SAN FRANCISCO—The "O's" have it here at the Game Developer Conference, where a pair of Kickstarter-funded ventures—Oculus VR and Ouya—wrestled the spotlight away from the game industry's biggest guns this week.
With nothing new emerging from the Microsoft and Sony camps regarding each company's highly anticipated next-gen console, a pair of upstart hardware platforms took center stage. Oculus VR's Oculus Rift virtual reality headset was the runaway star of GDC, demo-wise. Ouya didn't actually have a booth at the show but might have made the week's biggest news with Thursday's off-site unveiling of its $99, Android-based game console and the announcement that units will be available to the general public on June 4.
How popular has the Oculus booth been at GDC? The line to test drive the mech combat game Hawken on the Rift was at least a hundred strong for the entire show—two-hour wait times were not uncommon and I personally witnessed people literally running to the Oculus booth to get a head start on the line when the exhibition floor opened at 10 a.m. Pacific on Friday.
GDC: Sights and Scenes From the Show Floor
I finally managed to get a brief tilt at the Rift—you can check out my hands on with Oculus VR's developer kit, which appears to have been subtly improved in the several months since PCMag's Will Greenwald demoed an earlier prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
It was interesting to watch the buzz for the Rift grow over the course of the week. On Wednesday, when the exhibition floor opened at GDC, most folks I spoke with hadn't even heard of the virtual reality platform. By Friday, just about all of my informal chats with attendees included a mention of the Oculus Rift, with many lamenting that they simply didn't have the time to wait for a demo.
When I finally resolved to endure the long, snaking line outside the Oculus VR booth, the excitement was palpable. My linemates and I discussed the possibility of getting physically sick while strapped into the Rift—a persistent rumor that thankfully proved false.
The consensus was that this technology was mere months from going mainstream, or at least that it should be. We decided that once it did hit, it would only be a matter of time before the Rift or something like it became a plot device in a TV crime show, where some headgear-sporting VR gamer got killed by an assassin the victim never saw or heard enter his apartment.
The story of the Ouya at GDC, meanwhile, was very different. Curiously, most developers I spoke with about the console offered up a variation of "meh" with a bit of qualified interest. That might have been a function of Ouya's lack of a presence at the actual show, but the apathy I encountered made me wonder if Ouya's popularity with the tech press isn't being matched in the dev community.
Ouya, like Oculus VR, is finally shipping dev units to its Kickstarter investors. But while Oculus is now in the phase of broadening awareness of its platform by showcasing it at an event like GDC, Ouya seems to be playing to a more restricted audience as it gets ready for general release.
Ouya demos have been available at private events, and backers who've received dev kits and now units have obviously been putting the platform through its paces. But we haven't seen the console in a free-for-all environment like the one Oculus VR braved at GDC this week.
Different Strategies
It's an interesting contrast in strategies, particularly since it's the Ouya, mostly because it is a simpler platform, which is far closer to volume production for a mass market.
In a blog post announcing the shipping of dev units, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman indicated that the company is banking on feedback from its early backers receiving dev units to help get the console as ready as possible for retail availability before taking a broader marketing approach.
"This is only the beginning. Today begins an exclusive preview period as we gear up to launch in June. We'll continue to add features, refine the user interface, and keep building the software as we head toward our retail launch—now announced for June 4," Uhrman wrote, adding that Ouya will use such feedback opportunities as a coming Reddit "Ask Me Anything," or "AMA," to help "prepare to launch to the masses."
Certainly, with more than 100 games already available on the Ouya, the availability of TV shows and movies on the console, and a named price and release date, this is a platform that's on the very brink of being in your or my living room. The Oculus Rift isn't there yet and it's tough to say when it will be—but judging by developer buzz, it's got game industry insiders as excited as they've been about something truly new since the debut of the Wii.
