The Next 25 Years of Video Games.docx

1、The Next 25 Years of Video GamesThe Next 25 Years of Video GamesBy: Steve Woyach, David Wong October 02, 2007 Add to Favorites Let just say it right now: Video games are going to dominate the freaking future. Youll see it in your own lifetime. Were warning you, though, its going to get weird. Beginn

2、ing with .2008:Neverending Games, Sony Model-T MatrixSpores Infinite UniverseAnything we say about the future of gaming has to start with Spore, a game from Will Wright (The Sims, Sim City) that no one would have even believed possible if they hadnt actually seen it in action. In Spore, you start ou

3、t as a single-celled organism . and evolve into a creature of your own design . then form tribes . then cities . then planets . then interplanetary travel . which lets you visit other planets teeming with infinite varieties of alien life. Yes, guys, you can then build warships and wipe them out.This

4、 sounds like a ridiculous crack fantasy to any gamer whos ever dropped $60 on a game and blown through all 12 levels in eight hours. How the hell do you fit an infinite number of planets and aliens on a few DVD worth of data?The answer is a technique called procedural generation, which just means th

5、e game doesnt have to store millions of creatures, it just stores the methods by which they can be built. You, the gamer, make the creatures.Your malformed abominations, along with all the civilization and technologies that spring from your deranged imagination, are automatically uploaded online whe

6、re they become part of the Spore universe. Those other planets you get to travel to? Theyre all created by other gamers.Theyre planning on half a million stars with millions of planets orbiting. When we say infinite, we mean it. Were talking about a game you could literally spend the rest of your na

7、tural life exploring without ever reaching the end.Whether or not this particular game becomes a hit, this method of game creation is the inevitable future. A whole lot of what sucks about games right now-specifically, the huge art budgets that force publishers to cash in with shitty licensed games-

8、will go by the wayside. Game makers wont have to construct a whole digital universe; they can simply provide the blueprint and distribute the creation process to millions of people like you and me.But, what could wind up having an even bigger impact .PS3 HomeSometime in the Spring of 08 Sony will br

9、eak ground on the kind of virtual world that has been predicted by, well, about 40 percent of the science-fiction stories written in the last 50 years.It called PS3 Home and basically anybody with a PS3 console will be able to take a handsomer version of themselves into a cleaner, more-awesome versi

10、on of the real world and mill around with other gamers doing the same.I dont think we can summarize the scale of this as well as the insightful experts at PrisonP have HERE, with the headline:SONY BRINGS REAL LIFE MATRIX A STEP CLOSERSETS PRECEDENT FOR FUTURE ARTIFICIAL UTOPIASCONSTRUCTED TO ESCAPE

11、HELLHOLE OF REAL WORLDHell, yes. If we were Sony, wed put that shit right on a billboard. Not that this is a tough sell; every move mankind has taken toward a virtual community has drawn a stampede. From MySpace to World of Warcraft, the promise of being able to start your life over as a cooler, bet

12、ter-looking version of yourself has been irresistible. Look at the picture up there. No one will be fat in PS3 Home.So far, Sony has done an incredible job of convincing us not to buy a PS3 (It getting pounded by the Wii and Xbox 360 in sales.) but even if PS3 Home dies on the vine, it will, at wors

13、t, serve as the blueprint the next virtual world is built from. It could be the Model-T of what could, generations later, turn into something close to The Matrix. But, were getting ahead of ourselves.But know this: It will happen. The virtual utopia has a spot reserved in our future right next to th

14、e sex robot: People want it, and it just a matter of working out the details.What Will Suck About ItPeople are dicks.Check your inbox. How many of your emails are from friends, as opposed to spammers? How many of your female MySpace-friend requests are dummy pages set up for porn?Spore and PS3 Home

15、are still made up of people and therefore a certain percentage of those wondrous new universes will be composed of dicks. At some point you will travel to a wondrous new Spore world and find the creatures there have evolved to have hides covered in porn URLs.As for PS3 Home, do you think Sony is pou

16、ring tens of millions into development so you and your little friends have a place to hang out? No, theyre creating one of the greatest targeted-marketing opportunities in the history of advertising. How long until busty virtual girls are chatting you up, then interrupting flirty conversations to sa

