Entertainment For Lively Minds
Are computer games the, erm, new rock n roll?
What did we do as kids? We hung around record shops on saturdays, flicking through all the stock, looking out for new releases, scrounging posters for said releases, looking for second hand records, haranguing the staff to play this or that and - very occasionally - buying a record or two.
The small record shop is to all extents and purposes gone from the high street, but it seems to me that its place has been taken by the computer games shop. Now, I know Word doesn't touch this stuff with a bargepole, but that's where you'll find all yer kids these days of a Saturday barging each other out of the way to play on the demo consoles, flicking through all the covers and - mum & dad or paper round willing - running home clutching a new release in grubby mitts. The fervour pre release around the bigger games - Grand Theft Auto 4, Killzone 2 (this Friday), Metal Gear Solid 4 - looks to me just like that that we saw leading up to the release of big albums...
Am I onto something here? Anyone else agree?
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I don't know
but I remember the Manic Street Preachers saying it about 18 years ago.
Maybe replace the phrase 'the new rock and roll' with 'one of the main things young people are interested nowadays' - not as catchy, but perhaps truer.
True
But yup, been true for quite some time. Computer games have been outselling music for years.
It's a huge industry...
... and deserves to be taken seriously.
I remember the Metal Gear Solid games, and are fantastic to play - As are the Grand Theft Auto games, which rely heavily on music via radio stations playing in the game.
Not yet upgraded to a Playstation 3 - partly as it would really mean forking out for a new TV to get best effect, and that it's rarely that I play games on my Playstation 2 or PSP these days - though I do have the odd game of bowling / tennis on my girlfriends Wii.
Oddly enough, the Wii has thrust the computer industry away form the geeky, boys / men only club it's always been seen as, towards a family friendly image.
true
me and soon-to-be Mrs Dog invested in a Wii last year. My brother and his family have a number of Nintendo DS handheld things.
I recommend
that you get a PS3. Ours wirelessly streams all the music from our Mac so we can listen to it on the surround system, it streams downloaded video material directly to the TV, in HD if need be. We can look at the pictures stored on the computers hard disk on the television (again, in top quality), we can watch Blu Ray discs in gob smacking resolution and - if we can cram it in, we can play games on it. Including a new one 'Flower' that is download only, and is the most beautiful thing I've ever played (you control the wind and blow petals around. Doesn't sound much, but it's the most uplifting experience I've ever had in a game).
It's a huge industry alright
but it absolutely does not deserve to be taken seriously, unless you are aged 10 or under.
Absolute rubbish
Gaming can be an amazing entertainment experience, well on a par with music, books and film; and a huge number of games have something to offer old(er) players: involving storylines, interesting characters and ideas, amazingly detailed gameworlds and graphics.
I take it far more seriously than I do many a musical experience these days. And I'm several decades older than 10.
A serious proposition
You sound like the ideal person, Simon, to do a blog I'd be very pleased to see here: The Old Person's Catch-Up Guide to Proper Gaming.
Where I'm coming from: I'm 51. I played and enjoyed the first DOS Prince of Persia 20 years ago. In the '90s I played and enjoyed Ripper (the one that. Was voiced by Christopher. Walken), Lighthouse and the first Myst. But since gaming seems to have largely abandoned PCs in favour of consoles, I simply haven't a clue.
A paragraph each on the pros and cons of Xbox, Wii and PS3, for example, would be great, as would five or six suggestions to get started in each category - especially the non-shoot'em-up games: fantasy, adventure, mystery, strategy, and so on.
Up for it?
Not so ideal I'm afraid!
I'm on a serious catch up myself at the moment. I didn't touch games for most of this decade myself. Imagine it, not listening to music for nearly ten years. It's like that only worse. Way too many games.
Actually the games coming out for the PC are as plentiful as the consoles, and usually cheaper. Also the PC versions of games quite often are more advanced graphically etc, whereas the console versions cut them down.
And, those old games you may have played are available online quite often for nothing from various places - and legit places too. The necessary spec for those is way below the most basic PC World computers these days.
There is actually quite a big 'retro' community out there for games, and some of the older ones have a community that upgrades old games and adds things to them. If you've a Mac go and search out Oolite, which is a rebuild of Elite, complete with add on options to play as the pilot of the Millenium Falcon for instance..
Oh well. Anyone else?
I mentioned the consoles because my kids are approaching the age where they're going to demand one, and I'm tempted by the PS3's HD/Blu-Ray thing ("thing" being the correct technical term for "functionality", "support" and "capability", I think) as well. I'd also want to play with Mrs V of an evening - pardon? - as an alternative to bad television or far-too-competitive backgammon after the Archlings have been put to bed, which would be a bit awkward on a desktop.
The Wii
is the console of choice amongst families of late; at Christmas at my in-laws (my wife has a huge family) there were three generations playing together at one point.
