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Has technology stopped driving gameplay improvements?
Quizzical
Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483
For most of the ~40 year history of video games, technology advances steadily made interesting gameplay mechanics that had been previously impossible suddenly possible.
For example, storage space used to be tiny, with only a few kilobytes to play with. Even about a decade into the video game era, Super Mario Bros. was only 32 KB for the entire game--and it was large for its day. But tens of kilobytes became hundreds, then megabytes. The adoption of the CD-ROM in the 1990s fairly abruptly meant that storage size was no longer a meaningful limit on what mechanics you could implement.
Processing speed used to be fairly pathetic, too. Anyone who tried to play fairly complex simulation games as late as the SNES/Genesis era can probably recall games that creeped along overburdened by AI computations. Simulations of highly complex systems can still overflow the capability of supercomputers today, but that's almost never a meaningful restriction on game mechanics anymore.
Internet connectivity has come a long way, too. We've gone from multiplayer video games meaning against someone next to you, to games needing to be playable on dialup, to most players being able to get pretty good ping times unless they're continents away. That has made possible entirely new genres, from MMORPGs to MOBAs.
And that's to say nothing of graphics, where we've gone from monochrome with big, blocky pixels to a handful of colors, to enough colors that you can't see the boundary between them. We've gone from only being able to manage a handful of small sprites on the screen to doing 3D perspective graphics in real time. And the latter has gone from the worse-than-contemporary-2D look of StarFox to graphics power being so cheap that even fundamentally 2D games typically have 3D graphics as their underlying methods.
For most of the history of video games, we've seen a steady stream of games sporting mechanics that simply couldn't have existed ten years prior. But today? Can you think of anything in a game you've played recently that couldn't have been done with lesser graphics ten years ago? Using geolocation creatively in smartphone games, maybe, but that's all that comes to mind.
And it's not just that technology has hit a rough patch; it's also that I don't see anything on the horizon that will bring such advancements to games again. There used to be obvious limitations on what was technically possible. Today, ping times to connect distant players inhibiting twitchy gameplay is the only thing that comes to mind, and that's not going away anytime soon because of the speed of light.
But that's okay. Technologies tend to improve less as they mature. Someone who designs light bulbs for a living could probably tell you great details about how today's light bulbs are better than those of fifty years ago. In a technical sense, he'd be right; longer bulb lifetimes and less heat output are surely good things. But they're not nearly as big of a difference as going from candles or oil lamps to electric light bulbs that actually work.
But if technology has stopped driving gameplay improvements, that doesn't mean games are doomed. Plenty of interesting things could be done today, but haven't. Good novels will release next year that could have been written a century ago, but weren't.
It would hardly be catastrophic if games stopped quickly becoming obsolete so quickly because technology has moved on. Millions of people play games that are over a decade old today. In 2000, that was substantially less common. In 1990, it was outright rare. And that's where I think games are headed: we won't think of a game released in 2030 as having significant advantages over one released in 2025, just like we don't think of a novel published last year as having natural, enormous advantages over one published in 2010.
For example, storage space used to be tiny, with only a few kilobytes to play with. Even about a decade into the video game era, Super Mario Bros. was only 32 KB for the entire game--and it was large for its day. But tens of kilobytes became hundreds, then megabytes. The adoption of the CD-ROM in the 1990s fairly abruptly meant that storage size was no longer a meaningful limit on what mechanics you could implement.
Processing speed used to be fairly pathetic, too. Anyone who tried to play fairly complex simulation games as late as the SNES/Genesis era can probably recall games that creeped along overburdened by AI computations. Simulations of highly complex systems can still overflow the capability of supercomputers today, but that's almost never a meaningful restriction on game mechanics anymore.
Internet connectivity has come a long way, too. We've gone from multiplayer video games meaning against someone next to you, to games needing to be playable on dialup, to most players being able to get pretty good ping times unless they're continents away. That has made possible entirely new genres, from MMORPGs to MOBAs.
And that's to say nothing of graphics, where we've gone from monochrome with big, blocky pixels to a handful of colors, to enough colors that you can't see the boundary between them. We've gone from only being able to manage a handful of small sprites on the screen to doing 3D perspective graphics in real time. And the latter has gone from the worse-than-contemporary-2D look of StarFox to graphics power being so cheap that even fundamentally 2D games typically have 3D graphics as their underlying methods.
