Thirteen Years...
So it's my youngest daughter's birthday today.

It's also, coincidentally, my own, but since my daughter and I share a birthday and I'm no longer keen on having that bigger number follow my age, I prefer to focus on the fact that it is HER birthday. For me - being alive (barely) when man first walked on the moon is beginning to show its downside.

But it does afford me the opportunity to look back. And forward.

Thirteen years ago, Alex St. John and Microsoft threw me a hugely awesome birthday party. And they didn't even know they were doing it. There were freaking LIONS there, man. And togas. I started my career at what was probably the "big boom" in the video game industry, and I won't lie to you - it was pretty awesome. It was a time of massive transition - the entire industry and the face of video gaming was changing before our eyes, and it was exciting to be there in the middle of it.

I think that morning Michael Abrash had given a talk explaining what he and John Carmack had done to build the new Quake engine. On the bus on the way to the big party, heard some guys talking with a designer from the Atari 2600 days. And they were all talking about how amazing the world of videogames had changed in just a little over thirteen years (since the release of the original Pitfall! cartridge). I remember thinking how it didn't seem like that long ago, and reflecting on how amazed I was at how much video games - and the industry - had changed since then.

The next day, in Microsoft's post-CGDC DirectX conference, I saw some things that blew my mind. A vision of the future that made me think William Gibson's and Neal Stephenson's technology were now old hat. A glimpse into the amazing future of gaming. A future that now appears relatively quaint. Voice over the internet! Real-time Internet gaming! Massively multiplayer games with hundreds - maybe even thousands - of players playing together in real-time? Wow - that was amazingly cool. The technology - which I had tinkered with a little in the past - was finally becoming mature.

And here we are today:

* Graphics technology is - well, amazing. Not as amazing as it could be. But compared to what Michael Abrash was remarking about in his talk this morning thirteen years ago, it's pretty incredible.

* Online gaming. We can play some pretty impressive multiplayer 3D games in a web browser today. Things I wouldn't have thought would be possible back in the mid 90's. And of course, World of Warcraft has taken over the world of gaming. We'll see if the newly announced OnLive thing actually works.

* Online Distribution and the rise of Casual / Indie / Niche Gaming: In the early to mid 90's, we saw the rise of "shareware" as an alternative to what was otherwise the Only Game In Town. You found yourself a publisher willing to put your game in a box and distribute it to the stores. But shareware was still very much a "back door" that didn't work very well. Today - wow. One thing it has done is allowed game makers to reach "niche" markets that the publishers no longer wanted to serve. Thus we have had the rise of casual games, and we have several "dead" genres make modest comebacks - such as graphic adventure games and wargames.

* Indie Games on Consoles - I really didn't think I'd see this happen. At best, I thought some publisher might go slumming and produce some kind of "indie games pack" shovelware on disc, but not the ability to have downloadable "indie" games on the major consoles like we do now.

* Gaming Goes Mainstream: It was already getting there in 1996, but it's pretty well established now. Maybe some old fogies in public office don't realize it yet, but pretty much everybody plays video games now. Maybe not Gears of War, but they are gamers - a round of Solitaire on the computer, a couple of hours a night in World of Warcraft, online Poker, Wii Fit, Rock Band, Virtual Villagers, or good ol' traditional hardcore gamer fare with blood, guts, and busty women... games are everywhere and part of our culture now.

* The diminishing of non-online hardcore PC games: I've always been a computer gamer at heart, from the time we had to type in the code ourselves (and hey, I guess I still do). The immediacy, the flexibility, the... keyboard and the mouse! There are certain kinds of games that just work better on the PC than they do on the console, and those are the kinds I love the most. But the consoles have an overwhelming marketing force working for them, and they've managed to woo the older hardcore audience - once the domain of the PC - to their camp.

* The staggering increase in piracy: Those technological advancements have also made it trivial for people to steal other people's hard work - remotely and anonymously. Piracy has always been a problem, but it has definitely grown to staggering proportions. I believe that there is a causal relationship between this growth and the diminishing of non-online PC games.

* The rise (and hopefully fall) of "Strong" DRM: The attempt by mainstream publishers to not only clamp down on piracy, but also to further restrict the rights of customers has hit some rocks. If the latest moves by EA are any indication, this may be an idea that is going to give way to a "kinder, gentler" approach in future years.

So having pretty much grown up with videogames and seen so much of the technology and culture change, I ask myself, "What are things gonna look like in another thirteen years?"

Considering how much I didn't really anticipate back then, I'm not sure I can really guess. I expect online distribution and online gaming to continue their current trends - actually replacing brick-and-mortar as the primary means of game distribution within two console cycles (as it is already doing for PC games). I think the way we purchase games may shift a bit more, but I don't know what that will look like. I think something is gonna give on the piracy front, but I'm not sure how that will work out yet, either.

I think the advances in graphics - while still on-going - will be less dramatic. I think the Wii has proven to the industry that the fanciest, most realistic graphics are not the guarantee of success that they once were.

Gaming communities will be a bigger and bigger deal. Gaming is increasingly becoming a social exercise - even in single-player games. Again, what form that will take in thirteen years, I can't predict.

Oh, yeah. And the indies. Indie gaming is growing. The barriers to entry are down. The big publishers aren't even making a pretense of maintaining a stranglehold on distribution anymore. Instead, they are trying to embrace it and cash in. I see the growth - and the problems - continuing.

Beyond that - I just hope its a lot of fun.

Labels: retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:54 AM (Permalink)