just out of curiosity... (no offence) why are you old dudes so interested in
video games?
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From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Nov 21 09:46:38 2004
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hebert)
Date: Sun Nov 21 09:46:36 2004
Subject: games replacing Hollywood was Re: [brlug-general] hrm
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--- abbott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> just out of curiosity... (no offence) why are you
> old dudes so interested in video games?
Heh. One interpretation could be that we are nothing
but slacker liberals with no ambition.
Another could be that you weren't even born yet when
we started playing video games, and what we (the old
guys) are seeing now is the manifestation of what we
then imagined _could_ be, when video games consisted
of nothing but 2D pixellated aliens marching in step
across the screen, and chomping blobs of pixels eating
other smaller blobs of pixels.
We imagined 3D immersive experiences akin to being in
a movie, and what is appearing now on the video game
scene approaches that very closely. Note that the
video game industry passed the movie industry in total
income in 2002 ($9.4B vs $8.3B) and the gap continues
to widen (future job hint: start learning how to use
Hammer). Simply put, games are getting better faster.
Arguably, HL2 and Doom3 provide the type of experience
we imagined long ago, though I will admit that the
suspension of disbelief is relative. Now it becomes a
matter of modeling all the fantasy worlds that exist
in our collective imagination into 3D games. Some may
think I'm foolish, but I'll bet there's a bit of $$$
to be made.
Last night, I began playing a chapter of HL2 ("WE
DON"T GO TO RAVENHOLM NOW") that was the best gaming
experience I've ever had. And I've played a lot of
video games. My wife recommended I go to bed before
giving myself a heart attack. I took her advice, so
here I am.
Personally, I think HL2 is an immense achievement, in
that it introduces the Source engine, which will be
used by whippersnappers such as yourself, and possibly
old guys like me, to create games that go much further
than HL2.
For example, the HalfLife was definitely a great game;
excellent graphics, gripping story-line, etc. But
CounterStrike, which was developed as a free mod by
fans, took HalfLife much further than it could have
went alone, to the point where people (including me)
still play CounterStrike to this day. Note that CS
first appeared in 2000, and as of this minute, there
are 99,177 people playing CounterStrike
(http://www.steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html).
And I am not even counting those playing CS:Source
(same game, better graphics), which is BTW: 22,045.
The stats page I just mentioned shows that there are
3.713 _billion_ player minutes/month so far for
CounterStrike. There aren't many other games that old
that still have such a large number of people playing
them for such a long time. Think about that: the
movie/TV/entertainment industry would _kill_ for these
kinds of stats; not just for the technology to have
them, but to be able to track them as well. And this
is just one game.
In summary, the reason us old dudes are so interested
in games, is because they are fun. We still have sex
too, BTW. ;)
John
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