The 10 Most Irritatingly Impossible Old-School Video Games
In the old days, you didn't come back to a game again and again for anything as fancy as online multiplayer or user-created content. No, you came back because the games were freaking impossible. That was the only way game designers of the Nintendo Entertainment System and SNES days could extend the play time: through mindless, frustrating repetition.
These are the 10 games so infuriating, their very mention makes the hairs stand up on the back of our necks.
#10. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
The premise:
A ludicrously undersized boxer makes his way through a swarm of opponents who use the unwise strategy of fighting with a distinctly repeating pattern. All of this is done for the chance to lose horribly to Mike Tyson.
Why it was worth playing:
The first-person boxing was unique in 1987 (actually, how often have you seen it since?), unless you count the arcade version of the same game. It was genuinely fun trying to crack the various exotic underlings that stood between you and the champ. And, after a tough day, there was something deeply satisfying about mercilessly pounding upon hapless Glass Joe, who always seemed to be in the ring against his will.
Look at him, it's like he thinks there's a guy out in the audience with a rifle on him.
Also, in an era when other sports games were occupied by generic placeholders (not even team logos were represented), Tyson's celebrity endorsement was pretty cool. Seeing that crazy bastard step into the ring as the final boss really meant something.
Why it was infuriating:
While the early opponents were sometimes challenging, you could still find their weakness (hmmm ... that inconspicuous 'X' on his stomach, perhaps), and after that it was just a matter of timing your punches.
But, when you finally made it to Tyson (or "Mr. Dream" if you bought the game after Tyson's title defeat to Buster Douglas), no amount of Rocky-inspired runs through the city were going to save you. Mac's punches have about as much effect on the champ as a stiff breeze, which doesn't stack up well against his ability to send your teeth flying with little more than a mean thought.
Basically you had to withstand a series of withering blows from Tyson, dodging each with perfect precision (if any of his punches landed, you were done) while waiting for a window of opportunity about a quarter-second long to strike back.
Saddest moment:
Watching Mac crash to the mat following a thunderous right hook by Tyson and knowing that it was time for him to "fuck you 'til you love it." Then, realizing that to get back there you have to box every fucking one of those guys again. No saves in this game, boys and girls.
#9. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The premise:
That wacky Shredder is out to ruin everybody's day and cause some good ol' fashioned chaos again, and only a group of hideous, sewer-dwelling monstrosities are there to stop him.
Why it was worth playing:
In 1989, every young boy in America was legally obligated to spend at least two hours a day pretending to be one of the Turtles, and another two arguing with friends over which one was superior (Leonardo, in case you're wondering). It was the first chance to play as the gang in a video game and, at that age, it seemed pretty awesome. Also, the enemies appeared randomly each time, so no level played the same way twice (why doesn't every game do that?).
Why it was infuriating:
The game had some general weaknesses. The fun beat-'em-up platform was interrupted by annoying surface levels, and the ridiculously unequal weapon strengths made playing as anyone other than "I can kill from across the room" Donatello seem like a waste of time. You didn't get to choose, though, you just rotated through the Turtles as they died. All of this might have been overcome by the sheer Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-ness of it all, if not for one stage: The Dam.
The Dam level required you to try to beat the clock through a sprawling maze in order to defuse the bombs, which were prepared to unleash the fury of the Hudson River. See that pink seaweed shit? The stuff with an opening barely big enough for a mutated turtle to pass through? It killed you. It was ... electrified somehow. The science in the game wasn't all that accurate.
Setting aside the terrible example this set forth of telling kids the Hudson was safe to look at, let alone swim in, the failure to defuse the bombs resulted in an immediate game over, no matter how many Turtles were still alive. The margin for error was about one pixel wide and half a second long.
Saddest moment:
While it would be easy to pick on The Dam some more, we're going to have to go with the first time you make the mistake of running into one of the foot soldiers' rides while walking on the top level. You learn it doesn't just hurt you, it fucking flattens you.
Next Turtle, please.
