the future of games
by: Akbar Ali (syedali011@earthlink.net)
Yes, that's right. the "future of games". This seems to be the question on everyone's mind involved with creating the games (most often this is the publisher but i have seen a few developers get caught up in this mess as well).
Well see there is a trend with computer games, telelvision shows, big tobbaco and large corparate networks and publishers.
they all have one thing in common, they want more money.
well the answer to the future of games is a pretty simple one, which ever one makes more money ;) that in it's entirity is the so called future of games.
Now in the industry I think we have come to a point where we can begin to make a parrelel to tv and computer games.
The market between the two is starting to interchange more freely. It used to be where you had the *extreme* pc gamer and the *exteme* pcgamer.
these days this is starting to change. the computers you buy as standard rigs from dell and gateway come with 3d graphics cards that have *damn well throupout* and there fill rate is just awsome.
So as you can see, the average hoe shmoe has the approx same rig as the exteme gamer, the question as a devloper is who do you want to target?
the small poplulation of say around 5 percent of the people who are obssed with playing quake and *frags* and now what agp stands for and the diffrences between redhat and mandrake are, or; the other 95 percent, who spend there days when they come home reading the tv guide and watching who wants to be a millionare and take rather enjoyment in watching other people live there lives (countless number of *succesfull* tv shows do exactly this (felicity, the simpons, buffy the vampire slayer, dharma and greg, you get the point) ).
    *don't you just love those parenthess's insides of parenthess. heh., if you didn't get it don't worry.

in actuality there has been a game that did just this. it's name is "the sims".
It is simply a succesful tv show prepackaged for you to control at any time you want to *watch* the show. Sure the game allows you to control the people, but without out being able to do that there would be no game ;)
heh. maybe not. the average american is not to bright =)
well the sad thing is, now that we have seen a succesful game hit the market we are going to see a slew of crap games come out that clone the same idea the "the sims" has.
it's exactly the way corparate tv networks behave. If a show is getting awsome ratings the rival network will clone the show and try to add a new twist hoping that the viewers will switch to there "new" show.
well as for big tobbaco, heh ;) well who ever is the smartest company will devise a method to "addict" to consumer. almost like niccotaince. in doing so, you will have a customer for life.
peace,
akbar A.