We Were Born At The Perfect Time For Video Games
I am convinced we were born at the perfect time for video games. We were fortunate enough to see the beginnings and each year video games show us their potential.
Even though the industry is established today, it almost wasn’t. Video games experienced a boom in the 1970s with the arcade and the Atari entertainment system. Unfortunately, the industry Atari would work so hard to create would come to a crash by the 1980s. Many people blame the ET video game for this crash, but the cracks were showing way before then.
People believed video games had lived their moment under the sun. They were dead wrong.
The market crashed in 1983, but by 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System would almost single handily save and revitalize the video game industry.
Nintendo followed the NES with the: SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, N64, and many more. Sega would drop out of the race and Sony would later get into the console space and dominate like no other.
This is a brief history of modern gaming. The decisions that Sega, Nintendo, and Sony took in the 1990s are still being felt today.
This is why I am convinced we were born at the perfect time for video games. We are alive in an industry that is barely showing its potential.
If we count from 1985 when the NES came out, we’re looking at an industry that is barely 35 years old. If we compare this with other entertainment media like movies, we would have barely invented colored film. We could finally watch The Wizard of OZ in all its Technicolor glory!
This industry is so young that anybody born before the 1980s saw the inception of video games and its industry. You have literally seen everything video games have gone through. You have seen every graphical jump, the birth of the rating system, various console manufacturers come and go online gaming, mobile gaming, micro-transaction, you have seen everything.
In terms of video game history, I was born right in the middle. I am young enough to enjoy every single thing that comes out to this day, but old enough to have played games like Tetris on the Gameboy — the definitive way to play.
We are fortunate enough that we can keep one eye on classic 2D NES games while keeping the other in the future.
Going back to the film industry, if you want to watch silent era movies, you will have a hard time finding them. Not only that, but imagine how many more movies have been lost in history.
This also happens with video games, but since the industry is younger and it hit digital platforms sooner, no video game should be completely lost to history.
Ever since I was a little kid, video games have astonished me. I remember playing Super Mario World and thinking the colors, the music, and the art were so beautiful. I remember playing the original Resident Evil and being scared out of my mind because it looked so realistic. I laugh when I look at the screenshots now. Yet, I thought the same thing when Resident Evil 4 came out, and my jaw dropped when it made the jump to HD with Resident Evil 5.
When the newest Ratchet and Clank came out on the PS4, I was mindblown. These almost smooth pixilated creatures that I have played with since the PS2 were now looking like a Pixar movie — maybe even better.
They have surprised me more times than I can count, and I am ready to be amazed again. The next generation of consoles will amaze, and I can’t wait. In terms of graphics, I expect little. I don’t think it will be like going from the Playstation 2 to the PS3. I don’t know if we will ever see such a huge graphical jump ever again. Hopefully, we will though.
The specific area that I am sure will blow me away is everything that can be done in the game’s background.
With the emphasis of SSD instead of HDD load times are supposed to be a thing of the past. A while ago a video of the latest Spider-Man game was being loaded on a PS4 Pro and PS5. It took 8 seconds for the PS4 Pro to load. The next generation took less than a second. That’s also at the beginning of the generation. Imagine when it ends? Are load times going to be nonexistent? What does a huge, beautiful game without load times even look like?
No more walking slowly on tight spaces, that’s for sure.
If loading times are immediate, imagine how big and detailed a world can get.
How would the next Grand Theft Auto look? I have no idea, and that’s exciting.
I believe video games are art and each year that becomes a more accepted notion.
We have come a long way from video games being considered a fad, or a toy. Today video games comprise the biggest entertainment industry on the planet and we saw it happen right before our very eyes.
History is constantly being made, let’s enjoy it.
Sebastian Sanchez is a gamer, writer, and film lover. He received his B.A from UCSD in Creative Writing. You can follow Sebastian here, on twitter, or his podcast “Best of All Time” available on Apple Podcast & Spotify.