#8. Mega Man
The premise:
Mega Man is a world-saving robot bent on destroying evildoers. Also, he consumes their souls so he can absorb their powers.
Why it was worth playing:
Mega Man is also one of the most popular video game characters ever created. It was one of the first games to include the method of "winning" new weapons and abilities as the game progressed. Nearly all of the game-play mechanics that would define the series were found here, in the original game.
Why it was infuriating:
We said "nearly" all of the game play was there. A whole lot of the features you saw in the sequels were put there to make the game easier, because the first one was nothing short of sadistic. Many of the cool upgrades were often borderline useless outside of one specific boss they were designed to be used against. Also, some of the jumping puzzles were downright evil.
And, as is unthinkable now but was common then, you couldn't save. Every time you turned on the machine, you were greeted with the same fucking levels, which made failure a hundred times more infuriating. Every misstep meant you were about to lose a couple more hours out of your life.
Saddest moment:
As aggravating as the game could be to play, there is no more embarrassing moment in a gamer's life than the time he has to put cold hard cash on the desk, point to this game box ...
... and say, "I want that. That is right up my alley."
#7. Solomon's Key
The premise:
Demons have been accidentally let loose, and it's up to Dana to delve through a series of puzzle rooms to retrieve Solomon's Key in order to banish the demons back from whence they came, allowing the locals to return to their happy lives of magically floating blocks and goofy clothes.
Why it was worth playing:
At its heart, this is basically a puzzle game, where a lot of the challenge was in moving and creating colored blocks. That sounds boring as hell, but there was a real sense of reward for solving the puzzles. This made us feel smart and dulled the sense of inadequacy we felt on a day-to-day basis. There were also lots of secrets to uncover, including multiple endings. It was advanced stuff, for the time.
Why it was infuriating:
The makers of Solomon's Key were clearly Satanists. They seemed determined to make sure the key would remain safely away from Dana's clutches, and to ensure the demons would be left free to pillage and rain destruction upon the quivering, pixilated masses. Dana is far from the world's toughest gaming hero and always seemed moments away from death. Meanwhile, his opponents often enjoyed the luxury of unlimited re-spawning.
The levels (and there were more than 60 of the bastards) were often designed so that it was entirely possible to, through bad luck, get trapped in the level with no ability to progress. You were left to commit Hara-Kiri or wait for the final cruelty to take over when Dana's timer ran out. Just like the real world, kids!
Saddest moment:
Retrieving the key, only to be told you had failed to open up all 15 hidden levels, and as such, hadn't truly defeated the game. We're not sure how many million copies of the game were sold, but we're guessing about five people in the history of the world have seen the "real" ending.
#6. (Super) Empire Strikes Back
The premise:
There were some sci-fi films made in the '70s and '80s called the Star Wars trilogy (Google it; they had the actor from Firewall in them). This game was based on the second, and best, of those films.
Why it was worth playing:
This came out on two systems at the same time in 1993, the NES and the Super NES. Both had multiple game-play styles and included settings from the films.
The SNES version (right) looked less like shit.
But, both versions were as hard as brass balls.
Why it was infuriating:
When sitting in the theaters for Empire, we can only assume the designers were intently ogling their tub of popcorn and not the screen, as they left the theaters with the impression that Luke Skywalker was incapable of functioning as a member of society, let alone as a universe-saving demi-God. The game presents you with awkward controls and requires you to find force powers. All this means it takes a massive effort just to get Luke to kill that stupid probe droid.
By 1993, gaming had advanced to the point where long-ass levels were the norm, but the whole concept of a "checkpoint" had eluded this game's creators. If you died--even at the boss--you had to drag your sorry ass all the way through entire level again.
In the end, though, the sheer impossibility of the game's design may have prevented substantial property damage by Star Wars fans. If they'd progressed, they'd have reached the part where (in the NES version) Luke rescues Han, kills Boba Fett, and, in an act of Star Wars blasphemy, defeats Darth Vader in a light saber duel. We aren't making that up.
