The future: (every action has a reaction)
The month is almost over and I have seen some great articles about what is going to happen next in the game industry. Seeing recent positive events occur over a short period of time I would have to say great and exciting things are happening. We are definitely in a very important era of technological advances. If you were born yesterday your where born into a world with better technology than I was in 1989 the start computers that will soon be faster than the human brain and almost everything is touch screen listening to the state of the union I hear that our president is focused on solving our problems now without delay. I see innovation coming out quicker than ever. If you have an idea and access to the internet then your voice can be heard quicker than ever. New sub cultures have been developed meeting people over the internet isn’t as frowned upon as it used to be and people that play video games are not deemed social rejects or misfits. Most importantly (for the sake of this post) video games are getting more realistic than ever before.
With this said let me bring you to the main focus of my topic cause and effect. Remember back in the day when you would shoot a brick wall with a rocket launcher and all you would get was an explosion and no burn mark? Well I certainly do that was a very long time ago nowadays it is all about the realistic destruction and reaction of every individual object in the game. Helped by physics game developers can calculate where an object was hit, the density of the object and the distribution of energy in order to make that wooden crate or whatever flies realistically into a million pieces. This is not the only innovation we have seen within the last couple of years; with Rockstar’s rage engine objects can display unscripted physical change to objects, this means that it will be very hard to see the same damage done to an object. Another great example by Rockstar is their use of the euphoria engine models react realistically to where they have been hit and stumble according to gravity. Now that I have finished kissing Rockstars shiny well licked buttocks let me progress to what I think the future has in store for us.
1. Total communication between objects. To further realism in video games I believe that game designers will develop an even better network of communication between game objects this means the box, body, water etc will be fully aware of force taken or object associated with and react accordingly and realistically to stimulus.

2. Ai that feels pain realistically. Yes this has been the gripe of all my game play, I shoot an enemy with a shot gun and the bastard is still shooting at me. Or I hit a guy in his leg and he just keeps on walking. In the next couple of years I believe we will be seeing more realistic reactions to damage taken I hate to mention their name again but yes in The Euphoria engine did a great job at this in Grand Theft Auto 4 and valve did actually show physical damage being done in l4D2

3. Armor will be position based. I notice in a lot of games when you where body armor you have no idea whether or not your body armor is protecting you when you are hit unless it is like Golden Eye where you basically have extra health, but for other games it is much like taking random less damage. Developers are trying to create surfaces that block according to position on the body and caliber of bullet received.

4. Destruction. As we can see with the Frostbite engine almost every wall and building is destructible an even better example is Red faction guerrilla. The next step is making absolutely everything destructible Even if it means tunneling so deep you get bored.

5. Finally let’s talk about the choices you make and how they affect the player later on for example games like Mass effect, Fable, etc the next step would be to make a choice that would affect you negatively and actually be able to counter that negative effect with another choice.

Cause and effect will always be improved upon as games advance and realism becomes a key feature to developing a successful title. The more realistic your Game is the more fair it is and blame will shift away from crappy mechanics that are not well utilized. I believe the Source engine and Rage engine are great examples of how realism can rally improve game play. Sometimes it is not always about graphics.

The future is quickly approaching I dream of the day when I can see a body of a fallen player and disgrace it even more by realistically shooting it to the bone. But for now here’s hoping to a better tomorrow