Future of Gaming

Am I the only one who believes that the raising bar of next-gen console games will eventually die out? I would think that the raising devolpment cost vs. profit of "next-gen" gaming will not only turn down some gamers but force developers to emphasize certain aspects(graphics) over others in order to "Advertise" their products.

Is this decline destined? A set economic mechanism to prevent the ongoing evolution of gaming for the masses? Of course one can argue this "evolution" will always be working by forcing developers to realize high defintion realism isn't necessarily better than some art styles in gaming. Am I raving mad? Or do my predictions hold some water?

As long as you have Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo battling for a larger gaming marketshare, games will keep improving over time. If one of them takes over and "wins" the console wars, we'll all lose because they will no longer have an incentive to keep making things better.

We have competition to thank then. I just hope these companies won't have to risk bankrupcy in order to provide decreasing prices.:P

Even if one company wins the console wars (which won't happen) there are still hundreds of developer companies and even more third party developers. If game dev companies get lazy then the open source market will call them on it.

OpenGL, ODE, Havok, DarkBasic... allow 3rd party people to make huge advances in the game industry and will continue to push it along.

In my opinion games are getting better, not worse even as they focus more on graphics. Good stories are key for a game to take off now. Remember, game development companies are teams and there is usually maybe one or two graphics specialists on that team, plus maybe two or three modelers. The rest are working on the engine, AI, and story.

The graphics might advance but not cheesy storylines, the graphics will always advance limitless, bump mapping is the whole jazz right now but soon bump mapping will be replaced with paralax mapping which makes textures look 3d, the graphics will just keep getting better but don't expect the gameplay to keep up.

I honestly would rather see gameplay improve, the graphics are already good enough for me, you can get better but gameplay is what makes a game fun.

Graphics are almost unlimited in what is displayed. There are still a lot of advancements to go though, whoever solves the problem of chromatic reflection will get his name on the algorithm. Refraction still has to be done with raytracing and therefore not able to be put in games.

What I'm looking forwards to soon though is dedicated physics cards. As good as the Havok engine is, it's slow and still very restricted. It can't do cloth or liquid in real time, I can't wait to see better simulations in games.

The storylines and gameplay are getting more sophisticated all the time. Many game companies have professional sci-fi writers on their payroll.

Yes !!
PPU's (physics processing units) are going to rock, once they get cheap enough (and have sufficient demand)
they'll do for realism what GPU's have done for real-time graphics

That, and ray-tracing I think is where high-end games are going

nVidia & Intel are also butting heads over hybrid CPU / GPU processors, as well - so we may have hybrid multi-core units sometime soon

having said that, Nintendo have shown that good, old fashioned (and cheap) fun to play games have more clout than anything

PC games are in something of a limbo at the moment, with no-one wanting to commit too heavily in anything new
- DX10 has largely petered out due to vista
- OpenGL, while on a par, and in some areas surpassing DX, is overdue for an API breaking rewrite with version 3.0 (LongPeaks), and developers in the DX camp seem reluctant to adopt it at the moment, instead opting to stick with aging DX9

This has left the door wide open for consoles and cute portable devices to woo the public

But yeah,
realism & advanced AI (from Accelerated physics cards) and hybrid processors would seem to be the way forward

It'll be interesting to see if any AI API shows up. Right now every game has a separate AI system, even though large chunks of the code are usually very similar. I think AI should go the way of graphics and physics and game dev community should create an AI package that the developers can use and customize as they'd like.

I don't like the idea of hybrids because they seem like they will be difficult to program for. Similar to the PS3's cell processor. In theory it's way beyond the power of the XBox, however there is still no way to harness the full power of it because no one knows how.

Well said Ynot about Nintendo, the Wii has no next-gen hardware in it. Fun games don't rely on graphics.

3.0 is way overdue. It was supposed to be out last year. Hopefully it will come out soon, they have finally gotten rid of the fixed pipeline so I think DX developers will be happy with it.

