Since fairly early on in the history of the universe, evolution‘s been hard at work. The exact point at which evolution came into effect and what it means varies depending on those you ask. Some say it started when Adam and Eve were burying dinosaur bones and joking about how it was “really going to mess with their heads”. Others say it began with life and only pertains to life (that’d be Charlies model) adapting to the surrounding environment. I myself believe it affects all things as anything bound to time is bound to change over time.
One such example of this is the evolution of humans. Dramatic physical mutation is frowned upon by society. If you’ve got an arm growing out of your head it may be really handy (no pun intended) for gathering fruit from trees or holding an umbrella or any number of other things. Society however would view it as a defect, something that needed to be “put right”. As such, rapid physical evolution is no longer viable. Mental evolution is (and has been for some time) the future of the species. The tools we create are what allow us to adapt/expand. As such, videogames can be used as a small measure of the evolutionary progress humans have made.
That all sounds great. It’s nice to know that games are just a reflection of humanity’s ability but sadly there’s more to it then that. For starters, it’s an industry and therefore involves money. Now while money isn’t inherently a bad thing it does tend to bring out the worst in some people, leading to no end of BS and unethical behaviour. This can range from lying about their product to lying about a competitor’s product to making all versions of the product as close to identical as possible.
It doesn’t stop at those creating the games or hardware either. Parasitic media outlets also try to “cash in” using underhanded means to receive payment in the form advertising revenues. Sometimes companies involved in the publication of games use this fact as leverage to censor information (bad press) that may affect their (publishers) income.
Further exacerbating the problem is no shortage of truly mindless cheerleaders. Eager to mislead, insult and annoy anyone not of the same persuasion. It really is sickening. None of which lead to an evolution of the medium. All it leads to is stagnation and disillusionment.
I think what all the companies and cheerleaders need to remember is that there’s a word for not being able to evolve at the rate of your surroundings. It’s "extinction". Yes companies are a reflection of human evolution too and bound to the same rules. Trying to slow evolution down too much can only ever end badly.
I wonder if anyone told them that.
Mixed Realms latest is an action-packed journey into hell. Here are all 25 PSVR 2 trophies for Hellsweeper VR.
"The Dallas-based (Texas, the US) video games publisher Apogee Entertainment and Šempas-based (Slovenia) indie games developer Emberheart Games, are today super happy and proud to announce that their retro FPS spellcaster "Wizordum", is coming to PC via Steam EA on November 15th, 2023." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
NoobFeed Editor Daman Shelley writes - Deceit 2 is an excellent game that doesn't really feel like a sequel; the game is a much more refined version of the first game that has fleshed out many of the original mechanics and added even more. The gameplay is both equally fun and terrifying while fully immersing you in the experience.
Good stuff.
I like the part about entertainment forms being a reflection of human intelligence and advancement, but how capitalism has made it stagnate. Social theorists ( see: practical application of the pseudo-sciences of anthropology and sociology ) argue that the compression of time as we know it via faster global communication etc has increased the rate at which we learn and evolve, and so our entertainment has become a causal factor in evolution rather than just a byproduct of evolution.
I wrote a paper on this same thing except regarding music rather than games and how pop music for example ( the musical equivalent to gaming, despite what ' HARDCORE!!!' gamers claim ) used to be provocative and inventive and like all music genres was born as a reactionary social forces. See: Joy Division or Madonna ( not the current impostor, but rather the pro-Women's right to self expression / feminist idol incarnation of the now-robot-lizard-Madonna ) or David Bowie, all challenged social norms with their image and music style. Now the genre, just as gaming, exists only as a commercial entity. Catch all games ( no, I'm not referring not Pokemon ;) ) like Uncharted 2 offer no originality, no unique innovative gameplay design/plot/characters/no innovative rendering techniques ( lol @ deferred rendering while I'm on the topic ) yet it's praised as the second coming. I've said it all along, Nintendo are the ones with innovative GAMEPLAY. Which is what gaming is all about.
Fetishist consumerism is all the act of gaming is to these young in's buying what the man on TV said is cool...people actually LIKE a marketing guy from a gaming company :S
People will keep buying games with 8hr campaigns, online only MP, half the resolution of their 1080p TV, DLC/DRM/Both. When last gen we had 20hr campaigns, online and offline MP with bots and split-screen or LAN. 30 levels in an MP game on day 1 and the game would actually work on launch day instead of needing a patch. All the while furiously campaigning for inferior graphics as the years go on. We went from MSAA to MLAA, HDR to deferred. 60 frames to 30, I mean seriously, a lot of Nintendo64 games ran at 60 frames...
Play Beyond is more like Play Behind, but don't take my word for it, ask the PR team that lives here. I'm sure MNichols will write you up a nice essay on why the human eye can't see more than 30 frames, or how up-scaling is better than native res, or how dualshock is better than a keyboard/mouse...
Yep people hate evolution.
Looking at the way dogs are bred to specialize in there job. hounds that flushed out fowl etc, You got retrievers, you got greyhounds etc.
They all where bred to a specific purpose and have strengths and weaknesses. The survival of the species for them is never in question. Humans adopted them and have there purposes. It is Human Selection , rather then Natural Selection.
Consoles are a lot like dogs they have strengths and weaknesses , and they each specialize in something.
Wolves are hunted to near extinction in a lot of areas, while ankle bitters are adopted into homes and they are many.
Wii specializes in MC and while not a beastly performing console it is adopted by the masses. micro evo
360 specializes in Networking XBL, Hands free MC micro evo
PS3 It only does everything. macro evo via "future-proofing" arrogant stance but it is delivering most of it's promises. Though sometimes you have to wait on things. *cough* GT5.
People will adopt the type of dog best suited for them and there purposes, same with consoles.
Well evolution is great, can't deny that. The gaming industry and more specifically consoles are holding back what advances developers can make. As long as there there are consoles, developers will continue to develop for those systems which are lagging behind in the technology curve. PC is a different beast. It's pushing tech to the bleeding edge of what's possible, but the problem is nobody seems to want to push new tech. People are always complaining that they have no games to use their ultra-beefy system on, and then when a developer makes hardware crushing games like Crysis and Metro some people cry that it's too much to handle. I think devs need to find that fine line between good performance on lower end hardware and pushing hardware as far as it would go.
Well written. I agree completely.