They never brought out a Return of the Jedi game for the NES. Well, we're thinking that's why. The Empire game fucked up the storyline to the point that there was nothing for a Jedi to return from.
Saddest moment:
Discovering that crouching allows Luke to put a little extra into his jumps, and realizing that the once-menacing star pilot has been reduced to nothing better than a platform-hopping, overweight plumber.
#5. Ninja Gaiden
The Premise:
The entire Ninja Gaiden series is based around the general principle that ninjas are really, really cool, and that games made about ninjas could be counted on to be likewise. As some semblance of a storyline is required, we learn that Ryu has been sent on a quest by his father, who is killed in one of the NES' best introductions.
Why it was worth playing:
You aren't going to find a lot of people arguing that Ninja Gaiden is anything shy of awesome. The game's titles translates to "Ninja Story" and makes good on its primary promise, by giving the main character a mask and sword and physical abilities beyond those of a non-ninja human being. Also, you have to appreciate that at least some semblance of thought was put into plot, which cannot be said of all ninja-related games.
Why it was infuriating:
You also aren't going to find a lot of people who can lay claim to having beaten Ninja Gaiden, either. The enemies encountered are bad enough, but the game featured some of the most ludicrously difficult jumping challenges found in 2-D platforming, thanks to the required use of Ryu's wall climbing ability.
There is no letting up from the bosses once you reach them. Despite this, the greatest frustration encountered will come at the hands of birds. We aren't entirely sure where Tecmo went to read up on ninjas, but wherever it was, they came away with the impression that it's physically impossible for a bird to cross a ninja's path without angrily knocking him down a chasm mid-jump.
Saddest moment:
Triumphantly making it to the game's final stage, defeating two bosses and watching your just-revived father get shot to death, only to die yourself at the hands of the final boss. Then you're propelled back to do it all again, trapping Ryu in an unending emotional roller coaster that would surely have driven him quite mad.
#4. Ghosts and Goblins
The premise:
The brave knight Arthur must make his way through the titular ghosts and goblins in order to rescue--you guessed it--a princess in distress.
Why it was worth playing:
It's pretty apparent that a platformer about rescuing a princess can be successful, as there was another franchise about two brothers which operated with a deal of popularity on the very same premise. Add in the horror angle and you had a pretty cool, more grown-up Super Mario Bros.
Why it was infuriating:
Ghosts and Goblins is essentially a lifetime achievement recipient, as the forbearer to a series of equally impossible games. Many of the upgrades available for Arthur weren't really upgrades at all, offering an increase of damage at the expense of the actual ability to hit an enemy with it. This was hardly helped by the ADD-inspired movement patterns of the enemies in the game, which took only one attack to reduce Arthur from an armored knight ...
... to a cowering oaf in a pair of white men's briefs.
A second hit would send him to the grave and the player to the start of the level.
All of this pales in comparison to the primary motive behind shattered controllers: Ghosts and Goblins creators had the audacity to use realistic physics. In video games up to that point, when you jumped you could change direction in midair. Not here. If you left your feet, you were going where you were going, so you better fucking deal with it.
Fuck.
Saddest moment:
Any time spent between the first moment an enemy hit you on a stage and the time you died. As demoralizing as it is to sit down to play a game knowing full well that you aren't going to beat it, simultaneously spending half that time in your underwear is downright humiliating.
#3. Friday the 13th
The premise:
Video games based on popular movies would probably be pretty popular themselves.
Why it was worth playing:
In an '80s gaming world dominated by bouncing cartoon heroes and corny villains, here was a chance to play the gory blood fest your parents wouldn't let you watch. Every gamer imagined himself as Jason, just running wild and slaughtering the shit out of a bunch of terrified campers.
OK, the game didn't let you do that. Instead, you played as a camp counselor, clad in short-shorts that are uncomfortable even in 8-bit form.
