Video games have been around for decades (30+ years… wow) and there have been some amazing advancements in every aspect of the technology. It seems in the last few years the industry has really taken off and flourished with my generation’s love of interactive and customizable entertainment. Video games started with my parents’ generation, but they also grew up in an era of passive entertainment like broadcast television and radio. Now you can download music and play it on a personal device, customize radio channels (Pandora), text message and play games on your cell phone, watch videos on YouTube, access social networking sites like Facebook which now have games embedded inside of them. Hell, our knowledge of the world is fueled by Google and Wiki pages. No longer do we have to wait until the next morning to read the news in the paper or wait until our local network airs the afternoon news. We are a flexible, trendy, wired generation that love to get our game on.

We are so passionate about our gaming that we even have a platform war, which is really nothing more than drinking the proverbial [sugary beverage] of your favorite console’s marketing campaign. We have Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all vying for our undying attention and obviously our money. Each company’s marketing campaign is a bit different, but overall they just want to get their console into your home. In reality, anyone that plays a game is a gamer. If you can sit down and enjoy a video game and want to play it again and possibly branch out to other games, then you are a gamer. Don’t believe this crap that someone playing a casual game is less important to the industry than someone who plays Halo for 30+ hours a week. Both are gamers and both are equally important to the evolution of the industry. People that fight over which platform is better are ignorant fools who have joined the cult and have stopped thinking for themselves. We need open-minded individuals to be aware of big picture and take advantage of the industry’s strengths. The industry is constantly growing and changing, mostly for the better, so you are either with it or against it.

The big three companies responsible for gaming in your home are Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Nintendo’s Wii has the Wii-mote which allows control through motion sensing. It even has a little speaker built into it. Sony has incorporated motion control through its Six Axis Controller, which is fairly intuitive, but it still hasn’t been taken advantage of to the degree it should be. Microsoft’s XBox 360 controller is a slightly more streamlined version of their last controller. It doesn’t have any major features as far as intuitiveness goes, but it is a solid controller and can interface with a headset and a small add-on keypad. The XBox Live! service allows for decent network play and voice chatting, which has yet to be match by the other two consoles. Each system has its weakness, but they are fun to play nonetheless.

This brings me to my main point. Each console has its target demographic, but overall they want to win everyone over. They have made advancements in wireless controller technology, networking. voice chatting, and intuitive gameplay with motion sensors and analog controls. A lot of the technology is something similar to what PC gamers have had for years, but it is in a more streamlined and in an easily accessible package. The unfortunate thing about PC gaming is that it is the equivalent of the crotchety old man of the industry. We buy our fancy and expensive hardware, monitors, and speakers to make us feel like we really are in the game, but we have been using the same controls since the “dawn of Doom”.

You can buy mice and keyboards that cost a hundred dollars or more a piece, but they are pretty much the same thing as their $10 siblings from 10 years ago. Buying a laser mouse and fancy keyboard doesn’t make you better… it just proves you have more money and you like having “new” technology. We use the WASD keys to move around and the mouse to look or navigate menus. Need more buttons for new gameplay features? Just assign them around the WASD set. Now, I’m not saying that PC gamers should drop their keyboards and mice and pick up a controller, but for all the engineering prowess that we have in the PC industry, you would think that we could invent some better equipment to interface with. To think that in ten or twenty years people will still be playing first person shooters with a mouse and keyboard is ridiculous since a handful of keys and a mouse will not be enough to control a realistic character in a digital world just as complicated as our own. The controllers of the future may resemble mouse and keyboards, but they will be more intuitive, more ergonomic, and have all the bells and whistles that we should already have today. I’ve been a huge fan of Counter Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2 and can’t imagine playing them any other way, but for newer games that keep trying to revolutionize the way we think in games (Bioshock and Crysis, for example) why can’t we include gameplay and peripherals that make our movements just as intuitive as our brains solving the puzzles?

All of our games are getting more intelligent, but we continue to play harder, when we should be playing smarter. Imagine the freedom that PC game developers would have with making drastically new gameplay dynamics if we started using more intuitive peripherals instead of continue using peripherals for that old school-button pushing-linear gameplay that we have grown so accustomed to.

Moral of the story: We need to play smarter, not harder, and we won’t be able to do that until we work together to have the right tools to do so.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Consumer Electronics, Games, Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.