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| Singularity - The video game (Activision) |
Zach Parsons at somethingawful has written an interesting post on video games, and their place in the future. His view, The Singularity won't happen - our addiction to video games will get in the way.
According to Parsons, between 1981 and 2011, the advancements in gaming far outpaced the advancements in any other form of entertainment. Excluding digital effects, a high-quality movie made in 1981 still looks roughly as good as a high-quality movie made now. Music has been democratized by technology, but it's hard to argue that it has been improved. Television is still transitioning from expensive, scripted episodes to cheap "reality" television that can be forgotten almost immediately. Books have almost ceased to exist.
Consider the following examples:
Then...
Frogger, 1981
Donkey Kong 1981
This was a soldier in 1986's Ikari Warriors:
Today...
Portal 2
Infinity Blade 2
25 years later a soldier in Battlefield 3 looks like this:
Tomorrow?
Advancements go beyond graphics or other production values, all of which are rapidly approaching the cinematic quality. The game play is also increasingly complex and realistic. There are increasingly complicated puzzles, new feedback devices or other immersive technologies involved in game play. You can dance with video games, sing with them and there is probably a whole industry in Japan that caters to having sex with them.
Video games will continue to be developed, especially with the money pouring in to the industry. IGN interviewed some of the industry players to discuss what video games will be like in 2020.
Parsons writes about gamers taking too much time playing games while not focusing on the important things. He even cites an example of parents neglecting their child to the point of it dying while they played World of Warcraft.
The numbers of hours by people around the world playing Angry Birds supports this idea. (Addicted to Angry Birds? Here is a helpful infographic.)
Summing up Parson comments:
Fifty years from now, maybe less, we will experience an entertainment-based singularity event. We will be video gamed out of existence. There will be no grand collective intelligence or robot masters to take over, just empty movie theaters and dinner tables and little baby skeletons in cribs. There will be heaps of uncollected garbage and dogs running loose in the streets. The bad guys will be in charge, doing whatever it is they want with our desolate cities, and the rest of us will be trying our hardest to forget the real world even exists. It will probably be pretty easy.
It doesn't have to be this way. The solution is simple: stop playing video games.
Hear, hear.
somethingawful.com:
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