I'm curious to see if the iPhone/iTouch shows up as a competitor in the handheld gaming market. In terms of power it's far ahead of the DS and PSP, and Apple just released the developer's kit today. The three axis accelerometer makes it great for certain types of games.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ninja9578

I don't like the idea of hybrids because they seem like they will be difficult to program for. Similar to the PS3's cell processor. In theory it's way beyond the power of the XBox, however there is still no way to harness the full power of it because no one knows how.

---

Agreed
the internal designs of CPU's & GPU's are very different
as such, both require specific types of memory

There's already problems physically fitting main memory close enough to the CPU on motherboards (to keep latency down) without a hybrid needing a second bank of graphics-only memory as well

I can see a market in the mobile world for hybrids
but it's purely a space saving exercise

also, I can see a need for them in specialized hardware
(large scale, highly parallel-able number crunching operations would benifit from hybrid processors - but this is a niche market)

plus, PCI-Express has enormous bandwidth headroom
the most demanding graphics cards today only use a quarter of the bandwidth offered by one PCI-E slot

PCI-E is hugely future proof, so I don't see GPU's (or PPU's for that matter) moving away from cards anytime soon


*edit*
just looked it up, cause I couldn't remember the figures

PCI-E 2.0 has a max bandwidth of 128 Gibabits per second
by contrast, AGP 8x has a max bandwidth of 17 Gigabits per second

Agreed, it's possible that the mobile market will use them, those devices are so customized anyway though it's not really a change.

I think fear will keep the market from getting in a rut. There are three console manufacturers right now, but at least 3 other companies that I can think of that could produce one if they wanted to (Apple, nVidia, and Sega).

The current console makers don't want any more competition in an already tight market so they will try to not only stay ahead of each other, but out of reach of someone who wants to enter the market.

As said before, the future of the gamin market will be the physics card. Things look real, now it's time to make them act real. Now-a-days if you're playing a slayer game and the other team goes into a house you've got no choice but to follow them and possible walk into an ambush. Wouldn't it be cool if you could take a rocket launcher and put a hole in the side of the house and surprise them? Of maybe take a flamethrower and burn the house down, smoking them out and bringing them into your own ambush? That's the future of gaming.

I just wonder how people are going to improve their consoles. I mean, games look almost real now. Next-gen they should be either insanly close or right on it. I mean, what are they going to do after that? I mean, what else is there besides making things for the console itself?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by slayer

I just wonder how people are going to improve their consoles. I mean, games look almost real now. Next-gen they should be either insanly close or right on it. I mean, what are they going to do after that? I mean, what else is there besides making things for the console itself?

---

There are always improvements to be made, especially in gameplay. Realism isn't the only thing, in fact, some games are too realistic and become boring and dull to play. While I absolutely love the new GTA IV, I still miss the old more cartoony and absolutely ridiculous GTA style.

Also, once they've got graphics nailed, they can start implementing more styles of gameplay into a single game. You know, so you can have like a game where you can be a commander RTS style, or you can be a soldier FPS style, or you can be an omniscient God Black and White-esque or Spore like. The possibilities are endless. Also, let's not forget virtual reality games still have a long ways to go yet, and the new game devices that actual read electrical signals from your brain so you can control certain aspects of the games with your thoughts, like being able to focus on an object to pick it up and move it around. There was a really interesting video about this, but I can't find it, I saw it about a year back now....

As the gaming market increases, and the money flow into the industry increases, so will the quality (and price) of video entertainment. I do agree that we're at a point right now where innovation and evolution of next generation consoles and PC's will only be so much, we've already hit a pinaccle that our current technology can handle.

Just to throw my 2 cents in. I think the quest for accurate physics is complete bullocks in the long run. Accurate physics does not make the game fun, in contrast, it more often hampers game maker's creativity and style.

Lets picture a perfect physics engine, destructible everything.

Now lets look at the 2nd law of thermodynamics, everything moves towards equilibrium. Essentially, this means that in a "perfect game" everything just moves towards being the same, best represented by a pile of rubble that used to be a fun, well designed map.

The best games are ones that simulate physics in ways that make it fun. The same thing applies to art. Why has anime become so popular even though the detail and realism are actually crap? It's well stylized.

