Why GTA4 blows OoT our of the water.

[rocketpig]

Bodhesatva said:

Words Of Wisdom said:

Bodhesatva said:

Personally, I think Chess and Go are better than both of these games. My favorite game released in the last 2-3 years is Portal, a game that hardly pushes the envelope in terms of graphical or technical complexity.

In short, games do not get better as the graphics or even the tech get better. Games likely will not be better in 10 years, just as games were not worse 10 years ago, or 100. If that weren't the case and the level of fun actually was increasing, then people who lived 50 years ago would have been having much less fun than us and people who lived 200 years ago would have died of boredom/antifun before they died of Cholera.

This isn't to say that GTA IV isn't a better game than Ocarina of Time, by the way. I haven't played the former and the latter wasn't my favorite game to begin with. Instead, I'm just pointing out that games aren't getting any better than they were, and the perception that they are is entirely that; a perception.

Yep. Games haven't gotten better at all. That's why no one buys consoles and we all sit around playing Chess and Go.

Oh wait...

Lots of people do sit around playing Chess and Go. In fact, I'd wager they're still more heavily played than any Console game on earth. Check out Yahoo Chess' statistics alone, let alone the numerous tournaments, leagues, and hobby shops dedicated singularly to Chess. Go has the same reputation in the East.

Add to the fact that those two games have been played for centuries, or in the case of Go, millenia. Have any console games been played by a large population for more than, say, 5 years? No? Then they fail. If you think Chess and Go are dying or something, then you clearly don't know the world we live in, or just don't run in the right circles. It would be like me insisting that no one likes Rock anymore because I don't personally know anyone still listening to it (I seriously don't have any friends who do).

I agree. Games are not getting more fun and in many cases, have actually taken a step back in that regard over time. What technology offers is different ways of communicating an idea. Sometimes that technology is used to move the industry forward. Often times, it's used poorly and actually moves everything back a little. While technical prowess of developers have definitely improved over time, the other necessary requirements needed to truly move things forward (storytelling, pacing, controls) have remained rather stagnant. Tetris today is just as much fun as it ever was, as are SMB3 and Fallout 2. Other games haven't fared so well. Why? I think it's because more focus was put into the technical side of things while the developers forgot to ask themselves the ever-important question of "is this enjoyable?" As the videogame industry matures (please God, let this start happening soon), we will see games that will continue to be played by later generations because they stand out as true monuments of the industry, much like old movies today.

BTW, Chess is probably a bad example to compare to videogames because it's quite possibly the greatest, most complex, and deep game ever created. That's a pretty damned high bar to set for anything else.