Why it was infuriating:
The game play consists primarily of walking in a giant loop and throwing rocks at zombies. Yes, zombies. Why Jason would still even be considered a problem when there are hordes of the undead swarming the camp isn't made clear.
Eventually Jason decides to attack your fellow counselors or the campers you are sworn to protect. Should you overcome your basic instinct to let him have them, you can confront Jason in a cabin, where he will attack with weapons substantially stronger than anything you have at your disposal.
If you do manage to defeat Jason in this mono-e-mono battle (and the movies should give you a fair estimate of how likely that outcome is) he will flee, leaving you to wander around aimlessly until he starts killing another counselor. Generally, this continues until Jason has inevitably killed all six of your counselors. On the bright side, none of them were particularly likable in the first place.
Saddest moment:
The first time one of your camp counselor friends die because you failed to properly calibrate your compass to retarded Friday the 13th logic. The game uses a top-down view for its map, but gives you absolutely no indication of which direction your character is facing.
So, basically you just have to pick a direction and walk, then keep checking the map to see which way your dot is moving. Meanwhile, Jason has presumably picked up your friend in a sleeping bag and crushed him against a tree trunk.
#2. Contra
The premise:
The futuristic world faces the kind of threat that can only come from aliens and terrorists working together. A mission this vital can only be handled in one way--send in two guys with the weakest guns you can find and count on them to find something better on the ground.
Why it was worth playing:
Contra perhaps best exemplifies the beauty of the Nintendo Entertainment System, in that it is a game which manages to be simultaneously put-your-foot-through-the-TV impossible, but still fondly remembered as one of the greatest of its time. You could play simultaneously with a friend and you could get weapon upgrades that would fill the screen with bullets. The game play was entertaining and the levels were well-designed. Also, some of the enemies look like spitting vaginas.
Why it was infuriating:
A whole lot of readers are saying, "What? Contra? That was a breeze!" And, it was. If you used the Konami Code, the simple cheat code you could punch in with your controller that bumped up your lives from three to 30. If you tried to make it with the original three lives, you were in for a challenge that bordered on ridiculous since a single hit, anywhere on your body, killed you dead.
The Konami Code was already famous by the time Contra came out (it was used in the game Gradius two years earlier) and it almost seems like the developers intentionally set the difficulty so that you'd need 30 lives to make it. For the poor bastards who had never heard of it, it wasn't if the game was going to get angrily punted across the room, but when.
Contra also forced you to share your pool of spare lives with the other player, so you were forced to pay for his retarded mistakes (something we're sure ruined many childhood friendships).
Saddest Moment:
Running through your evil foes, resolute in your 30-lives-induced superiority, and watching the extraterrestrials' island explode ... only to slowly realize that you couldn't even win a video game without cheating.
#1. Battletoads
The premise:
Two anthropomorphic toads, who are in no way in violation of copyrights which may or may not be had on other anthropomorphic baddy-fighting creatures, attempt to rescue their friends from the evil Dark Queen.
Why it was worth playing:
You have to give the designers responsible for Battletoads credit; they put forth an ambitious effort. The game offered an array of diverse game play. The levels in the game included straightforward Double Dragon-style brawlers, descents through caverns, jumping puzzles and even some high-speed hover biking, all while simultaneously being badass affronts against God's creations.
Why it was infuriating:
The potentially awesome hover biking is made somewhat less so when you realize few players were able to last more than six seconds before smashing into a wall or plummeting to their death. With each checkpoint bar the player reached, a small ball of hope grew inside of them--only to be smashed on the ensuing wall seconds later.
What sets this level above all other nigh-impossible gaming creations is the truly sadistic way in which the stage is designed. Any gamer that has progressed to the long-jump portion of the biking competition has known the most empty of all moments--watching their super-mutant frog flying proudly through the air, straight for the next floating bastion of safety, only to find they are too low on the screen, smashing into a painful death.