17、y theyll need 20 bucks to continue?All that is just around the corner. Now, let skip ahead a generation .The Next 25 Years of Video GamesBy: Steve Woyach, David Wong October 02, 2007 Add to Favorites 2013:Badass Handhelds With Even Badderass Web ConnectionsA PS3 in Your PocketWell be at the generati

18、on of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox . 720 or whatever they decide to call it.Now, the gaming industry greatest obstacle has always been the fact that humans eventually have to go outside. This is why handheld gaming is such a big deal these days The best-selling game machine isnt the Wii, PS3 or 36

19、0. It the handheld Nintendo DS, by a huge margin.People need something to do in all those settings where, in the old days, they used to read a paperback (at the beach, waiting at the airport) and kids need something to do on car trips or in detention. Both groups tend to be avid non-readers.Come 201

20、3, you should have a portable as powerful as a PS3 or 360 (portables run about a generation behind), which is pushing the limit of what the human eye can even perceive on a little 4-inch screen.Now, saying handheld gaming is the future right after saying online gaming is the future may sound like a

21、contradiction. After all, wireless Internet access is spotty and cell phone Internet makes you feel like it 1997 all over again. But .The Miracle of 4GThis is where 4G comes in.4G is the upcoming standard that will give you a wireless connection at 100Mbit/s, anywhere. That more than 30 times faster

22、 than the best DSL connection you can get at home, kids.Above: The Nokia 4G phone concept, currently in theMake-an-awesome-Photoshop-of-it phase of development.Whatever the virtual-gaming universe looks like at that point, be it World of Warcraft 2 or the second generation of PS3 Home or a sprawling

23、 descendant of Spore, you should be free to access it anywhere, at any time, from your handheld.Also, this nearly-unlimited Web access will probably signal the end of physically buying games off the shelf. Electronic Arts is not going to see the point in selling boxed games for $60, when they can ha

24、ve you download it for a fee, then pay another monthly subscription fee to play it (the scheme that made Blizzard rich off World of Warcraft).What Will Suck About ItAs you may have already guessed, this era of download anything, anywhere, anytime also introduces the era of your mom screeching up the

25、 stairs after she opens up a $600 monthly gaming bill.That bill wont just be from little Timmy buying new games or paying subscription fees on existing ones, either. Itll be from buying in-game content. Already you Xbox-360 gamers can spend real-world money to get extra cars in Forza 2.It will be a

26、money-making bonanza for them. For us, well, some day well reach the final boss castle and meet a dragon who tells us that the only way to prove we have the heroic heart of the Chosen One is to give him 20 bucks.Of course, being gamers, well still spend most of our time wishing for the Next Big Thin

27、g. Which brings us to .The Next 25 Years of Video GamesBy: Steve Woyach, David Wong October 02, 2007 Add to Favorites 2018:Graphics Fired Directly into Your Eyeball, The End of the Game ConsoleSize Becomes a Non-FactorComputers tend to double in speed (or shrink to half their size) every two years.

28、If that continues, by 2018, well be getting close to the end of how small the circuits can get (or at least thats what they say) because at some point youre using circuits that are only one-molecule wide. Efforts to make them smaller than that will probably, like, make you travel back in time or som

29、e shit.From HEREBy that point though, a system quite a bit more powerful than your PS3 would fit on a device small enough that a dog could swallow it. So, were talking about gaming over a cell phone-sized device that just short of movie quality.Of course, the problem with making handhelds smaller an

30、d smaller is that youre making that screen smaller and smaller, too. What good are spectacular graphics on a tiny little screen you have to squint to see? The answer is, of course .Your Eyeball Becomes the MonitorVRD (Virtual Retina Display) is a system theyre working on at the University of Washing

31、ton that will project images right into your damned eyeball.The idea right now is for Heads-Up Displays for pilots and soldiers and such, but itll be just a matter of making it small enough and cheap enough for the rest of us. By 2018, a device, no more intrusive than a pair of sunglasses and a Blue

32、tooth, should be able to put you right into a virtual world that fills your whole field of vision. The graphics wont be real-life quality (thats further away than people think), but it should still be really fucking cool. That why we talk about the end of the home console here. Youll be getting to the point whe