This week Michael takes a look at the development ceiling of hobby games and asks, "Is this all there is?"
Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Author: Michael Barnes
I think it’s very significant though that games like DUNE and COSMIC ENCOUNTER, both released in the 1970s when video games were at their crudest, most rudimentary level of development, still represent a sort of pinnacle of innovative, forward thinking design. There are still designers working today trying very, very hard to duplicate the successes of those titles directly or by incorporating gameplay concepts and mechanics into their own designs. If we look at those games as benchmarks of hobby game “technology”, then it becomes clear that we haven’t really strayed too far along the evolutionary path from them.
It was games such as those that really established the hobby games grammar, and it is becoming more and more evident that there may be only so far that the limited syntax and grammar allowed by the medium can take us- unless designers and publishers look beyond what is on the board and understand that it is the human interaction, the discreet and subtle interplay of people, emotions, and egos that can generate great game concepts and effectively move the medium into a new era of creativity.
One of the smartest things video game designers ever done was to make video games more cinematic. Cinema affects the emotions and the senses directly, and anyone can appreciate thrilling editing techniques, great sound design, or crisp dialogue whether they understand the nuts and bolts or not. The cinematic impulse is, outside of obvious production innovations, what really divides the video games of today with those of 20 years ago. They’ve invented new grammars and syntaxes and effectively blown through the ceiling that I felt when I packed the Xbox for away for good sometime in 2004. Now I’m just waiting for hobby games to figure out how to transcend the limitations of their medium and format and become something more than what they have been for the past 30 years with little actual progress.
