JoshWoodzy wrote:

I feel I don't have to accept the fact that games will be discless in the future because I've become disconnected to gaming as a whole and concentrating on my own little corner of it. I feel I'm at an age where I'm starting to care less and less about games themselves, and just happy to see the companies I care about do well. I'll probably not play new games at all within a decade and just be happy I was a part of a great scene at it's peak.

See, I feel the opposite way at this point, though I can certainly understand your opinion, and I like that, especially because I believe we're roughly the same age. Even passively, as it's usually watching my wife play rather than playing myself, I feel that rather than being at it's peak, the video game 'scene' is currently enjoying it's 'awkward teenage' phase, where there's going to be a lot of hits and misses as it 'struggles to define itself', so to speak.

You had it's infancy and young childhood (First through early third generation) where it was relatively limited in it's expressive and comprehensive capabilities (kill screens, straightforward storylines, rudimentary and cartoony graphics [albeit with some exceptions, as you could have with any precocious child]).

Next came it's late childhood/tween years of improved comprehension/communicative abilities and expansion towards independent mobility and growth (fourth and fifth, with a growing emphasis on portability, improved graphics/storylines and overall more 'mature' content, added control complexity, not to mention a rapid upswing in societal integration [ubiquity, expanded player demographic and more 'acceptability' in the mainstream]).

Now, in the last ten years or so, right in the sixth/seventh generations, it's been, as I'd stated, in it's painful teen years, where it's jockeying with increasing real-life pressures and tasks, as well as rivalries with other teens (platforms: does it play movies/cds/get streaming downloads/allow for intercommunication between players and online multiplayer formats? Can it compete with smartphones/tablets/PCs?) and trouble with 'authority figures' (game piracy and content concerns, ones that'd caused some trouble during it's earlier years but weren't as much of a focus). It's got new avenues of expression (growing user-created content, non-standard controls like IR tracking/motion or voice control) and it's more style conscious (high-definition output, nearing far side of Uncanny Valley phenomenon graphics).

As far as I see it, the future's going to be a fucking blast, depending on the choices that get made when the video game field REALLY 'grows up'. There's wild potential, like AR overlay format, user(s)-defined events occurring in real-time that shape any particular game's overarching story, a complete absence of peripherals, etc. It's got me excited as fuck just thinking about it. And, just like peers who 'grew up with these kids', sometimes we have to let go of our preconceived notions as to how they should turn out, because children rarely end up exactly how everyone thought they would be. Still, in it's totality, the video game industry/movement/whatever is still, as far as I'm concerned, a pretty 'good' fucking kid. If it gets to grow up in a relatively organic fashion without too many people telling it what it has to do, I think we'll all be surprised where it goes from here on out.

JoshWoodzy wrote:

I definitely didn't mean the "peak" that I was speaking of was now, I meant the NES /SNES/90's PC Gaming era. My bad.

It's all good. I just can't see that as a peak of any sort, given how far things've come, unless you're kind of viewing things as a wave. Again, though, that's just a difference in opinion, and again, maybe it's just me, but I'll take Fallout 3 over Fallout 2 any fucking day of the week. Now, on another part of the subject:

Cameron wrote:

Syd Lexia wrote: Unless there's a huge price drop in games, pass. I'm not paying $60 for download-only games. A thousand times, this. There is no freaking way I'm spending that much for a game. If the next Xbox doesn't have a disc drive, then I'm moving over to Playstation (under the assumption that it will have a disc drive). I have no problem with having games only in a digital format, but the problem is that a lack of physical copies eliminates the possibility of getting games used, which is the only way I can buy games since college has made me dirt-poor.

I don't think, especially with the expansiveness of the US market demographic as well as the current and long-term depression/recessionary outlook of the US economy, coupled with the fact that there'd be a lack of physical media, that the companies could possibly justify maintaining prices like that. If you look at the cost of full DLC games such as Gotham City Impostors or even what they're offering new titles for as DLC vs. physical copy (seems to average about ten bucks even after a few weeks in terms of price difference), I'm almost positive it'd scale downwards as they wouldn't be dependent on brick-and-mortar retailers to move the product and wouldn't have physical shipping/production costs to offset. And I think that attitudes, such as your own, would be a firm indicator that if they tried to, their business model would be relatively fucked by consumer backlash.