For most of the history of video games, we've seen a steady stream of games sporting mechanics that simply couldn't have existed ten years prior. But today? Can you think of anything in a game you've played recently that couldn't have been done with lesser graphics ten years ago? Using geolocation creatively in smartphone games, maybe, but that's all that comes to mind.
And it's not just that technology has hit a rough patch; it's also that I don't see anything on the horizon that will bring such advancements to games again. There used to be obvious limitations on what was technically possible. Today, ping times to connect distant players inhibiting twitchy gameplay is the only thing that comes to mind, and that's not going away anytime soon because of the speed of light.
But that's okay. Technologies tend to improve less as they mature. Someone who designs light bulbs for a living could probably tell you great details about how today's light bulbs are better than those of fifty years ago. In a technical sense, he'd be right; longer bulb lifetimes and less heat output are surely good things. But they're not nearly as big of a difference as going from candles or oil lamps to electric light bulbs that actually work.
But if technology has stopped driving gameplay improvements, that doesn't mean games are doomed. Plenty of interesting things could be done today, but haven't. Good novels will release next year that could have been written a century ago, but weren't.
It would hardly be catastrophic if games stopped quickly becoming obsolete so quickly because technology has moved on. Millions of people play games that are over a decade old today. In 2000, that was substantially less common. In 1990, it was outright rare. And that's where I think games are headed: we won't think of a game released in 2030 as having significant advantages over one released in 2025, just like we don't think of a novel published last year as having natural, enormous advantages over one published in 2010.
Comments
I think technology based advances will be something of this nature. Dunno if it will be VR or some other type of thing like nerve gear like in sword art online or even something like a holodeck.
I think when something of that nature comes out, dunno when, the advances will start again till they hit another ceiling.
I think the OP is looking at things out of proportion a little. We haven't advanced that much since tv was invented, just improved on what was "thought" up back then.
We are essentially still looking at images in/on a box, we just have made improvements on that and that's why I think we are hitting a plateau so to speak.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
I have played a lot on the Vive. I think the tech is pretty amazing. However, as far as gaming goes right not...it sucks. There just are no games like say a Battlefield or CoD or even D3 out there that push the limits on this new tech. In fact, the tech itself is playing it way too safe because of the fear of motion sickness. Instead of traditional movement methods such as mouse and keyboard or even using the Vive control sticks, they generally use a modified teleportation or a mimic of moving. As free as VR make you feel with head movement and minimal walkng around, you just feel it is a lot of bogus talk when trying something that should allow free-roam. Until they embrace a more "traditional" type of movement in games, I do not see the Vive to go much further then it already has.
Let's party like it is 1863!
But I think you're partly correct: Today's improvements in processing capabilities can't be translated to new game mechanics and features any more. If they bring us any improvements, it becomes with where we run the games, and what kind of devices and controllers we use, and those improvements are much slower and more gradual than what we used to have.
Any attempt to deviate from the known formula is a risk that requires a lot of money and that publishers and investors aren't willing to take. Why? Partly because of the amount of failed projects for one, just look at No Man's Sky. It's a lot safer to make a new Call Of Duty every year, you can't go wrong using the same formula every year if the players keep buying the new games and bringing the companies insane amount of profits.
10 years ago, people used to treat customers in segments. You saw 18-24 year olds enjoy feature X, so you made more X if you wanted that segment. The TV industry still very much does that. If a TV show does well in a specific segment at a specific hour, you keep the show. If it does poorly, you drop it and buy something else. A lot has changed recently - Facebook and Google are definitely pushing data analysis heavily.
It may not be as eye-catching as augmented reality, but I believe it will change both gaming and software fundamentally. Games will have the ability to be completely personalised experiences. If you enjoy crafting, a game may introduce more crafting to you. If you enjoy exploration, it may encourage exploration. This can be done on an individual basis, not segment wide.
What's truly interesting is combining this with instancing. We now have the ability to see who you like. With instancing, we have the ability to match you with people you will enjoy. You can write a maximisation formula for instancing, in order to boost a certain variable. For example, you could make your instancing system optimise for player happiness. If you were more business driven, you could optimise play hours or cash-shop spending.
Seeing where technology is going in general, this is bound to happen sooner or later.
I wrote a research project on this 4 years ago, which landed me the post at University where I am now. It's usually very hard to sell something computer related at University, so there must be a lot of general appeal to it. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to pursue it further. I'm almost certain it will happen though, either with my help of without it.
