This is a thing that's been on my mind for the last month or so. So I'm just gonna write something semi-coherent because why not.
I think the biggest problem in gaming is that it sits at the intersection of art, entertainment and most troubling of all, technology. Video games have always been tied to technological progress and innovation and technology at large has almost always been a matter of linear improvement. We went from radios to black and white TVs, and then color TVs, and then HD TVs, Ultra HD TVs and along that development we went from reel-based video to VHS, DVDs, Blu-Ray, Streaming and so on and on. And of course this applies to more than just TVs and home entertainment, cars improved, factories improved, computers, medicine, art tools and on and on and on and on.
My point is that we generally perceive technological development as always improving on a previous iteration. And video games are very closely tied to this perception as well. 8-bit gaming with the NES and Sega Master System got replaced by the 16-bit SNES and Genesis consoles. And in the 90's we had the 3D graphics boom. I'm just old enough to remember what a big deal that was even though I didn't quite experience any consoles before the original Playstation. 3D gaming in the 90s was such a big deal, the hype machine at the time was essentially saying that 16-bit 2D games were done. Relegate them to the same part of the library where they keep the books on dinosaurs because those games and that tech was extinct.
I know that on retrospect that sounds hyperbolic, we know now that the classics of the earlier console generations are timeless. But when 3D graphics started to come in vogue, it was seen as the color TV to the old black and white TVs. It was perceived as a natural step up and an essential improvement. Disregarding that a lot of really good movies were shot in black and white and that they still hold up today.
I'm gonna keep going here with a few more examples because this all ties into my concluding point.
After 3D graphics in the 90s dominated the discourse, we kinda got into a bit of a lull, the sixth generation of consoles and the PC scene at the time wasn't really that big of a leap like the leap from the SNES to the Nintendo 64. The most impactful difference was that of storage and refinement. Games could be a lot bigger when you used DVDs for storage and it started getting easier to make games. But the next really significant move was to HD graphics when storage got even bigger and consoles were powerful enough to render really high quality textures.
Since then, consoles haven't really expanded in any meaningful way like the jump from 2D to 3D with either the eighth or ninth generations. Textures have gotten higher res and animation rigs and procedural generation have gotten far more elaborate. But the only significant innovation since 2006 has been Virtual Reality, and I gotta tell you as the 90s kid I am that the hype for VR was an exact repeat of 3D graphics in the 90s.
I've been critical of VR for years now, ever since I first had an experience with it in college with the college's pre-release Oculus Rift model. VR reminds me so much of the jump from 2D to 3D graphics that I sometimes feel like I'm the only sane person in the world when talking about it. Here's what it boils down to:
First of all, VR is a one-trick pony with a really damn good trick. There's no doubt in my mind that VR can do first-person games better than any other gaming platform. That's easily the reason that VR was hyped so much when it was first emerging on the scene. All the demos were first-person games and they were all really impressive. Current VR rigs are even more impressive. But the problem that VR cannot ever overcome the same kind of limitation that 3D gaming has, and it's that it either can't or does a really bad job at implementing older design methodologies and systems.
To explain this, imagine playing a third-person game on a VR rig. Or just go ahead and play one, there are third-person games for VR rigs out there. Now the question I want to pose is, what part of the VR experience significantly enhances the third-person game experience above what you could get from just doing it on a regular monitor? Granted I haven't tried any third-person games in VR myself, but everything I've seen when it comes to videos and reviews point to that the only difference is one of how you see the game in front of you. Essentially it's a presentational difference. Third-person games simply aren't elevated or enhanced by VR.
Here's a more drastic example, imagine playing Stardew Valley in VR. Or any other strictly 2-dimensional game in VR. Can you even imagine it at all? Because the only way I can imagine doing it in VR is the same way I already do it in real life, with a 2-dimensional screen in front of me. And even if you can imagine it properly, in what way would VR ever enhance the gameplay experience of a 2D game? It can't, because it's a one-trick pony that does first-person games really, really well.
It's exactly like when in the 90s, consoles started rendering 3D graphics. 3D doesn't really change anything about old design methodologies and systems. If you apply 3D graphics to an SNES Super Mario game, you get New Super Mario Brothers for the Wii. It's just a different look, but otherwise the same game as before.
And that's not even accounting for the excessive cost of VR in the first place. Not just the price tag for a rig and a computer to power it. But also the spatial requirement. Not everyone has the space in their homes for a VR rig, although I know sensor-less VR is coming so this is a moot argument. But aside from that, VR is also physically taxing. Most people play games to unwind after a long day's work and not everyone feels up for a few hours standing up and playing Beat Saber after stacking shelves for 8 hours.