Somebody has captured this ordeal on video. They do it successfully, but look at the millisecond of warning you get toward the end of the level when the barriers are coming. That was the hell of the thing: Every time you had to start over you knew the part that was going to fuck you up was still ahead.
That's 108 fucking obstacles to dodge in about two minutes (oh, we counted). Fuck up the split-second timing on one of them, and you're splattered on the road. This game was an asshole.
Saddest moment:
The first time, upon finally topping the bikes, you progress to the surfing level and realize that, essentially, you have to do it all again. Oh, and this time the dangers are mobile.
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 ...
2013: Badass Handhelds With Even Badderass Web Connections
A PS3 in Your Pocket
We'll be at the generation 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 isn't the Wii, PS3 or 360. 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 2013, 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 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 4G
This 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 than the best DSL connection you can get at home, kids.
Above: The Nokia 4G phone concept, currently in the
"Make-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 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 have 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 It
As you may have already guessed, this era of "download anything, anywhere, anytime" also introduces the era of your mom screeching up the stairs after she opens up a $600 monthly gaming bill.
That bill won't just be from little Timmy buying new games or paying subscription fees on existing ones, either. It'll 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 money-making bonanza for them. For us, well, some day we'll 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, we'll still spend most of our time wishing for the Next Big Thing. Which brings us to ...
2018: Graphics Fired Directly into Your Eyeball, The End of the Game Console
Size Becomes a Non-Factor
Computers tend to double in speed (or shrink to half their size) every two years. If that continues, by 2018, we'll be getting close to the end of how small the circuits can get (or at least that's what they say) because at some point you're 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 some shit.
By 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, we're talking about gaming over a cell phone-sized device that' just short of movie quality.
Of course, the problem with making handhelds smaller and smaller is that you're 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 Monitor
VRD (Virtual Retina Display) is a system they're working on at the University of Washington 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 it'll 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 Bluetooth, should be able to put you right into a virtual world that fills your whole field of vision. The graphics won't be real-life quality (that's 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. You'll be getting to the point where the home "tethered-to-your-TV" system doesn't offer any advantages to your handheld, just as a land-line phone doesn't offer much over your cell these days.
It's no good talking about how home consoles will always look better, either. Already, graphics are getting to the point that non-hardcore gamers can't tell the difference from one generation to the next. That's why the Wii and even the PS2 are selling like crazy. The masses don't know what pixel shaders are and don't care. Graphics have advanced to the point that people look like people and dragons look like dragons.
Once handhelds reach that same threshold, most users just won't see a reason to play the one you can't take with you.
What Will Suck About It
About five minutes after the eye-projection technology hits the market, advertisers will find a way to superimpose ads over every damned surface you look at. It will detect your eyes staring at some girl' boobs, and suddenly across her cleavage you'll see the URL for www.soyouliketolookattitties.com.
Then, we'll find ourselves looking forward to ...
2023: No-Hands Gaming, Games That Learn
Brain Control
The problem with the head-mounted handhelds is, of course, you still need some kind of controller to move around and shoot the bad guys.
That' where direct brain control will come into play. This is where it all starts to sound like science fiction, but tell that to these people who are already developing a brain-computer interface they think will help with rehab for the disabled. Hitachi is testing one for everybody else:
You may insist that it's silly to think such world-changing technology would ever be used for something as frivolous as playing video games. But, then you have to tell the people at Emotiv, who have already made a device that can do it.
Obviously that stuff is still in the prototype stage and if you saw somebody doing whatever that guy up there is doing, you'd probably beat the hell out of him (wait, is that Andy Dick?). We figure it'll take between now and 2023 to make this device into something that won't make you look like a total jackass.
As for the games we'll be playing ...
Beyond AI
Assuming computer-processing power keeps expanding at the rate it's expected to, by this point a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational ability of the human brain.