1) Graphics
Whilst I realise that graphics are getting ever more powerful, there still seems to be a fundamental problem with rendering graphics. Ultimately, my screen has a limited number of pixels to render, yet rendering speed changes drastically depending on what I'm looking at.
This is a major barrier to multiplayer games. The more people you play with, the more difficulty the engine has in rendering the game world, so you experience lag. It becomes a constant battle between number of players and graphical fidelity. Most times, graphics win, which is why we have smaller and smaller group sizes, more instances etc. If you want 100s or 1000s of players in the same space, you have to sacrifice graphics to make it possible.
This limitation constantly holds back MMOs specifically - the main fundamental feature (massively-multiplayer) usually can't be done because the average PC can't handle it. Processors can handle the data, the internet can now transmit it, but our gpus can't render it quickly enough.
2) AI / Procedural Generation
By AI, I just mean more advanced scripting rather than actual AI. Both AI and procedural generation have the potential to create actual living worlds for us to inhabit. Between the two, a game could constantly be changing, living, updating itself so that each experience is different.
So, as an example, Skyrim. Should start at the same place for everyone, but after that your actions actually change the world. So, you side with the stormcloaks, so the AI kicks in and starts organising "random" stormcloak raids on imperial outposts. The AI builds new outposts, new quests are generated, new trade routes setup etc. Or maybe you ignore dragons, so they become a plague on Skyrim and half the cities burn down. But then you clean up, kill all the dragons. Orcs decide to populate, so the cities get rebuilt in orcish image.
Such technology would increase the replayability 10-fold as each playthrough could be substantially different.
3) User Input
Fundamentally, we're massively limited by how we input commands into a game. When playing a shooter, I'm using a mouse to aim, I'm not actually aiming something myself. When playing an MMO, I'm pressing 1-2-3-4-5 to swing my sword, I'm not actually swinging a sword.
There is a massive disconnect between what I want to do (in my brain) and what actually happens in the game, limited by the input systems. Its a major reason I think VR will fail.
As a result, games have had to be developed with the input systems in mind. Mechanics have been developed to simulate what would actually happen in real life, because it is not possible to capture real life properly. Things like bullet spread, hit/miss chance through RNG etc.
I want someone to develop a universal input and feedback device that can capture all my physical inputs as well as provide physical feedback.
To give you an idea of what I envisage this being: an exoskeleton
So, as a gamer, you'd get into your exoskeleton and boot up the game. Your headset you give you VR-type vision, whilst helmet also gives you surround sound. The exoskeleton would be suspended above the ground. When you move your arm in real life, the exo-suit capture that movement and translates it into the game. When you touch something in game, servos in the suit kick in to make it feel like you're actually touching something.
With a suit like this, games actually become realistic. In a fantasy game, for example, you'd actually feel like you're holding a sword. When you swing it, you actually swing it in game. When you connect with an enemy, the suit actually makes it feel like you've connected. If you're playing a shooter, you actually have to aim, you actually have recoil. Running / crouching / jumping are all based on your real life movements. If you miss, its because your aim was off or you didn't handle the recoil right, rather than because you were using a weapon with pre-programmed bullet spread.
I'm guessing that's quite a ways off or maybe even pure science fiction, and even if we accomplish it, will we be fully aware of what's happening or will it be like actual dreams where it's fuzzy at best after waking?
I think right now the technology that's pushing what MMOs are capable of is processing speed and internet bandwidth. While we could say, conceivably program a game where thousands of characters are fighting all at the same time in an action combat system, imagine the immense lag that would generate and how fast it would fry your computer.
So the faster computers and faster internet we get the more "stuff" we can have happening in game at once.
The encouraging (and discouraging) thing for me, is we have barely even scratched the surface of what could be done with MMOs using current technology. There is infinite room for innovation right here and now and we just aren't exploring it.
We need more Hideo Kojimas out there fearlessly taking risks, and publishers ready to roll the dice and can afford to take a couple losses before a huge win.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And with this focus, you can't play a character better than/different from yourself. Not what I'm interested in all the time with RPGs.
It'd be a lot simpler and less expensive for some sort of fabric-with-sensors get up.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
There certainly are a lot of improvements we still need, like a harddrive fast as the ram memory (which would revolutionize MMORPGs). There is certainly a limit to how good a game can look but I don't think we are there yet.
