Hardware VS. Software

PR men have really bad reputations. Awful. It isn't their fault really - they aren't telling us to be gullible, just exploting the fact that we are. But most of the time they have our best interests at heart - if only we'd trust them, they might actually sell us a real gem. Of course, most of the time that isn't the case. Buzzwords and catchphrases fill the air and pages with an air of polished mucus. "New AND Improved!" cry the oxymorons, and the morons themselves lap it up. Graphics, you say? Well, it's just got to be better than actual gameplay, hasn't it? Right? Yes, it is very easy to stand up here and say that. Indeed, I've been taken in before myself. But what do we hold to be better - the software or the hardware? With buzzword generators now changing 'The Console War' into 'The Software War' (and quite rightly too) what should we really appreciate as the best advancement? It's not really an easy question to answer - and you're probably going to be drawn to the same conclusion as 'Should I Believe In God Or Not?', but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know where to stand. Let's take Doom 3 as a case in point. iD had progressed so far into graphical development that John Carmack, chief designer on key iD titles since time began, had actually reached discussions with graphics card engineers on the kind of technology he needed to be in home PCs for Doom 3 to run. Games designers designing hardware too? Well, why not. After all, it only takes one look at the spectral lighting and per-pixel shading of Doom 3's environments to tell that its been worth it. And, indeed, the gameplay was slick and adrenaline-fused. But look at the Myst series. One of the biggest selling games franchises of all time, and the graphics are undeniably glorious to look at. Its latest installment takes this even further, with full animation and more interaction with the games environment. But many people would argue that the game is flat. For instance, you don't have to do much more than click everywhere, and only occasionally work out a pattern to things. These are, naturally, extreme examples from a platform where such conflicts don't usually occur. But look at the console world, and we see a far clearer picture. Nintendo. The grand master sage of the industry. Yes, we had precursors to it. Yes, we've had (arguably) better things since its Golden Age. But no, you can't dispute that it has left possibly the greatest mark on the gamers of this world. It was magnificent - the rise of the Famicom to the Super Famicom, or SNES to anyone west of Korea, is sure to be heralded as a turning point in the industry's evolution. It fought off (or at least battled strongly with) Sega in a (virtual) cosmic battle of epic proportions. And then Sony got involved. Not that this was a bad thing, necessarily. But the jump from 16-bit to 32-bit was a large one, especially when Sony promised much more than just a bigger number. The Playstation was born. The SNES began to drop. Nintendo had no choice but to announce the imminent N64 - with an even bigger number next to the -bit! Amazing! This, for most people, was the first choice between software and hardware. Here was the N64 promising number-crucnhing power that had never been heard of before. 64-bit processing? To those that knew what it meant, it had numerous majestic possibilities - and to those that didn't it merely sounded really damn cool. But then there was the Playstation, promising a lower bitrate but amazing games series, later including Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid - previous Nintendo front-runners. There they were, sitting on the benches. Did the people choose games or power? Well most people are aware of the answer - they chose both. The Playstation had a modern feel and, once it realised who to target, became popular with the new wave of gamers harshly dubbed 'the Mainstream'. Nintendo retained most of its afiocondos, and has since been labelled as the last refuge of the true gamer. It doesn't really matter - both groups of consumers fought with their wallets and the console war remained a dead heat. Was it hardware or software? No-one really knows, because no single console could be said to have performed better. Even the second generation console war has its share of consumers, albeit this time geared between Sony and Microsoft and sadly away from Nintendo.
But the next generation is coming now, and what of that? Already we are playing games where the grpahics are better than they need to be. Where will the advances be made next? Realistically modelled wind? An accurately-calculated weather system? At what point do aesthetic enhancements stop adding anything to a game? And so the Playstation 3, XBox 2 and N5 will not be fighting their battles on the circuitboards, but on the discs themselves.
Is this a bad thing? Well judging by some of the spurious sequels and worn-out genres scuffing around the shelves at the moment, quite possibly. If the games industry of the future is to be weighed on the quality of the games then we could be facing a decided lull in the coming few years. However it isn't all doom and gloom. While companies such as NVidia brush up their finishing touches to their latest range of 64-bit graphics cards, games developers are really pushing ahead with even the bleakest genres and gameplay styles.
On the one hand, you have games like Darwinia. Here we have a revolutionary game idea that blends a seamless transition of graphical styles with a gameplay never seen before. It's the brainchild of Digital Dreamscape, with postmodern stylings and the vibe of bedroom coders breaking from what they call the 'underground gaming scene' and into the brave new world of the next-gen. But you also have heartening stories of games such as Half-Life 2 and (potentially) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. These games are using the tired and deprived First-Person SHooter genre and not only giving them a facelift, but really pushing them into the new age.
Computers are growing up. They aren't games, they're barely entertainment. They're now experiences. The days of the pretty light shows are over, because everywhere we look are equally pretty light shows now. Now gamers will be given the chance to play properly. Some see it as a step forward, into a new generation of gamers and games. Others see it as a rose-tinted step backwards into the era of bedroom gaming where the ideas and content ruled, not the resolution.
Either way, games are changing. Very soon we'll be fighting on new battlefields - but this time it's how you fight, not what you fight with, that will determine whose side you are on.

