and make players choose whether to use it for targeting/scanning/protection/etc or sacrifice those advantages for improved peripheral vision, hearing and comfort.

 

 

Something else I thought we'd see this gen is light-up buttons on control pads. Onscreen instructions ('Press X to open') could be replaced or complimented by the illuminated button. They could help clean up the HUD. They could be used to signal notifications when the console is not in use (a la the 3DS). They could be used for puzzles themselves, or whack-a-mole style code QTEs, or covert communication between teams, or signal affiliation with different colours, or flash as warnings if you're about to stall or can be seen. Obviously there's battery life issues, but tiny LEDs don't suck too much juice. It seems like an easy little addition that could have some useful UI applications. 

[melmer]

I think a lot of invitation in the future will come from integrating smart phones

Instead of making people purchase specialist gaming devices just let them use the tech they already own. Almost everyone has a smart phone these days, especially gamers. I saw a head line the other day that said the next version of singstar will allow you to use you phone as a microphone...PERFECT

http://www.vg247.com/2014/05/22/singstar-ps4-phone-app-you-can-use-as-microphone/

[clyde]

As a larger point, the next ten years will be when people who think of smart-phones first when some says "games" will have a large amount of disposable cash. I don't know how that will pan out, but I imagine that things that promise micro-celebrietism and sponsorship while not requiring a controller (instead using hardware that is already omnipresent) will hatch a few mega-successes tht we can not currently fathom.

When a game scores daily vlogs using likes from a bot-net indistinguishable from human fans that will truly be next-gen.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I think this gen was pretty underwhelming because the leap in tech is pretty mild. From what I've heard only overhyped news sites really feel like there's news game that really show 'next-gen' tech in a major way. Most general players might enjoy the slightly higher fidelity, but there's nothing that has really been done to shift the way the games are played. It even seems like the gaming companies themselves didn't want to force the upgrade, given how long the last cycle lasted.

 

I think to make a real paradigm shift it has to be about the experience changing. Something like the Wii U pad except that is actually used and not just an amalgamation of their previous 2 succesful consoles. Phone integration could be interesting but I feel like it would need to be a catch all, like having a PS5 hub app, that connects all your games through to the phone, allows you to perform some sort of play when away from your console (I know small elements of this have happened, but I mean something more ubiquitous).

 

The XBONE's Kinect situation shows how difficult it is to get everyone behind something that you want to push into all/most of your games.

I know it was already failed tech in people's eyes, but if that was the Occulus I don't think support would be much better (ie. You'd get a lot of cheap poorly made ports that underwhelm people). And people would still look at the forced price difference as a huge downside.

[Ucantalas]

Maybe its just because I watch a lot of streams and Lets Plays of games, but I kind of thought the whole "Sharing" thing on now-current-gen was a really good idea.

[Ewan]

The thing that I find disappointing, though not unexpected, is the continuation of last gen franchises to the new consoles. At the start of last generation developers seemed to be open to big gambles on new franchises (uncharted, mass effect, gears etc.). But look at the narrative over the past 5 years: AAA gets more expensive, mid-tier developers close their doors for being mildly-innovative yet unsuccessful. And the result is...well: more Uncharted, Mass Effect, and Gears of War for the new gen. Even new titles like The Order and Watch Dogs seem to have spawned from the same design principals of 5 years ago.

 

So yeah, I think I'm expecting that big budget games are gonna kind of suck for a little bit now. Sure there will be outliers that do something different akin to The Last of Us or Bioshock or LittleBigPlanet but I think the norm will be a continuation of the same with small, currently unappealing to me advances a la smartphone integration.

 

I think the indie push from Sony is telling as well. Their big first party games are taking longer and longer to make, indie fills in the gaps for the wait for the next big title.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Sure there will be outliers that do something different akin to The Last of Us or Bioshock

 

I find it a little disappointing that these are the games that were different. I enjoyed both, but they still seemed entirely mired in the AAA ideas of other big releases. They were enjoyable and they added different flair but even if most AAA games followed suit I think I'd be left feeling lacking with my options.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Even new titles like The Order and Watch Dogs seem to have spawned from the same design principals of 5 years ago.