My best mate loves his role playing adventure games, and has both the PS3 and X-box as his weapons of choice. The problem is there are a lot of good games that are console specific.
Alternatively a few people I know who qualify as serious gamers have all the consoles and a highly spec-ed PC in order to have no risk whatsoever of missing a good game. But then spend most of their gaming time on the PC.
like simon (above) says, Archie, it's a case of
swings and roundabouts. Pluses for the PS3
a) Blu Ray Player; to get the most from BluRay you need the big telly and a big room in which to hold it. I've a 32" LCD and to be honest, I've no intention of ever forking out for a BluRay movie, as the quality of ordinary DVD is good enough. Your mileage may vary
b) stores things. You can rip mp3s and store them on it. I'm not sure if you'd appreciate this or not, but some games will allow you to have your own soundtrack to the game; I'm a fan of Wipeout (futuristic racing game, every race takes less than 3 minutes, oodles of explosions - in short, crack cocaine for the console) and enjoy having my *own* driving playlist come thru the system rather than the bangin' dance choons supplied with it. You can also just sit back with a good book and play music through it. If you don't have the PC in the same room, it's handy
c) plenty of family friendly games, or the kind of things that normally functioning adults would enjoy should Mrs V decide that, perhaps, from here on out, the Washing Up will be done by the person who comes last in a game of Lemmings
The Wii, on the other hand, is smaller, and more tightly focussed on honest-to-god easy-peasy pick-up-n-point playability. It's more focussed on families/fun; if the Playstation is often more about beating 'the game', the Wii is more about beating the other person on the couch. Some games on it can be quite frustrating as pointing/waving/balancing isn't the most exact of sciences, and it was quite a wise move on Nintendos part that they started to ship 'controller covers' with the WII to protect the controllers. I've already cracked one of mine from chucking it at something in bloodyminded frustration...
dunno much 'bout xbox. The Wii is *probably* the safer bet. It's cheaper. It's cheerful. The kids will love the fun of it, the online stuff is cute, it's all safe as houses...
Indus explictly said that...
...the gaming *industry* shouldn't be taken seriously. This implies that, irrespective of the products of that industry, the business itself shouldn't be given any serious consideration.
Given the size of some of the players and the value of the market, especially when compared to (say) the music industry, that's a very odd opinion.
Either Indus knows little about business or, more likely, it was a bad choice of words and he was intending to refer to the *products* of the gaming industry :-)
About a year ago
I spent quite a lot of time in Bedford which struck me as an average sized, typical English town. I spent a long time wandering around the town centre and was struck by the fact there was no record shop that I could see, but there were three game shops. There was a Woolies and a WHS - both, of course selling games as well as CDs.
It was the first time I'd been struck by this, but I'm sure it's not the only record shop-less town centre these days.
Too big to download - for now...
I imagine that much like music retail is dwindling, when domestic broadband connections become fast enough and hard drives vast enough that game companies will switch to digital distribution and in doing so kill the second hand market, which they've been dreaming of doing for years - so what will take the shelf space then?
Obvious
Jetpacks
There'll
still be a hardcore on here moaning that it was all much better when jet packs ran out of fuel after 60 seconds, none of that digital fusion powered rubbish that the kids all have nowadays ect ect ect.
Much rather...
... have hover boots.
and where's the silver suit
I was promised we'd all be wearing by 'the year 2000'.
AND food in tubes.
Downloading already available...
... and from BitTorrents, too. The computer industry faces the same problem as the music industry - though I think it's possible for them to put a 'virus' into software / hardware to find illegal downloads.
The significant difference...
... between the games and music industries is that technology advances are a key factor for games, but a tangential adjunct to the music business. The music business just didn't see far enough ahead, so when they started selling their wares in the form of perfect digital copies (i.e. CDs), at a time when the Sinclair Spectrum was the bee's knees computer-wise, no-one forsaw a future when a) punters would be able to burn their own CDs (any more than make their own vinyl), and b) then convert and upload these perfect copies onto a worldwide network of linked computers for anyone to access.
Conversely, the games business has always thrived on complete paradigm shifts every few years, for 8, 16, 32 and 64 bit machines and cassettes to 5" floppy disks to 3" disks and CDs onwards, but has kept gradually steering customers towards the "console" model, i.e. dedicated games machines as opposed to PCs. This rejuvenates the industry on a regular basis, consigns old formats to history very quickly (there's no equivalent to vinyl junkies in gaming), and makes piracy progressively harder (though not impossible, but certainly beyond the vast majority of gamers.)
Yes, computer storage and downloads are increasing, but so will the size of games - having worked in the games business years ago, I remember when 5" disks went to bigger capacity 3" disks, but then games started coming on multiple disks (12 is the most I can remember), so when CDs came in, everyone though that was the end... until games started coming on multiple CDs too - as a rule, developers will always push the technological envelope and will fill up all the space you give them. The download-only distribution model is definitely possible if the industry wants it, but while it's working perfectly well the way it is (yes, financially it's bigger than the the movie and music industries combined), there's certainly no hurry...
