Gaming
The Landscape of Gaming — Have We Sacrificed Fun for Power?
In the quest to make gaming consoles more powerful, have we forgotten what made games fun in the first place?
Last weekend, we had some leaks drop regarding the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro and its specifications. So far, things are looking promising on the hardware end of things, and here are a few of the details to confirm that:
- Rendering 45% faster than PS5
- 2–3x Ray-tracing (x4 in some cases)
- 33.5 Teraflops
- PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling) upscaling/antialiasing solution
- Support for resolutions up to 8K is planned for future SDK version
- Custom machine learning architecture
- AI Accelerator, supporting 300 TOPS of 8-bit computation / 67 TFLOPS of 16-bit floating point
However, as the discussion around these leaks progressed, the gaming community defaulted to a topic that always seems to work its way into the conversation: Graphics. As usual, all the typical buzzwords started getting thrown out, like “ray-tracing,” “higher resolutions,” and “4K upscaling,” among others. At the end of it all, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “When did gaming become about everything but the games themselves?”
Then I realized, it’s not just the conversations around processing power and graphics that have distorted the meaning of gaming, but also the things we don’t talk about anymore. That said, I recently decided to dust off a few of my older consoles for a reminder of what use to make gaming so fun. After rotating between the Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and PlayStation 2, going back to the current generation felt hollow, and I want to explore why that might be.
Graphics vs Gameplay
For the first half of my trip down memory lane, I started off with the Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis. Paper Mario, Destruction Derby, Virtua Fighter, and Virtua Cop were some of my favorite titles as a child. Although, I have to say that between them all, Paper Mario is the one that has aged the most gracefully. That’s not to say that the others weren’t graphically pleasing in their own right, but booting them up for the first time in two decades was definitely a jarring experience.
In fact, when I first started playing these games, I was actually confused at how these blocky and pixelated images could’ve possibly held my attention back then. However, I remembered that for the era these games were made in, they were as good as it got. Not only that, but as kids who were probably exploring video games for the first time, we were more than entertained. Everything was a new experience and each game felt like it was something different from the last.
Looking at things now, though, we’re mastering the art of games becoming cinematic experiences, but we’re not improving on what made them so appealing to our inner child. A world can look beautiful and tell a compelling story, but if the player on the other end of the controller isn’t having fun, then what’s the point? I’d even say that most games in the modern era are just carrying players through to the next cutscene without much to do in between.
Gaming should serve as an escape from the mundane, but somehow we’ve managed to capture the realism of life, and ironically, the lifeless aspects of it as well. It may sound strange, but I’ve found more replay value in titles from the 90s and early 2000s than in those enhanced by today’s technology. What does it say about today’s multimillion dollar AAA developers when people look back fondly on low resolutions and dated gameplay mechanics?
DLC vs Cheat Codes
Other elements of gaming, which we hardly acknowledge anymore, are cheat codes. One of the earliest memories I have is taking a notepad and pen whenever my grandparents and I would go to the store. Every trip was a chance to find a magazine with a special page dedicated to cheats for a game I had. As time went on, we eventually moved away from magazines and towards websites like SuperCheats, CheatPlanet, and devices like the GameShark or Action Replay.
Sadly, long gone are the days of mashing up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. Instead, what we have now is corporate greed in the form of DLC and microtransactions, which compounds the issue of poor gameplay even more. Why bother fully developing a game when you can charge players for the missing pieces at the same price as a finished title? You can pay $19.99 for a character pack, $39.99 for an expansion, or even $59.99 for a season pass. People have become accustomed to these practices, so why not?
Consequently, the gaming industry has taken advantage of people’s willingness to pay just so they can deliver the bare minimum. Although, it’s not like it’s a scam, not entirely anyway. Cheat codes were originally designed as a way to make debugging and play testing easier for developers. During those times, developer kits were also a bit more expensive, so things like infinite money, infinite health, and secret in-game tools were usually just leftover codes.
Now that the development process has become more efficient, there really is no reason to include cheat codes. However, to see how we’ve gone from the freedom of hidden developer codes to repackaging them as items to be paid for, is very disheartening. It’s even worse when you realize that despite how much extra money these corporations earn through DLC, they still can’t deliver anything groundbreaking.
Single Player vs Online Multiplayer
Finally, we have the conversation of how single player and multiplayer games hold up against each other. As technology has improved, so has our ability to connect with each other globally. While wrapping up my retro gaming session, I thought back to the times where I’d sit inside and play games on my own. I didn’t have many friends growing up, so I had to make peace with finding comfort in myself a lot, but I could never say that I was bored with my options.
Whether it was Sonic Adventure 2, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Jet Li: Rise to Honor, or Shadow of the Colossus, I always had something to play. What made these games so captivating, though, is that I didn’t need anyone else next to me to enjoy them. These worlds were full of intimate experiences that I could share with myself and still fully appreciate.
However, that level of immersion has taken a backseat as online connectivity becomes more prevalent. Now, things are a little different, because you’re not playing by yourself or on a split screen next to your closest friends. You’re connected to the internet, you’re playing against a global leaderboard, or you need a specific type of party to clear something.
Now that most games are made to create a shared experience and connect us to more people than ever, titles with dedicated single player content are hard to find. The tens or hundreds of players that you can be connected to at any moment have become the new entertainment. Resultingly, we’ve seen a sharp rise in toxicity and unsportsmanlike behavior between gamers, which only diminishes the role of gaming in escapism even further.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that a shift is occurring in the gaming industry, but I can’t say that it’s for the better. Technology only moves in one direction, and I see the quality of games dropping even further if developers don’t return to their roots. Personally, I think we’ve reached a point where we no longer need to max out the utility of consoles, not right now at least. We need to steer the conversation away from what the latest hardware is capable of and back to what the games themselves can offer.
With that in mind, I’d enjoy getting everyone else’s opinions on the matter. Do you think that the focus on console utility has taken away from the fun of gaming? Do you find graphic maximization to be unnecessary? What are your views on the concept of DLC? Has online gaming negatively impacted single player games?
If you‘d like to keep the conversation going, comment on this article. Alternatively, you can subscribe to me at ‘Keith Price’ to get my takes on everything related to Gaming, Tech, and the DCU!
References
Kamil S. (July 14, 2018). Super Nintendo Entertainment System — Controller. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/selective-focus-photography-of-snes-controller-13W6AqIKV_I
Onur Binay. (December 31, 2021). A person playing a video game on a laptop. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/a-person-playing-a-video-game-on-a-laptop-auf3GwpVaOM
Sean Do. (August 16, 2018). Person using computer playing fps game. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/person-using-computer-playing-fps-game-EHLd2utEf68
Tom Henderson. (March 17, 2024). EXCLUSIVE — MORE PLAYSTATION 5 PRO SPECS DETAILED. Retrieved from https://insider-gaming.com/playstation-5-pro-more-specs/
Vitalii Khodzinskyi. (May 3, 2023). A close up of a video game controller. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/a-close-up-of-a-video-game-controller-FXlVXYTU-0s