Mass Production

Picture the scene. You’re a hardcore gamer (this might not be so hard for some of you), and Long Running Series Volume 23 is waiting for you at the store. You rush to buy it, run home and begin to settle into a fantastically involved session of stats, stories and special effects. Then you find that some corporate publisher has taken over your independent hard-working developers, the manual could fit inside a fortune cookie and your favourite characters are now being voiced by American teens – or aren’t there at all. Just whose mass market are we pandering to? At what point did the target market blur into mass market?
Gaming used to be – and sometimes still is – referred to as being for those with too much money and not enough life. Perhaps they're right - many gamers would proudly agree in fact - but whether or not gaming is a pointless hobby for boys trapped inside men's bodies, gaming was the refuge of the proud and the few. Those brave men who sat in the dark recesses of their own bedrooms and blazed their own path through the new territory of open source code and blocky graphics. Suggesting that gaming might be fun was like suggesting the Earth might be round in the sixteenth century. Actually doing anything related to gaming was like exploring the New World itself - in more than one way. Very soon, gamers had established themselves nicely and were reaping the rewards of their perseverance.
Back then, almost everyone was hardcore. There was no middle ground, because there was so little ground that it was impossible to offer any to people who were undecided. You were either in, or you were out. There was no casual Sims gamer to speak of, and there wasn't much of a mass market either - by definition, if you were a gamer you were the mass market. How do you segregate a market that is already so small?
The masses are very easy to attract though. The joining of the hardcore gamer and the mass market was necessary because, like civilisation itself, it can only truly progress through increased interest. If gaming hadn't grown, it would have been crushed by the rise of other markets . It's only choice was to try and accept and deal with the sugar-sweet musings of bandwagons and pop culture.
At first you had Mario. Then you had Crash Bandicoot. Now Mario is struggling to reinvent himself for the twelfth time whilst we're looking at Tak and the Power of Juju and Inane Platform Character 4 (possibly not a real game). The mass market slowly grew in size and strength until it had power over most of the releases. Take a look at the charts today and you'll see samey sports or driving games, poor attempts at licensing films and only occasionally a true gem somewhere. The mass market has allowed games to be made simply because they'll sell. Who really wants that?
Well the problem is that everyone, really, wants something like that. Mass Market gaming is what keeps us alive. Without the appalling attempts at Disney games or the contrived Sims add-on releases you wouldn't appreciate the true genius of other games. Where would Halo fit in? Where would Half-Life be made? Similar to great civilisations again, balance is the key. Mass Market games are the big things that let the little things happen.
It isn't all doom and gloom. We're bringing together two parties. Hardcore gamers are showing the mass market what an indulgent gaming experience really is, but similarly mass market gamers are teaching others to remember to have fun. For every adrenaline-fuelled Medal of Honour onslaught you've got to chill out on the Eyetoy - and for every wailing and flailing on Singstar you need to hop skip and jump your way through a level or two of Mario Sunshine. It's all about the balance.
People get offended when the Mass Market begins to take over. And not just offended - scared. Edge ran a cover story about the mass market's slow infection of the industry a little under a year ago, but the reality is far from this. The mass market needs to come of age, too. Yes, occasionally you get long running series that have been warped by the desires of bigger things. But similarly you get series like the Sims that try to 'grow up' too fast and alienate some of their followers (see The Sims 2). The two seemingly opposing sides of the gaming world need to come together and combine their aims and abilities to create an industry that is not simply targeting the lowest common denominator, but also interested in fun for all. Perhaps the next-generation is where this opportunity lies.

