I haven't posted in a while, and only posted once before, so I felt it was time say something.

It'll be short and and quick. Just something that occurred to me as I watched some video game ad waiting for a video to stream on a website. My thought was this: wow graphics have come a long way. My second thought was wow, that looks more real than the view from my window. And here we go.

Electronics have come so far. Digital technology is amazing and the resolution quality of the screens we play games on have become more like a rectangular cut through reality into another world. Before what comes next arrives I'll preface it with this: I like games like Fall Out 3 and Metal Gear (though I've only play one of them), Metal of Honor, etc. Zombie games are fun. I mean who hasn't walked into a room and seen someone playing a Resident Evil game without wanting to pick up and play for five seconds just so you can unload a couple of shot gun shells into the nearest undead.

Alas though I wonder if the progress of technology, the number of computations per microsecond, the textured and clean graphics, hasn't lead me away from what drew me to video games in the first place. Nintendo was a scheduled escape from reality with Mario, Sonic and friends hijacking me every weekday at 3 to crazy worlds of over sized mustaches and hedgehogs in red track shoes. Games that stick players in the lives of WWII soldiers or intercity gangs are cool. They have great gameplay because of their creative teams and large budgets. But I wonder what games those same development teams would have been putting together if some natural disaster had landed humanity back in days of 8bit cartridges. Cartridges are dead and before anyone accuses me of being a nostalgic bleeding heart I'm not whining about getting back to the good old days (well maybe a little). I just wonder if in our perfectionary natures we haven't become to obsessed with graphics. Graphics are great. I'm as glad as anyone that the days of Splintering polygons harpooning my eyes is over. But why not use the amazing graphics technology we have now in a more creative way.



I said this would be short so I should stop before I make a coherent point. The movie industry might make it clearer. For how many years have directors and special effects people tried to make things look more real? Putting all hyperbole aside the answer is forever. But the whole point of special effects was to do something you couldn't in real life like show two superheros flying or a person dodge bullets or an over sized lizard destroying downtown Tokyo. And yet it seems like the majority of mainstream games (mainstream referring to where blockbuster titles), have been trying for a long time to become more and more realistic, not just in how things are shown but the material itself. Shadow of the Colossus is a visual delight that was not possible ten years ago. In it technological and graphics prowess meet dreamlike art. In the end I'd just rather be galloping through a forest that I couldn't find in real life than with a bow in one hand and a master sword in the other instead of puttsin around robbing hookers in a back alley that looks remarkably like the one I see every day on my walk to 7 eleven.



Well I have to get back to finals studying and the West Wing now.

There are plenty exceptions to this, maybe so many that they aren't exceptions, in which case I'm sure more than one person will correct my ill advised rambling.