something hit me the other day. not physically, but rather like an epiphany: hardcore gaming isn’t what it used to be. in fact it’s not even what it was before that. i see myself for who i am today of course, but also from a hilltop where I can see who i used to be, and after twenty years of evolution, have seen trends come and go. like many other things in life, gaming has its cycles, and it appears as though we’re all poised on the edge of the next age in its history. so what is hardcore 3.0, and what happened to one and two?
as i see it, fundamental shifts in culture have popularised different game genres at different points in time, much like the latin explosion of ‘99-00 in music, or the grunge era of the early to mid 90s. take 2d platformers for example back in the late 80s, or street fighters in the mid 90s, or the ubiquity of FPSs of today. for better or worse, gaming has already hit two milestones; two generations of hardcore gamers, and the third is just around the corner.
when i was a kid (a real kid mind you, not this ‘big kid’ business i try to pass off today), the term ‘hardcore gamer’ had the connotation of someone who either had access to a sizeable fortune and had amassed a library of dozens upon dozens of games and could play each of them for a brief while and was the envy of every kid in the neighbourhood, or someone who with modest gaming expenditures had a few games, but played the hell out of them: early morning, any time during the day, late into the night. even neglecting one’s health, all for achieving the highest score or purely for the love of hoisting their favourite sprite-based character to that out-of-the-reach ledge. it was truly the romantic era of gaming.
the first generation of gaming was all about diversion, and had little to do with replicating real-life experience, and focused on using the limited (by today’s standards, but it was cutting edge at the time) technology to squeeze every ounce of well-thought, straightforward fun out of a system, and into the hands and hearts of anyone who wanted to play. it didn’t exclude or intimidate users with steep learning curves or complicated, arthritis-inducing controllers that even an eight-fingered life form would take issue with. these were games you could pick up and play as easily as you could read a comic strip, and escape into for however long you wished; even shorter games whose beginning-to-end might be a half hour often had great replay value. but then, like any good art, the steeper the limitations given, the better the end product as the creation requires extra time and thought to realise the goal by ingenuity rather than indolence or indulgence.
in terms of nintendo products, generation 1.0 lived from the days of NES through approximately the release of the nintendo (ultra) 64, a pretty typical span of time for measurement of any modern, named generation (about 11-12 years), but what factors might have begun the gestation period for bearing 2.0? many, to be sure, but i’ll pick an easy one that comes first to mind: control complexity, and one of the first genres to introduce this was in street fighting games. now to be clear, i’m not blaming the state of the industry on any one thing, game, or genre; merely choosing a place to jump in. perhaps it was the demand of the genre itself combined with the available controller technology that created games where one could—and certainly would—learn not only a plethora of moves using an often arbitrary sequence of button-presses, but then also recognise or anticipate an opponent’s moves, and in less than the blink of an eye, respond with a counter or defence attack, delivered by a flawless execution of acrobatic fingers, as if on a tiny board of simon. while i personally own and enjoy a range of fighting games, the reason it so quickly jumps to mind is that i remember thinking after first playing one how difficult it was to simply pick up and play (intelligently, button-mashing doesn’t count!), and how it took a lot of practice to be able to play well or advance. sure, market indicators and the fact that street fighters sold like mad in the 90s may have meant the industry—or at least consumers—was interested in growing up a bit, or was its popularity read wrong? instead of moving everything toward advanced, complex, ‘adult’ games, maybe what the industry was looking for was simply diversity, not an overhaul.
of course business being what it is, ran with the idea, and continued enabling games which upped the ante as it were, innovating fighting games with additional considerations like combos; real-time strategy games touting dozens or hundreds of variables, characters, weapons, and commands. so by the time 3d technology came around, the logical thing to do first with a system is take your existing 2d controller, and add buttons or features to control the new third dimension. could developers have left out some of the older, more antiquated 2d control elements? probably, but the fact that they didn’t not only kept gamers used to the old controllers happy, but ultimately allowed developers freedom to use the extra buttons for more complex control schemes. had a simpler controller been designed, developers would’ve been pressed to think longer on a game’s design, and use ingenuity to solve problems, not rely on ‘tchotchkes’ like buttons or other apparatuses.