But paradoxically
when the Spectrum around that was the golden age of software piracy - seeing as anyone with a tape to tape recorder could copy anyone elses software. Replace 'worldwide network of linked computers' with 'school playground' and the model was already there.
No equivalent to vinyl junkies in gaming?
My local games-shed appears to do rather a nice trade in software for the sNes, Mega Drive and Master System even though your Golden Axes and Sonics are available in their original form on next-gen-friendly shiny little diskoids. I know gamers who get incredibly enthusiastic about the N64 joypad or the glee of teaming a Nes lightgun and Duck Hunt.
I do agree with your argument with regards to the rather clever buisness model that requires gamers to stump up 300 notes every couple of years, while at the same time, towards the end of a platform's lifespan, games fall to £15/20 and suddenly we're back up in the £50 region.
No equivalent to vinyl junkies?
There is a thriving 'retro' games scene where fanboys discuss in hushed tones the relative merits of obscure Japanese console games, replay the Spectrum vs Commodore and Amiga vs Atari wars of the '80s, and insist that it's all about gameplay, not flashy graphics, and that it was all so much better back in the day.
Vinyl junkies to a man.
Alright, I admit *no* equivalent was probably...
... an exaggeration, but I don't think retro gamers tend to have that evangelical zeal that sets the vinyl junkie apart (though admittedly a few do), and music isn't as centred on the "new new thing" the way games are.
And I speak as someone who still considers "Kikstart 2" on the Spectrum to be the ultimate gaming experience...
Quake
ye mortals, and weep. There is only ONE game.
Naaaa...
Doom was better - they'd lost it by the time of Quake.
We'll have to agree to disagree...
or I'll let you have it with a super nail gun to the head from the top arc of a rocket jump.
The revelation was GLQuake, with all the maps vis'd, played with two Orchid Righteous 3D graphics cards with a full 12Mb of graphics RAM each.
AWESOME.
I actually preferred Wolfenstein...
I thought even Doom was a step too far.
Think of it like Oasis...
Wolfenstein = Definitely Maybe. Something new, refreshing and exciting. Played it to death.
Doom = Morning Glory. More of the same but honed and with some added 'oomph'. Gave me lots of pleasure but in some indefinable way not as exciting as the simpler original.
Quake = Be Here Now. Too much of what was OK in it's original pure state. Played it a few times then thought "meh."
I should have made it clear
that I was talking about online GLQuake via Quakeworld, and not the single player bobbins. Playing on a server with 40 other maniacs running through DM3 with rocket-launchers is a pretty intense buzz.
And the NIN soundtrack to Quake pi$$es all over ANYTHING the Gallaghers are or ever will be capable of.
I love Quake, me. Can you tell?
"games started coming on multiple disks (12 is the most
I can remember)"
Beneath A Steel Sky on Amiga was 15 discs. Had to return one disc because of a code error. Later another code error stopped my progress. Didn't bother sending another disc away.
A friend of mine back in about 1976...
had one of the first computer games which was supposed to simulate tennis. There was a white line for a net and you hit a blob back and forth. The seven year old me was rubbish at it and lost interest after about 10 minutes. So I really don't think gaming and me was meant to be...
Back to the original question.
No. No more than chalk is the new cheese.
But it is!
Have you tasted it?
Not for years.
As part of the essential rite of primary school passage, I tasted both chalk and wax crayon. I'll stick with cheese and rock.
(Please don't say that chalk is the old rock, either. Or that my tastes are cheesy.)
but any geologist will tell you...
chalk IS rock
Is that right?
;-)
the games have a huge impact
on the music my son and his friends listen too. Get a tune on guitar hero and sales will go up !
Gaming: skills-training for the future
Onion
Very good. And I've only just realized that the Onion's videos follow exactly the same format as their written stuff: start with punchline. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
Haven't you also noticed...
that whenever we discuss something, it turns out The Onion has invariably beaten us to it? They seem to have an apposite piss-take ready for every eventuality.
Boredom
I'm no expert, most of my experience being of playing Grand Theft Auto and Tomb Raider on A PS2, but even the best games seem to get boring and repetitive. Is it just me who doesn't enjoy shooting people/monsters or driving something fast?
You
are not alone......Absolutely no interest.
And apparently it no longer makes you more intelligent.
Can you get Jet Set Willy
for the Wii? The colours, the immersion into a real world, its all there
With so many bands currently piling in with their own Rock Band\Guitar Hero games then I assume thet gaming is already the new rock n roll.
Plus it means that the multitracks used for the games are leaked onto the net for us music nerds to put under thge microscope. Everyboday wins! Game over
The Onion
Hot New Video Game Consists Solely Of Shooting People Point-Blank In The Face
This about sums it up for me - entertainment for silly teenage boys.