VR was hyped as the "next evolution in gaming" or something like that and companies invested heavily in developing the hardware and the games. And we're now seeing that VR was never that big next step. And it's not just because it's a one-trick pony that costs a lot of money and physical energy, it's also because just like with 3D, the older games are not going to stop being fun just because you've found a new way to have fun.
Let's change the topic a little and move towards live service games.
Live service arguably became big in 2004 with the unprecedented success of World of Warcraft. When Blizzard was doing market research for WoW, experts said "don't even bother with marketing to Europe, they don't play MMORPGs there." Their research essentially concluded with "Maybe you'll get 200 000 players at the of the year." But WoW was so successful in such a short time that Blizzard and Sierra Entertainment had to pull copies from retail stores to catch up with the server demands.
And that success story came with 15 bucks a month for each active player. And it wasn't like Blizzard was the first studio that came up with a subscription model, but the success of WoW showed a lot of other companies that there was a lot of money to be made this way. And so came the "WoW-killers."
I played a lot of "WoW-killers" back in the day. Fallen Earth, Rift, Runes of Magic, Wildstar, Guild Wars 2 and whole mess of South-East Asian MMOs that probably weren't marketed as WoW-killers, but I sure played them. After the success of WoW, a lot of money was invested into creating the next 15 dollars per player/month game that wasn't just meant to kill WoW, they were meant to be even bigger and generate even more money for whatever company was developing them.
It didn't really turn out that way of course. Final Fantasy XIV has probably been the most successful out of the "WoW-killers" but unlike games like Rift, it wasn't marketed as a "WoW-killer," it was marketed as a Final Fantasy MMO. Final Fantasy already has a massive market share and fandom. If WoW had never come along, it would very likely have been successful regardless.
And WoW still lives on, despite the massive marketing that Rift had, despite that Guild Wars 2 is free to play and despite that Wildstar was a lot more fun (in my opinion. RIP, king...). And despite that WoW still lives on is for basically the same reason VR can't become the "next evolution in gaming," and it's because people people are not going to stop having fun with WoW just because you've found another new way of having fun.
Nowadays we don't call these games WoW-killers because subconsciously we know that WoW can't be killed by other games. But instead we call them Live Service Games.
Fortnite, Apex Legends, Overwatch, League Of Legends and so many more games like them come out all the time now for the same reason that companies invested money into WoW-killers, and it's because the already established kings of the genre have carved out a nice little money-generating niche with their games. At the time of writing, Sony has invested billions into as many as 16 different upcoming live service games. They purchased Bungie with their own live service game, Destiny, and the experience of making and running such games, just for the purpose of making the next big Fortnite or Apex Legends or Overwatch.
One might think that spending that much money on so many games is wasteful, but the fact is that Sony needs just one of those 16 games to be a success and they're gonna make up for their losses in a very short time.
And once again Sony and all other companies working on live service games fail to understand that people are not going to stop playing those other games just because their latest game is shinier.
And that's what it boils down to in the end.
Games exist at the intersection of art, entertainment and most troubling of all, technology. We perceive technology as always improving in a linear fashion. We had black and white TVs get replaced by color TVs. And we had 2D games get "replaced" by 3D games. VR was going to be the next big evolution in gaming and gaming on a monitor would go the way of standard definition TVs. Wildstar was more fun, and it was going to kill WoW. And the upcoming live service games from Sony will earn more than Fortnite.
It's all hype. It's always hype. Because games are not just technology, they are art and entertainment as well. Classic movies from the Silent Era didn't stop being entertaining just because the latest Star Wars movie has better effects. Renaissance paintings never stopped being beautiful just because cameras can capture reality flawlessly or because the latest version of Clip Studio or Affinity Photo can make art faster.
And in the confusion of seeing the technological aspect of games as more important than their artistic and entertainment values, old games get lost as companies stop caring to preserve them. Games that are dependent on servers become completely inaccessible and the countless hours that people spent making those games never get the chance to be appreciated again. Studios get shut down and people lose their livelihoods because a successful game release isn't worth keeping the lights on when publicly traded publishers are legally obligated to always generate more money next quarter.
So the cycle continues for that quarter and the next after that ad infinitum.
Make a shinier game. Make a shinier console. Make technological developments that outdates the old stuff. Make the old games inaccessible. Make people unemployed. Make the rich richer. Make the fucking hype machine spin faster and faster. Make it spin so fast it drills a hole through the fucking spacetime continuum.