Our tiny Bluetooth-sized device should be capable of generating graphics pretty damned close to what Industrial Light and Magic are doing now for big-budget movies. The graphics still won't be true-to-life, in the sense a part of our brain still knew the giant fighting robots in Transformers were fake (Though, maybe in 2023 giant fighting robots will be a common sight in the real world.).
Still, you should have games that can pretty easily render simpler environments, such as a living room realistic enough that if you dozed off with your PlayStation 6 eyepiece in, you'd wake up and not realize you were still in-game. At least not until the demons showed up.
That actually sounds pretty cool now that we mention it. Imagine a haunted-house game with dead people and shit sneaking up on you all the time, and as far as your eyes and ears know, they're really there. We're talking about a game that could trigger a fear response that would physically make you poop your pants.
Again, assuming the dead are not actually walking the earth in 2023, in which case the sight would be common.
But with the kind of processing power at your disposal, you have to think way beyond that. If you take that Spore-like procedural generation this far into the future, you wind up with games that can basically remake themselves on the fly, according to the reactions of the gamer.
Think about games that adjust their difficulty according to your level of skill, or games that change according to your mood. And if you're controlling it with your brain waves, it will know your mood.
What Will Suck About It
These are all still technologies created by human beings, which means that a whole lot of the games will still be terrible. Some of this magical immersive brain-interface technology will be dedicated to making a game version of Shrek 7.
We don't want to come off as cynical here, but those of us who were playing a Sega Genesis back in 1992 dreamed of the kind of consoles we'd have 15 years later. Not many of us were anticipating that some of the most popular titles of the wondrous future would be shitty games sold at Burger King.
Let's not forget the advertisers, either. Think how well they'll be able to target their ads when they know your exact emotional state. The day after your girlfriend dumps you, the porn ads will blanket the landscape. The moment you get hungry ...
2028: Supercomputers Woven Into Your Jockstrap, Games That Do Everything
Computers Everywhere
If they keep bringing out new game machines every five years the way they have been, we'd be on the PlayStation 7 at this point. Though, that's really unlikely, even if Sony is still in business, and mankind has not been wiped out by the giant robots or the zombies.
The processing power and/or miniaturization of this stuff starts to get mind-boggling at this stage. If the "half-the-size-every-two-years" rule somehow held true to this point, you'd be talking about computing power in a package one-thousandth the size of what you're using now. That's laptops embedded in sheets of paper ...
E-paper.
... and processors woven into your clothes ...
E-fabric.
"¦ with the costs low enough that if you left your computerized T-shirt at the park you'd hardly bother to go back and get it the next day. We hereby predict that by the year 2028, someone, somewhere, will literally wipe his ass with a computer more powerful than any that exists today.
The point is that at this stage, the concept of actually owning a console/computer starts to get silly. Once miniaturization reaches this point, the next step is probably distributed computing, where all computers scattered around your house and around the world team up to do, well, whatever you need them to.
Some of you are already doing distributed computing, with the Folding at Home project, where computers all over the world are joining forces to do complex calculations to help solve the mysteries of protein folding and maybe cure diseases like Alzheimer's. PS3 owners are even doing it.
At this point, whatever interface you've got stuck on your head won't need its own processing power. It could just be a tool to tap into the collective power of a vast pool of computers operating 24 hours a day, all over the damned place. All you'll be doing is buying access.
Access to do what, you say? At this point, what we're calling "gaming"--the whole technique of running simulations that engage a human mind--could be used for pretty much anything. Would there even be other forms of entertainment? You could get your movies, TV shows and concerts there.
Hell, business types could even hold virtual meetings there, wearing virtual suits while their real body is sitting at home, lounging in briefs with a bong in their lap. For the kids, plug them into a simulation that teaches them algebra and say goodbye to the classroom forever.
What Will Suck About It
Do the math. If your brain is always wired into that vast computing network, somebody on the other end always knows where you are and what you're doing.
And, what you're thinking.
Yeah.
