In an age where videogames are a major part of our popular culture, it’s hard to imagine a time where the industry wasn’t so mainstream.
Long gone are the days where a development team consisting of a few programmers, struggle to release a game with the limited amount of time and resources given to them.
Now, many developers consist of large teams of people who work on a game simultaneously to meet their deadlines with huge blockbuster movie-like budgets.
The kind of of quality that us, the consumer now expects from games is substantially higher than what gamers used to expect. Graphics are far better, gameplay is smoother and games can now tell a complex cinema quality type of narrative all while immersing us in the experience.
Early on, when home consoles were in their primitive forms, games were simple, straight forward and fun. Due to their simplistic nature, games were marketed towards younger consumers who could have their friends over to play a winner stays on tournament of Blades of Steel on the NES or team up to play Double Dragon II and defeat those harder bosses together.
Double Dragon II
There was no online network and no game patches to download if the developers felt that their product wasn’t up to snuff….what you bought is what you got.
In times of need, I would get advice from friends on how to proceed through a certain area of a game that I was having trouble with and then go home to try to use those tricks I’ve learned. I would try and try until my fingers hurt and my eyes were strained from staring at my behemoth of a tv’s standard definition display. It all came down to that very moment when I claimed victory…and victory never tasted so sweet as it did then….all because it was earned..
With the dawn of the online age, videogames could now be played against people from all around the globe without having to leave the comfort of your living room. Games recieve updates to fix bugs and glitches to optimize a games performance and the sheer magnitude and scope of a game’s universe, is nothing short of staggering….so what’s the problem?
The reliance on a consoles online network and the fact that we rely so much on "being connected" has caused many of us to realize how fragile our gaming experiences are when these services become unavailable.
The frustration we feel when we know we can’t play our desired games online is something that was never felt in the past due to the fact that all you had to do was simply put your cartridge in the console and play.
It was in the confidence that knowing when you booted up your console, that nothing was going to stand in the way of the allotted time you had set aside to play your choice of game.
This is the confidence that has been shaken as of late with Sony and Microsoft’s recent distributed denial of service attack (ddos) over the Christmas break. It has somewhat put a damper on how we view one of our favourite forms of entertainment.
It may be for the simple fact as we have not yet been reassured that this type of attack can ever be prevented. This large inconvenience could strike at any time and could hinder the precious time we have set aside to enjoy ourselves…and our time, is important.
What I truly miss is rushing home after purchasing a new game, tearing off the plastic covering, inserting the game quickly into my console and begin enjoying a few hours of gameplay. That has now been replaced with getting home and knowing there will be at least 10 to 15 minutes of wait time before playing due to game installs and day one updates. That’s also hoping that the network is online and allowing me the opportunity to play.
As graphics and storytelling continue to push the envelope as to what we expect from videogames, it’s in the accessibility in the services these consoles provide that need to reinstate the confidence that we can play the games we want to play, when we want to play them…the very thing that retro gaming did so well needs to be present today.
In a day and age where we expect so much from our videogames in terms of graphics, framerates, sound and control, so should be the same expectation on the reliability of the platform we choose to play them on.
As we move forward and games become more complex, challenging and innovative, let us remember that things such as accessibility and reliability are just as important.
Looking to the past may be a good reminder of simpler times equals smaller expectations. If that is indeed true then these more advanced times should call for greater expectations.