I don't really think that

JoshWoodzy wrote:

Agreed. Now, when it comes to wanting to play Fallout 3 over Fallout 1 or 2, or any other sequel/reboot/re-whatever, I can understand that but don't agree. Games just felt magical back then. You felt so immersed in games when you were younger and nothing else seemed to matter. As an adult, I can't remember the last time I was immersed in a game like that and just feel like I'm grinding to hurry up and get to the end. Immersion is just a silly buzzword now it seems. Skyward Sword looked so fucking amazing in every single regard. If I would have seen that kind of shit as a kid, my mind would have fucking exploded. Now? It just felt like another Zelda sequel. That's what I mean when I feel like I'm becoming disconnected with gaming as a whole. Of course, I will always and forever be a Nintendo fan first and foremost over everything, even if I'm not buying every single game for it's current system. They will always have my support.

See, and I think it's pretty cool we can be on opposite sides of the spectrum on this, because it really shows that gaming draws all types. I loved Fallout, especially 2, don't get me wrong, it was quirky and definitely fun, but at the end of the day, I guess it just didn't have the same draw for me. There was more of a sense of detachment there, and maybe it was because of the viewpoint or the fact I was playing it on my parents' shitty computer, but compare that to how I reacted to Fallout 3 on the 360? I felt like, boom, I'm in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, bitches! It's much the same with Skyrim; magic or not, I've never had a videogame where I felt like I was watching a movie, or where I was constantly curious as to what'd happen next, or wanted to take pictures of the view from a certain mountain peak.

I dunno. Getting back on topic a little, I don't think I'd be horrendously disappointed if games went to a DL only venue from here on out, although it's nice to be able to trade them in for cash when I'm broke. I think at some point, though, and relatively soon, it's really going to be unavoidable, as we've got an entire generation who's never lived without the Internet reaching the age of majority.

Syd Lexia wrote:

Greg, I appreciate the indy scene. What I am talking about is the big budget studios, primarily. The big developers for the most part, are greedy and poorly managed. They spend ridiculous amounts of money making games, then use it as justification to rip off the consumer, whether it be through excessive DLC, Day One DLC, or re-releasing the same game over again with slightly more content. There is also this idea games don't have to be good. Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 weren't designed to be good, they are half-assed games that trade on the names attached to them. Companies trying to build franchises, and if they can't, they simply reboot their old ones and promise you the franchise will be "good like it used to be". Are there people out there doing exciting things with games? Absolutely. Is this reflected in the mainstream commercial industry? Not especially. Going back to what aeonic said again, because it really sticks in my craw, games are not going to better in 10 years. They made good games 10 years ago, they make good games now, and they'll make good games 10 years from now. But better? Absolutely not. Different? Yes. Better? No. I want to reiterate that games are NOT in their adolescence. They are in full-fledged adulthood. The question is, where do they go from here? Do they mature gracefully like Christopher Lee has? Or do they become a fat, obnoxious caricature of their former glory, like Robert DeNiro has? It could go either way. Hopefully it goes the Christopher Lee route.

I think, Syd, where the problem is is that I'm not saying games will be better in ten years; as much as I'm more a fan of current games, there's still some fucking classics that blow the dick off of anything out there nowadays, and there's always boatloads of shit churned out with the gems. I'll still always fondly remember when I accidentally erased my cousin's save state on FFI and had to play it for over thirty hours one weekend to get back to where he was at, or the time I first played Kickle Cubicle, or the epic adventure that was FFVII, things like that. If anything, I was indicating how different they'd be, and I still think that they've got a vast amount of room for growth, which is the reason I don't believe they're in their 'adulthood' yet.

Despite the advent of better technology, you're still playing on a piece of hardware attached to a television, as much as you were with an Atari 2600 (this is, for the moment, ignoring portables, which are effectively just hardware with a small screen, bells and whistles notwithstanding). My contention is that the medium of play itself is still evolving, and in another four or five generations, will be completely unrecognizable, even to those of us who haven't succumbed to dementia by then. As justdrop stated, and I fully believe as well, gaming seems to be replacing film. As you stated, games provide players with a means of interacting with a story that's otherwise static, like a film. The one thing that's missing from the gaming experience is direct, personal and meaningful interaction with the game environment (or at least the realistic simulated sensation of such); the Kinect/Wii/Move are changing that, for certain, but right now, it's still a baby step, and you're still shackled to a room and a television for the most part. Technologies like AR overlays or VR simulation or, fuck, I don't know, if you really want to get futurey, direct neurological simulated sensory imput, those are means of bridging that gap between partial/peripheral involvement and full-on immersion, an introduction of absolute fantasy storytelling into the mobile, physical world. That, to be honest, is where I think it's going, but I could be totally fucking wrong.