Stylized art > full realism
Fudged physics > real physics

Graphics can always get better. While it's true that we can do photorealistic graphics, it takes minutes to do a single frame. Games are not photorealistic. Color reflection, refraction, true shadowing, and true reflections are still impossible in games. Next-gen is anything but realistic.

An everything destructible game won't end up in a pile of rubble. For most buildings it would take all of the weaponry in the game to level it, it's not like you are given huge bombs in gameplay. What's a rocket launcher going to do to a bunker?

Physics won't get there any time soon, but I would like to see realistic fluid and clothe simulation in the next generation of consoles as well as realistic air flow currents. Smoke looks okay in current games, but it doesn't behave right. I did my senior thesis on fluid dynamics and it could easily be done in real time for air.

Voice interaction will probably be included very soon. Imagine if you're with a group of soldiers. In games now they do what their AI tells them, which is usually go towards an objective. What if suddenly a ton of enemies show up? Right now they still move forwards, but soon I think we'll be able to yell "retreat" and the voice recognition system will change the type of AI to move back.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by arby

Just to throw my 2 cents in. I think the quest for accurate physics is complete bullocks in the long run. Accurate physics does not make the game fun, in contrast, it more often hampers game maker's creativity and style.

Lets picture a perfect physics engine, destructible everything.

Now lets look at the 2nd law of thermodynamics, everything moves towards equilibrium. Essentially, this means that in a "perfect game" everything just moves towards being the same, best represented by a pile of rubble that used to be a fun, well designed map.

The best games are ones that simulate physics in ways that make it fun. The same thing applies to art. Why has anime become so popular even though the detail and realism are actually crap? It's well stylized.

Stylized art > full realism
Fudged physics > real physics

---

Funny you say that. I remember when the Ragdoll physics engine first came into use. Everyone was so happy because you could blow bodies around and stuff. Sometimes the video game industry tries to be a little bit more than what it is, an entertainment industry. Not to say cinematic games aren't fun, but sometimes you should focus more on the gameplay, then on photo realism and stuff.

We need CO-OP games and consoles that can handle players on a mass scale...like 200 people.

I would love to play some GTA game with 200 peopl XD That would be insane!

Also, gameplay > graphics...so once people start getting the graphics down, they should get better gameplay. Although the gameplay should come first and then the graphics!

I think gaming will continue to advance and advance and advance until it's virtual reality on such a level that it is pretty much 100% lifelike, then gamers will be vegetables and refuse to return to the real world, and then there'll be a big war about it, and we'll wipe ourselves out.

Anyway that's what I think.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/reload.png

I'd also like to see a mass amount of people in one game together. We need better interwebz for that to happen I'd imagine. I think it would get too frustrating and chaotic if there were two teams fighting against each other. Instead, maybe it would be massive co-op against huge numbers of AI monsters. Whatever the future brings, it's gonna be sweet.

Wait 'till the day we get VR games which we play while sleeping.

That won't happen until internet speed gets much much higher. Massively multiplayer games only work now because there is a centralize computer running it. Doing it with hundreds of Xbox's would shoot pings sky high and make them unplayable. That needs to be fixed before huge games like that.

Improved AI would be nice. The problem is (as I've said before) there is no standard for AI and every single game has it's own system. Someone needs to build a huge AI API. Dammit, if I was getting a masters I would do it as my thesis.

The problem is that there are game specialists and AI specialists and they almost never overlap. Modern AI is not the same as game AI, and there is very little overlap. Game AI is much simpler and is usually a layer-fail AI system instead of a weighted move AI system.

I'm teaching this summer so I'll have a lot of free time... maybe I'll try and get some of my sourceforge friends to get together and start an open source AI API. Huh, would require a lot of callbacks to the physics engine to be registered :?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

Wait 'till the day we get VR games which we play while sleeping.

---

:eek:
http://www.dreamviews.com/

Makes me think of what they did with Crysis, just good graphics and moderate gameplay. Although they are developing a headset that can read your mind.