2033: The Real-Life Matrix, Video Games That Are Way Smarter Than You
According to computer smart guy Raymond Kurzweil, by 2029 the kind of computer power it'll take to equal a human brain will cost about $1. If trends continue as they have been, what we're calling supercomputers could be made as small as a speck of dust. You could paint them on your walls.
Take the whole idea of distributed computing we talked about and multiply it several thousand times over. Computers become both ubiquitous and invisible, embedded in almost every surface you touch, with the whole atmosphere full of the data they're shooting back and forth to each other. More information than your parents absorbed in a lifetime could come firing into your brain in the blink of an eye.
Combine that with patents Sony already has for ways to fire ultrasound pulses into the brain to create real-life sensory experiences, and you've got everything you need for five-senses virtual reality. And, you don't even need the jacks in the back of your skull.
We're assuming some kind of nuclear fusion or some other kind of vast energy source is out there by this point (all this flying data will require unimaginable amounts of electriciy) and that we're not living in mud huts and fighting radioactive mutants for food. But, if we're not, PS8 Home (or whatever they're calling the digital metaverse at that point) should finally exist as a new-and-improved version of reality you can touch and smell--only noticing the transition by the sudden absence of fat.
Imagine it. In your lifetime, a magical world where you can actually meet that Burger King mascot, and smell him and feel his robes. As for the porn, well, is it even porn at that stage? It's pretty much just sex. You have sex with the porn lady and when you roll over, there's the Burger King guy to hand you a Whopper in person.
As for what sort of "games" or other entertainment would be offered there, it's possible that by then the gaming industry would have achieved its final goal: A device that makes you enjoy the experience no matter what they do. It's true that it would require electrodes inserted into the pleasure centers of the brain, but at that stage it would probably be considered cruel to not implant them in every newborn.
Electronic Arts could crank out a Shrek 9 game in a couple of weeks that features nothing more than Shrek standing in your front yard, quietly staring and occasionally farting. The whole time your brain will be telling you it's the most fun you've ever had.
You may be having so much fun in the game realm that you'll never want to leave. And that's OK, because this guy says that just down the road (around 2050) you'll be able to download your mind into the computer. Your body dies, you live on in the virtual world. Forever.
Or, you know, as long as somebody is paying the bill.
What Will Suck About It
At this stage we could very well be getting to the outer edges the long-predicted era when mankind is just an irrelevant blip in a world dominated by computers. If the combined thinking power of the world's computers completely dwarfs the combined minds of all the humans, then at this point the machines will pretty much be making games purely to entertain each other.
Or, possibly mankind will only be allowed to survive for the machines' amusement. Perhaps they'll force us to walk through hallways and shoot each other out of a desire for ironic revenge that we will have accidentally programmed into them somehow.
It's all speculation at this point. Who can predict what will happen on that day when Spore has, generations later, culminated in systems powerful enough to create entire universes and even simulated minds to populate them. You would reach a point where the population of simulated beings in existence dwarfs the real ones.
Even stranger, the simulated people born inside the simulation would have no way of knowing they were in a simulation. You may have heard that guy in The New York Times say that mathematically we are almost certainly living in one of those simulations now.
But anyway, Spore looks pretty cool and we're looking forward to it.
SAN FRANCISCO—The "O's" have it here at the Game Developer Conference, where a pair of Kickstarter-funded ventures—Oculus VR and Ouya—wrestled the spotlight away from the game industry's biggest guns this week.
The consensus was that this technology was mere months from going mainstream, or at least that it should be. We decided that once it did hit, it would only be a matter of time before the Rift or something like it became a plot device in a TV crime show, where some headgear-sporting VR gamer got killed by an assassin the victim never saw or heard enter his apartment.
In a blog post announcing the shipping of dev units, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman indicated that the company is banking on feedback from its early backers receiving dev units to help get the console as ready as possible for retail availability before taking a broader marketing approach.
