Are video games getting better or worse as graphics, sound and gameplay complexity improve?

Better

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by Pete Davison

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This is a question that, at first glance, appears to have an obvious answer.

"Yes, of course they are. Are you crazy?"

The "are you crazy?" is optional, depending on how well you know the person, of course.

Let's take a closer look at this issue, however, as there are more factors at work than some people take note of. Firstly, there is absolutely no denying that game graphics have been on a gradually accelerating "curve of amazingness" ever since the early days, with many games we're getting now carrying almost photo-realistic graphics, and with the advent of high-definition console gaming with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, we're now getting games on our big-screen TVs that once would have only been seen on a high-specification PC.

Also related to the presentation issue is that we're now getting games that we're in full control of that look as good as, if not better than, the pre-rendered, limited-control "interactive movies" of the early CD-ROM era. Anyone remember games like Cyberia, Lawnmower Man and numerous other such monstrosities, heralded at the time as the beginning of a new era but now seeming rather laughable due to their woeful lack of actual interactivity? These days, we are getting games with graphics that knock the socks off these pre-rendered "masterpieces" but allow us the full level of control that we expect.

We have also seen the dawn of the "sandbox game" genre - open-world games where there is a vaguely-defined goal, but a lot of freedom for the player to explore as they please. The best-known examples of this genre are probably Oblivion and Grand Theft Auto, but numerous others have tried the same concept to varying degrees of success. There's no denying that a sandbox game offers an unprecedented level of freedom to explore. There is also an unprecedented level of freedom for developers to hide secrets in places that no-one will ever find unaided, leading to a huge boost for the strategy guide salesmen - but this is perhaps an overly cynical view!

One may argue, however, that the more vaguely defined goals of a sandbox game lead the narrative to suffer, as there is less structure and "pressure" on the player to follow the storyline. Certainly, titles such as Oblivion are often mocked for the player's ability to go off and do something completely unrelated to the story of the game while a quest-critical character simply stands in place for months of game time, waiting for the player to return. This is, of course, ridiculous, but entirely necessary in the context of the game and the technology's current limitations. How frustrating would it be when you wanted to come back to the storyline only to discover that the person wasn't there any more? With current technology, there is only so much we can do about this. Sometime in the future, we may have the capability to, for example, go into a town and start freely asking around where this person had gone, or even for the game's internal modelling of the world to be able to calculate things happening independently of the player's interactions, with the game changing significantly and the plot essentially being procedurally generated based on both the player's actions and how long they were taking to do them.

Some suggest that graphical excellence has reached something of a plateau now, and it's probably true. Any further improvements on graphics from now on are likely to simply be refinements, such as more convincing facial expressions, smoother frame rates and the like. This means that we are at a stage where developers can start concentrating on the important things again - the gameplay, specifically. Many predict that over the next few years we will start seeing many more games where established gaming conventions are turned on their head and used in more and more creative ways - who knows? Perhaps one day we'll see the procedurally-generat ed storyline I describe above, and it would be indistinguishable from a "professionally" written story. Or perhaps we'll see an online game where the "story" characters are also controlled by real humans, enabling real, completely flexible interactions, and we'll be one step closer to the fantasy of "virtual reality".

Games are constantly improving, it's true. Developers just have to be careful not to get lazy and complacent, happy to turn out "just another shooter" with pretty graphics when they could be doing something new with the genre. It's time for developers to get creative with existing conventions, rather than churning out the same old blockbusters year after year.

Some developers, of course, are already doing this. Atlus, for example, turned the typical expectations of a Japanese role-playing game on their head with the release of Persona 3. Rather than allowing the player to take their sweet time through the game as with titles such as the Final Fantasy series, Persona 3 had a strict time limit, with the game coming to its conclusion at the end of the allotted period in the game's calendar whether the player was ready or not. It was also somewhat unique in that players could choose how they spent their time within these limitations. The game focused a lot on the conflict between one's "work" (in this case, battling monsters) and one's personal life, with players having to carefully manage their time spent interacting with their peers at school, developing relationships with others and taking part in various activities, while still remembering to train their characters in combat by battling the monsters that appeared in the "Dark Hour" every night. It was an interesting experience, made all the better by the fact that the narrative was well-written, emotionally resonant and powerful. It was something very different from the RPG genre, and it was all the better for it. Not only that, but it was presented on the PlayStation 2, with a far greater focus being places on the narrative and the game mechanics than the visual presentation. One may argue that presenting a game on a "last-generation" console removes the pressure to conform to the "pretty brigade" and allow developers to focus on the things that make a game truly memorable, and Persona 3 would certainly seem to back that up.

The best, most memorable games are the ones where something a little bit outside the norm has been tried. Persona 3 succeeds because of this. "Sandbox" games succeed because of this, because it is still a relatively young genre compared to some others. This isn't to say that predictable blockbusters don't have a place - in the same way the film industry has summer smashes and arthouse flicks, it's going to become the same way for games, with a broad spectrum of interactive entertainment available for everyone to enjoy.

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