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.