now the controllers for 3d games may have been designed to be as simple as technology would allow, but since the buttons were there, developers used them, and certain game interfaces for 3d environments became standard, be they platform in nature, like ‘super mario 64’, or a through-the-eyes first-person perspective like ‘doom’, among others. as time goes by, the sequels and clones were released–each attempting to add something fresh–would tend to also introduce new mechanics, rarely simpler than the original. in fact, ‘sequels’ (or iterative expansion packs as i call them) in the 3d era seem to be the status quo, for a number of reasons (but that’s a whole different article). that it remains true nearly all sequels extend the life of the original by adding something new, rather than replacing something, which adds to the complexity, and subtracts from the accessibility. it was this shift away from simplicity and games anyone could pick up and play to these more complicated systems that embodies what i dub ‘generation 2.0’: a generation devoid of real diversity, and of specific gamers dedicated to playing sequels via overly complicated interfaces (controllers AND game design); not a wide audience who indulges for the love of diversion. gaming is more or less a profitable competition for the benefit of business, not consumers.
this brings us to the present, where astoundingly intricate and complex 3d games are commonplace, as are a sea of unoriginal sequels, clones, and an industry catering to such a fraction of the potential market that one is hard-pressed to find more than a couple genres of games released at any given time. using the recent xbox360 launch as an example, i was disappointed by the lack of any games which even remotely interested me. i’m not a big fan of shooters, war sims or sports games (save for racing), so you can imagine that when of the twenty or so games available at launch only two or three fell outside that small list of dislikes, the system also fell outside the realm of my interest. perhaps generation 2.0 is the ‘sophomore slump’ of the industry; the growing pains and rebellious period of a young adult railing against its boundaries with newfound freedoms and learning its lessons the hard way; a necessary evil required to push its evolution to the next level, pun fully intended. but all is not lost…
enter generation 3.0. a new era of gaming where a return to the essence of gaming in all its facets is embraced. we’re not quite there yet, but with the advent of a system such as the nintendo ds introducing a new interactive dynamic with its touch screen has really set the stage for a return to those core elements of gaming: easy/simpler accessibilty, and with its new ‘touching is good’ aims to not only refresh how we play games, but it also allows all those gamers who drifted away during the darker ages of 2.0 to join the club again. similarly, the nature of the revolution’s free-hand control looks to take what the ds has started to a whole new level. is it suprising that so many ‘classic’ games from generation 1.0 are being offered for download on the wifi connection? it’s been said in many other articles and from nintendo itself that the big n is looking to recapture that magic of old, and the revolution is certainly on track to accomplish that goal. but until it arrives, what the ds brings to the table boosts us to about generation 2.5.
and this folks is where i come in. i’m personally sick of generation 2.0 and have indeed found myself alienated from one of my favourite pasttimes many times over the past several years and am genuinely excited to fully consume this new era as a hardcore gamer of generation 3.0. and this is the perspective i plan to bring to you in the future: a veteran waxing nostalgic with the experience of both previous generations, but also with the fresh breath of a born-again gamer. it’s like we’re waking from an ice-age, and it’s such a great feeling to see the snow melting around us.
what the sheer dichotomy of 1.0 and 2.0 has taught us is that certainly there’s a market and interest for both simple and highly complex games, but the industry simply cannot survive being either black or white. it’s the gray zone inbetween that includes both/all extremes which is healthiest, and is clearly the next evolution. does having the full spectrum of grayscale as part of 3.0 mean there’s nowhere to evolve into 4.0 and beyond? not at all. if nintendo has taught us nothing, it’s that we can expect them to inject into a world of gray the next big thing: colour.