The Next 25 Years of Video Games
Let' just say it right now: Video games are going to dominate the freaking future. You'll see it in your own lifetime. We're warning you, though, it's going to get weird. Beginning with ...
2008:
Neverending Games, Sony' Model-T Matrix
Spore's Infinite Universe
Anything 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 hadn't actually seen it in action. In Spore, you start out 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 sounds like a ridiculous crack fantasy to any gamer who's 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 the game doesn't 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 where they become part of the Spore universe. Those other planets you get to travel to? They're all created by other gamers.
They're planning on half a million stars with millions of planets orbiting. When we say "infinite," we mean it. We're talking about a game you could literally spend the rest of your natural 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--will go by the wayside. Game makers won't 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 Home
Sometime in the Spring of '08 Sony will break 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 version of the real world and mill around with other gamers doing the same.
I don't think we can summarize the scale of this as well as the insightful experts at PrisonPlanet.com have HERE, with the headline:
SONY BRINGS REAL LIFE MATRIX A STEP CLOSER
SETS PRECEDENT FOR FUTURE ARTIFICIAL UTOPIAS
CONSTRUCTED TO ESCAPE HELLHOLE OF REAL WORLD
Hell, yes. If we were Sony, we'd 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, better-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 worst, 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, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
But know this: It will happen. The virtual utopia has a spot reserved in our future right next to the sex robot: People want it, and it' just a matter of working out the details.
What Will Suck About It
People 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 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 pouring tens of millions into development so you and your little friends have a place to hang out? No, they're 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 say they'll need 20 bucks to continue?
All that is just around the corner. Now, let' skip ahead a generation ...
so that big square thing from 2001 would be more like an invisible chip thing if idk... whatever.
Replythey are making computers out of atoms already. quantum computers
Replysomeone has a mad on for ps3
Replyd-bag
Well, it's 2012, and the 3DS has near-Wii-level graphics. I'd say a PS3-level handheld by next year isn't that far-fetched...
ReplyAnd the "companies make shitloads more on selling in-game content than selling the game itself" is already here. Free-to-play TF2 and the Mann Co Store, anyone? Not that I'm complaining; digital distribution is a great system. The only problem I have with Steam specifically is that they are literally the only platform that hasn't taken the vital step of making prepaid cards for people like me that don't have Paypal or a credit card (and don't make enough (read: are unemployed) to qualify for one). Even freaking Facebook has prepaids. Why, Valve, why do you refuse to do this? It's the most-often-requested feature on Steam Forums, for the love of Freeman!
This is perfect. Especially with the handheld. The PSP Vita is, supposedly, as strong/powerful as the ps3. Only, it's releasing a year early. 4G is about spot on as well.
ReplyI love how he talks about cell phone internet, since he wrote this in 2007. Now it's WAY better and faster and a lot of people play online games ON their cellphones.
ReplyThe Burger King guy is scarier than the girl... And i hope they don't release a PS4, i just got a PS3 yesterday.
ReplyFunny thing is we already have those sunglasses like things, it was released not so long ago, though it only works as a monitor, not as a console. My opinion is that by 2014 or something like that, those glasses thingies will become standard. No more TVs, you'll see movies, television and play videogames with those things.
ReplyThey should redo the article because Spore completely sucked.
ReplyAlso, PlayStation Home just turned out to be completely usless for everything except for dancing in people's faces for no apparent reason.
Next year they should re-do this article to see how the timeline works with the updates in technology.
ReplyIt's interesting (to me, at least) that some sections of the book of Revelations describe a scenario where all information is centralized.
Reply#6 would have been ludicrous even in 2007. I, along with most of you (I suspect), hoped against hope that Spore would have some depth along with its incredible breadth. But even if you didn't expect Spore's gameplay to be so shallow, I'm sure you knew Home would just turn out to be Moonbase Beta.
ReplyThe thing is, spore is still a great game, it's just the new kiddy look turned everybody off.
The "infinite world" thing is probably why Minecraft is so popular.
ReplySpeculation and conjectures. Although there's realistic and plausible advancement such as quantum computers, the idea of a sentient computer/robot and transferring your mind to a computer, or even the outlandish though that we're living in a simulation is all bunch of guesses made up to get attention. What if we're living in a simulation - can be brush off with- what if we're not. Robots have hardly reach our level of sentience yet we keep worrying they'll be come smarter and destroy us. The only chance that's happening is the programmer making a mistake eg :destroy all parasites.
Replyim sorry about your speculations, if we were living in a perfect simulation of real life, it would explain many things. And since it was "Perfect" No one would be able to tell.
Like my friend would say, thats what they would want you to think.
Didnt surrogate show this whole scenario?
ReplyNo, your body dies, your brain dies, the copy of your brain lives on.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesPeople seem to miss that point. It will sound and act just like the person, but it's not going to be that person. A copy. Just like a copy of an album. It's not the actual band playing inside your stereo, it's just a copy. It sounds like it, and it sounds damn good, but it's not the real thing.
Something kind of tells me that when we eventually do try to put ourselves in computers like that, the product is going to be something that will literally be sickening to the ones there to witness it.
Singularity is best understood as an atheist metaphysical system, than an actual advancement in computer sciences. Frankly, the plan sounds more like undeath than immortality.
you guys are thinking so limited. At that point, our combined ability to problem solve will be so unimaginable by today's standards that we will end death.
Ya'll need to brighten up.
It may not be relevant whether it's a copy or not. In a sense we are just copies of ourselves, given that we continually replace the cells in our bodies. We don't actually have any idea what makes the "real person". It may well turn out that the copy is just as valid and real as the original, making the whole idea of a difference pointless.
And Jordan.... that album analogy doesn't really work, the album is itself a copy, not the "real thing".
I don't play Playstation Home. Neither do my friends. It's actually very cool, and it's free, but it's not as addicting as, say other games. On the other hand...now I really want to play it.
ReplyI hate how things get smaller, sometimes i just like looking at massive tv screens, gaming rigs, etc. and say yes, this was a good idea
ReplyGaming systems,computers, and ipods get smaller, While TVs either get bigger or take over your sense of vision. Or at least that's what i think
The internet's anonymity turns people into dicks. Smelly, smell dicks.
ReplyYou know, the idea that we might live in a simulated universe is interesting, especially because we have NO f*****g WAY of proving it right or wrong. Like destiny, or god.
ReplyOr existence as we know it right now?
Interesting thought huh?