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The gaming industry and the Man-Machine Interface
Sorenson
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Normally I'd be sleeping but a combination of being sick and playing the fuck out of Dragon Quest IV for the last several days has screwed my circadian rythem up something fierce, so I figure this is as good a time as any to throw this thought out for discussion.
So when we think about the idea of the man-machine interface we tend to think of stuff like Neuromancer and Ghost in the Shell and what have you, and thus tend to think of it in terms of quaint sci-fi storytelling and the like, being rather farfetched in its design and being at least several decades' worth of research and testing before being implimented in a scale anywhere near where it's shown in such franchises. for all of these facts and realities, however, the ideas being presented by such do give rise for thought of the effects that would be felt if/when such technology was indeed commercially viable for use by the mass citizenry. Not in any of the ways that these stories tend to show it off, though no doubt we could see that sort of stuff happening just because Humans Are Bastards and will thus always seek to try and pull such shit, but more realistic and grounded terms - like the impact that neurological augmentation like these franchises show off on the economy, or in our particular case, the gaming industry.
When you think about it, it's actually pretty scary in that dark-unknown sort of way in that the introduction of the MMI to the mass market could be an event that could radically change the way that the gaming industry operates, or even possibly lead to its outright collapse. The way I'm looking at it, the one thing that seperates the actual succussful gaming industry from every single schmoe with an idea is skill (and knowledge as well, technically); you've got to have the ability to code the actual engine, you've got to have people to come up with in-game resources like audio and graphics, you've got to do all sorts of bud-testing and the like - and most people just don't have the skill, patience, and economic resources to fulfill all of this.
The MMI, however, if fact decides to follow the style of fiction, changes all of that: it's the great equalizer of the playing field. Being able to augment one's neural processes and capabilities and (more importantly) contents takes away the advantage exclusivity that the industry has over the commoners and opens the way for anyone with the right idea and the right hardware to start parading through the industry's turf. Having the contents of an entire century's worth of computer programming and development right at your fingertips, right inside your brain, and then being able to employ them with the kind of machine-like speed and efficiency that pure flesh-and-blood devs couldn't - a game that took years of development could be completed in a matter of hours, days, a few weeks at the most, and which took a staff of hundreds could now be handled by a single individual or a small group.
I think you can see the problem that arises. With thousands and thousands of develop-it-yourself-ers putting out decent-to-professional-quality (by our current-day standards, at any rate) titles at a rate that beats that of the current industry a hundredfold there emerges a glut of free/lower-priced independent titles competing with those of the traditional industry's products, titles that are suddenly far more enticing and suitable for substitution compared to the industry's. With only so much time available to play, and with the quality hurdle removed or at least greatly lowered, people will naturally gravitate towards these DIY titles, and with the industry no longer having the quality product monopoly, they face a suddenly-very-real threat of collapse.
This is, however, only one possability - for all we know and can hypothesize, things may turn out very differently. Perhaps the lowering of the hurdle for game development, rather than spurring on a surge of independent developers, will instead allow for a great Gaming Industrial Revolution as companies find themselves buried beneath a tide of fully-capable programmers, writers, artists, and bug-testers all-in-one; with such raw power harnessed, the scale and quality of games could surge to a level unlike anything other, very well rivaling - or very well surpassing - reality itself.
But enough of this, for this is a board for discussion, not for one to prattle on incessently. Let us discuss what may be the eventual death or evolution of the industry we have devoted our lives to.
So when we think about the idea of the man-machine interface we tend to think of stuff like Neuromancer and Ghost in the Shell and what have you, and thus tend to think of it in terms of quaint sci-fi storytelling and the like, being rather farfetched in its design and being at least several decades' worth of research and testing before being implimented in a scale anywhere near where it's shown in such franchises. for all of these facts and realities, however, the ideas being presented by such do give rise for thought of the effects that would be felt if/when such technology was indeed commercially viable for use by the mass citizenry. Not in any of the ways that these stories tend to show it off, though no doubt we could see that sort of stuff happening just because Humans Are Bastards and will thus always seek to try and pull such shit, but more realistic and grounded terms - like the impact that neurological augmentation like these franchises show off on the economy, or in our particular case, the gaming industry.
When you think about it, it's actually pretty scary in that dark-unknown sort of way in that the introduction of the MMI to the mass market could be an event that could radically change the way that the gaming industry operates, or even possibly lead to its outright collapse. The way I'm looking at it, the one thing that seperates the actual succussful gaming industry from every single schmoe with an idea is skill (and knowledge as well, technically); you've got to have the ability to code the actual engine, you've got to have people to come up with in-game resources like audio and graphics, you've got to do all sorts of bud-testing and the like - and most people just don't have the skill, patience, and economic resources to fulfill all of this.
The MMI, however, if fact decides to follow the style of fiction, changes all of that: it's the great equalizer of the playing field. Being able to augment one's neural processes and capabilities and (more importantly) contents takes away the advantage exclusivity that the industry has over the commoners and opens the way for anyone with the right idea and the right hardware to start parading through the industry's turf. Having the contents of an entire century's worth of computer programming and development right at your fingertips, right inside your brain, and then being able to employ them with the kind of machine-like speed and efficiency that pure flesh-and-blood devs couldn't - a game that took years of development could be completed in a matter of hours, days, a few weeks at the most, and which took a staff of hundreds could now be handled by a single individual or a small group.
I think you can see the problem that arises. With thousands and thousands of develop-it-yourself-ers putting out decent-to-professional-quality (by our current-day standards, at any rate) titles at a rate that beats that of the current industry a hundredfold there emerges a glut of free/lower-priced independent titles competing with those of the traditional industry's products, titles that are suddenly far more enticing and suitable for substitution compared to the industry's. With only so much time available to play, and with the quality hurdle removed or at least greatly lowered, people will naturally gravitate towards these DIY titles, and with the industry no longer having the quality product monopoly, they face a suddenly-very-real threat of collapse.
This is, however, only one possability - for all we know and can hypothesize, things may turn out very differently. Perhaps the lowering of the hurdle for game development, rather than spurring on a surge of independent developers, will instead allow for a great Gaming Industrial Revolution as companies find themselves buried beneath a tide of fully-capable programmers, writers, artists, and bug-testers all-in-one; with such raw power harnessed, the scale and quality of games could surge to a level unlike anything other, very well rivaling - or very well surpassing - reality itself.
But enough of this, for this is a board for discussion, not for one to prattle on incessently. Let us discuss what may be the eventual death or evolution of the industry we have devoted our lives to.
Sorenson on
0