 ast issue I raised three questions about so
called next-gen gaming. They were: What
was last-gen gaming? What is now-gen
gaming? What will be next-gen gaming? I’m
going to try and offer my answers to these, and
you’re more than welcome to disagree with me.
Here goes:
Last-gen
This blanket term is, for me, not necessarily
tied to any particular moment (or moments)
in time. I’m constantly seeing last-gen design
applications in current releases, so I guess
that it’s more a list of gaming elements than a
halcyon ramble about some golden era
of gaming.
I’m talking about intrusive and clunky design
elements such as shoddy AI, an absence of
adequate NPC path finding, limited plot, pathetic
dialogue, shallow characters, archaic saving
systems, the absence of emergent gameplay
options and – perhaps the biggest of them all –
annoying and/or game-breaking bugs.
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I’ve left my answer fairly general here, and
that’s deliberate. This allows you to think about
which games, for you, have some or all of
these features – and then decide if you would
class them as last-gen games. In some ways
last-gen represents the birth and childhood of
games themselves, which are only now starting
to move through the trials and tribulations
of adolescence and, for some, into early
adulthood.
Now-gen
Yanking its slightly evolved arse out of the
last-gen primordial sea is now-gen gaming, but
the line is a lot tougher to draw. This is because
it’s my belief that gaming in general still carries
the baggage of all those things I listed above as
last-gen drawbacks. So, now forced to draw that
line, I’ll go ahead and chalk a circle around the
current consoles, as well as the PS2, Xbox and
PC, and call that now-gen gaming.
You’ll notice that I didn’t name any gaming
platforms in my last-gen section, and that’s because I believe that the age of dedicated
consoles
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is what epitomises now-gen
gaming. Where once gaming was almost
an afterthought, utilising the computer grunt
developed for non-gaming purposes, there
now exists a burgeoning industry that has as its
entire focus the development of bigger, better
and faster gaming platforms.
Now-gen gaming is about the focused act
of games as entertainment, with an industry
pushing forward to create stories, experiences
and interactive opportunities that simply weren’t
viable with last-gen technologies and, dare I
say, audiences. To game in the now is also
to be a critic, to judge a game on every past
instance of poor design and failed presentation.
It’s an age of self-awareness, fuelled ever so
vigorously by the gaming press, who in their
struggle to find an identity – are they journalists,
writers, or just grumpy pricks? – also forget
that they themselves are part of the cycle,
embroiled in the act of gaming in the now, just
like the readers they serve by writing reviews
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and pointing out the dire aspects of game
development.
Now-gen games, in my opinion, are the
games we’re playing today, by virtue of them
being about gaming as a business.
Next-gen
Rather than repeat last month’s rant, I’ll just
say that I don’t like this term. Anything that I
label ‘next-gen’ is only done so because of
my inability to think of a word or phrase that
more aptly describes its almost anachronistic
presence in a sea of now-gen games.
Next-gen gaming, if we must use the term, is
complete artistic expression via the medium of
games. The game can have bugs, it can have
a shitty save system. Heck, it can even have
god-awful graphics. But if these negatives are
overshadowed by a game that, in its entirety, is
an astounding and affective piece of art, then
to me that’s a next-gen game. It will be a game
that draws together the many threads of design
with a pure focus on the player’s experience.
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