The Real Deal

"Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be, remember that. If reality was that much fun people wouldn't play games."

Scott Orr, Ea Sports (attr.)

Apart from a shameless, shameless product placement deal with Airwaves chewing gum I would say that Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a pretty good game. I like being a ghost, with my array of increasingly unlikely gadgets and weapons, and though SC:CT can be seen by many to be simply more of the same I don't think that that's entirely fair. The AI has been revamped, the interactions rethought and the graphics overhauled. But above all, it feels a little more realistic.

The light meter shows you how visible you are, the sound meter compares how much noise you're making to the ambient noise. Fabric tears, ripples, rustles. Darkness is your friend. Realism has been used to make the game more challenging. But still, when standing in a darkened corridor frozen to the spot as a guard walks right up next to me, I'm not seen. Ridiculous? Maybe. Smart design? Of course. Realism in games is quite a complicated thing...

Gamers have had a fetish with realism in games ever since 3D games really came to the fore. Before then, we'd always appreciated advanced in technology but we'd never fantasised over them. The jump in detail from, say, the NES to the SNES was something. But the jump from the SNES to the N64 was quite something else. Once gamers had got to terms with the thought that photorealism wouldn't always be the realm of science fiction they started to become very, very interested in the prospect of The Next Generation.

Realism soon infested all aspects of game design. Take a look at most press releases for games and the classic selling points are realistic graphics, realistic physics, realistic facial animation - the list goes on, not to mention becoming more absurd. Which is fine, for as long as they contribute to gameplay. The gravity gun in Half-Life 2 is a clever little thing, combining a love of physics with a love of smacking stuff around, but as realism gets further and further into the psyche of the average gamer we notice some dangerous trends appearing. At what point does realism stop being fun?

Let's take The XBox 360 for example. Next generation on the horizon, and already people are talking numbers. But that's all they're talking. One teraflop? It might sound impressive, but if all it is is chugging the graphics on a Pong remake, no-one's going to notice. Despite this, though, a recent survey on Gamesradar showed that over 30% of gamers are most interested in the hardware capabilities of a console, even over games.

But the realism isn't just graphics and horsepower, it's game-based too. Though we strive after realism its worth pausing and asking how far we want to take that. Halo 2, the sequel to Bungie's landmark FPS that, arguably, put XBox on the map. The physics engine was completely overhauled from the original, meaning Master Chief had weight and depth, the Warthogs had fully-functional rollcages and, most importantly, obscenely large explosions caused obscene amounts of carnage. Which is always nice.

So for Halo 3, are we looking for more physics, more shaders, more realism? It would seem that way. But realism has to stop before we have Warthogs stalling, guns jamming and 'shrapnel wounds' stopping people from running properly. Realism in games is fun when it means making the game real. Start making the world real and it starts to lost its sheen.

A final thought - Spore, the latest gem from genius designer Will Wright, looks set to be one of the most inventive and audacious games - ever. Start in Eden, end up as God. A sweet pitch and no mistake. But Mr. Wright knows that a game this clever needs to keep the fun things in life - killing, for instance, and space travel - and cut out the boring things - like keys. No-one likes keys. Realism is used to take the player on a phenomenal journey through the very essence of existence... but it's never used as an obstacle.

We can only hope that the mighty teraflop does the same.