 

Sure there will be outliers that do something different akin to The Last of Us or Bioshock

BioShock was based on design principles from far more than five years ago. It was a pared down ripoff of System Shock. That's why Shock is in the name! And that shit goes back to Ultima Underworld. If BioShock is your idea of innovation you need to spend more time on freeindiegam.es - there's more innovation in any given week of posts on that site than there is in most of AAA gaming in this past decade.

[Ewan]

BioShock was based on design principles from far more than five years ago. It was a pared down ripoff of System Shock. That's why Shock is in the name! And that shit goes back to Ultima Underworld. If BioShock is your idea of innovation you need to spend more time on freeindiegam.es - there's more innovation in any given week of posts on that site than there is in most of AAA gaming in this past decade.

 

Yeah, the point I was failing to make is that games like Bioshock and Last of Us appear to be the current limit of leeway allowed to developers in high cost development. I am totally aware of the sorts of games that appear on sites like freeindiegam.es (which is not currently supported by Terry Cavanagh, which is a shame), I was just trying to say that it seems difficult for comparable levels of innovation to exist in big studio development because of the increasing cost of the gamble.

[clyde]

Dance Central was crazy innovative, but it didn't seem to catch on with a wide enough populous to sustain its cost. We have all three games, I can't imagine needing more of them though. On the flip-side, Minecraft was incredibly innovative and has had a huge impact.

If sustained innovation spawned from anything about the last consoles, I'd say that it spawned from the market that appeared in the smaller downloadable game stores. Maybe the inexpense and ease of use with using Unity or Unreal will have a similar impact.

[BFrank]

With 2 generations in a row of the big publishers pretty much ignoring every kind of input device other than controllers and sometimes KB/M, I think we're in a weird spot. The publishers don't make enough money to do anything but play it safe, so they're opting out of every kind of innovation other than 'graphical' and sometimes 'weird new pricing model'.

 

I suspect that indies and a new breed of mid-tier developer are going to come along and do for motion controls, music games, and VR what the big publishers can't. If you guys happened to hear Jeff Gerstman on the bombcast this week talking about the state of AAA development and the new consoles, I think we're in for a very long generation. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

With 2 generations in a row of the big publishers pretty much ignoring every kind of input device other than controllers and sometimes KB/M, I think we're in a weird spot. The publishers don't make enough money to do anything but play it safe, so they're opting out of every kind of innovation other than 'graphical' and sometimes 'weird new pricing model'.

 

I suspect that indies and a new breed of mid-tier developer are going to come along and do for motion controls, music games, and VR what the big publishers can't. If you guys happened to hear Jeff Gerstman on the bombcast this week talking about the state of AAA development and the new consoles, I think we're in for a very long generation. 

 

Johann Sebastian Joust is a pretty good indicator of this, but the issue is how many people are willing to get the move controller for it? And, if it was instead programmed to work with any webcam and some smartphones, would the technology be buggy or detract from the experience? A big draw for people to consoles is the fact that there is no uncertainty of highly varied specs and results but they need significant numbers to justify the investment.

[dartmonkey]

Johann Sebastian Joust is a pretty good indicator of this, but the issue is how many people are willing to get the move controller for it? And, if it was instead programmed to work with any webcam and some smartphones, would the technology be buggy or detract from the experience?

Funny you should mention that because I picked up a Move controller cheap just this weekend for that very reason. Sony are playing smart by getting indies involved, not only to fill the massive post-launch deadzone but also to showcase these other experiences. Nintendo should have been all over this. Only a handful of people have a Move controller - everyone and his cat has Wiimotes clogging up their bottom drawer.

 

Has anyone tried the Xbone controller and felt the rumble triggers? Not groundbreaking, sure, but they sound interesting. I guess they'd be cool for charging plasma weapons or jamming the brake, but they could be used to transmit simple morse code or a teach moves in a beat em up. Again, gimmicks in isolation, but I'm sure some of these could catch on, especially tutorial/UI additions.

 

Although tangential to video games, some company MUST be working on putting a camera inside a monitor (one that can actually see through the screen). The disconnect you get in video calls between looking at the camera and the screen is getting very old now. I want to look people in the eyes when I'm talking to them. However, I suppose that would take the whole 'Kinect is spying on me' narrative to a new level.