The problem is more that games seems to generally have worse story now (some exceptions like the Witcher 3 exist of course). The gameplay havn't got better either, often worse. The largest change today from 20 years ago is the difficulty that dropped to incredible easy in most games.
New cool hardware is nice but it isn't really the hardware that needs most improving but the games. But the publishers seems happy to make bad copies of earlier games over and over, it is like all games are being made by EA Sports or something.
We don't need a bad copy of an older game with better graphics, most people just play the 10 year old original then.
As for playing characters that are better / different from you, I'm sure there are ways around this. You could put some sort of software in it so that when you started running, the suit actually accelerates your legs to make you run faster for example.
I realise an exo-suit is a somewhat ridiculous notion as you'd need a whole room set aside just for gaming and it'd be bloody expensive. My point is really just to get people thinking about improvements for input devices. Gamepads or mouse and keyboard are both so limiting, both in the way we input commands to the game and in how we receive feedback from the game.
Apart from motion controllers for gimmicky games, we haven't really had any improvements in input devices since playstation releases their controller with thumbsticks. Its still press-a-button, observe resulting action in game.
It would be great if we could interface directly with the brain and get true virtual reality that way, but I think we're so far off that its not really worth thinking about. Exo-suits like the one I'm talking about are already possible. I applied to one university to do Cybernetics back in 2003 and they already had this sort of tech working - it was just a glove, but it had servos in it to simulate touch, so we got to test it out playing virtual catch.
The suit seems more something for an arcade hall.
As for interfacing with the computer directly (seen Existenz?) it is not something regular gamers will have access to in a long time. Handicapped people might get it far earlier though, there are already exoskeletons that can replace wheelchairs for many people, the problem isn't the technology but the pricetag.
But yeh, pricetag would be expensive to start with. The tech is pretty basic, just metal frame, joints, servos and wires to carry signals, but there would be a lot of it.
I'd like to see someone just go for it anyway, purely as a scientific experiment to see if it works and is fun. The only thing I've seen come close is a weird adult walker type thing with a slippery floor, so that tracked movement. It was used in conjunction with VR headset and (I think) motion controllers, the end result being that the user could actually walk in real life on the stroller and that was converted into ingame movement, so the bloke was actually walking around Skyrim, looking around in VR, and then actually swinging his sword using motion controllers. All looked very clunky, but at least they were trying!
A room just for VR? No problem for me but an exo skeleton with a full VR kit would be very expensive. Arcade halls could afford a couple but you kinda would need to fit it to your length and figure to really use it as intended so I think that is more then a few years in the future.
The only people that will get a good VR experience now is people who play simulators. Putting up a car simulator at home is not that expensive and a flightsim is a bit worse but still feasible for most gamers.
Its making very advanced improvements on server architecture. And the basic tech behind the new technologies werent developed by a game developer but by a phd in computer science.
You need imagination to move forward but you also need a firm grasp of the technology available.
JC based his new server tech on tech used by telecom companies. And it has been demonstrated to work. The implications of his tech are far reaching. Seriously check it out.
There are still plenty of improvements to be made on the current platform. It just takes someone to push in the right direction.
Even with current VR tech.....most of these VR headsets are third party relying on developers risking their own cash and time on supporting it. the only way its really going to take off is if someone develops a game that has market shifting repercussions as far as sales. someone literally has to develop the next WoW, LoL , CoD , etc for VR headsets to become anything more then niche.
there is more opportunity in the military and medical fields for VR then in gaming tbh
Some people complain about walls of quest text, but they used to be impossible. Same with digital audio that is recognizable as voice. For many years, technology drove new game mechanics by making previously impossible things possible. But now, I don't think there's that much that is impossible because the hardware isn't good enough, but likely will be in the near future. Plenty of things are still basically impossible because they'd be insanely hard to code.
Part of the problem is a host code bottleneck that limits how many draw calls it is practical for you to have. But DirectX 12 and Vulkan get rid of that bottleneck, so that's now a solved problem. What games will do with it is still an open question, though.
2) The limiting factor there is the same as it was 10 years ago: programmer cleverness. Good AI and especially good procedurally generated content are really hard problems. Throwing more hardware at it doesn't make a bit of difference.
3) Could happen, maybe. And that is something I hadn't considered. But they'd need Wii or Kinect style controls to get a whole lot more precise before it's viable for anything but the most casual of games.