The world of video games

By: Yves Nicol

Rumour has it that famous basketball player Shaquille O'Neill and Bill Gates played the racing game, Midtown Madness3 over the Internet last January in an Xbox Live competition. And indeed since the creation of Pong, home video games have become one of the most popular forms of entertainment for people of all ages.

As a further testament to their success some of these video games have even been adapted into movies, for example, as Mortal Kombat and Tomb Raider. From Pong to Doom III, PacMan to Quake3, games have significantly evolved in variety and quality.

Many video games enthusiasts face a dilemma when trying to choose a machine to play their games on. Should they buy a PC that they can also use for other tasks or should they buy a specially designed games console such as an Xbox or Playstation?

If you buy the latest PC then you have the most powerful machine, in terms of memory capacity and speed, required to play games and every setting from the game can be set at its highest level. It looks good; it's fast and enjoyable. But there is a downside with PCs, they need to be upgraded constantly because game developers keep on improving the quality of games and graphics. These highly sophisticated 3D graphics demand more and more power from PCs.
Game consoles, however, don't require any upgrade because the games are specifically designed for the specification of the machine. The Xbox, the Playstation2 and the Game Cube are the latest game consoles on the market and are competing against each other for the largest market share. The Xbox and the Playstation 2 also have the added advantage that they can play DVDs as well as being a game console.

At the moment, the Xbox is the best game console on the market but PCs are still one of the best platforms for games due to their processing power and the huge variety of games that can be played on them.
Game consoles have the added advantage in that any console on the market is less expensive than a PC.

But what about the games themselves? What makes them so attractive to players?
The challenge for games creators is to keep players interested. To do so, they try to bring more innovation into the games. Games like role-playing games (RPGs), such as, Final Fantasy are very challenging to create because they give users control over one or more of the game's characters. These characters evolve based on the user's choices during the game. The Artificial Intelligence for this game is phenomenal.

Even with the quality of actual RPGs some players are still not satisfied and demand more. The latest innovation in this type of game could be set by Peter Molyneux and a games design company called Big Blue Box who are developing Fable, an RPG which will allow players to control a character from childhood and customize him, even his appearance based on the choices the player makes in the game. For example if the game's character is exposed to the sun he will develop a sun tan. If the character is strong then he will develop muscles. Also, depending on the player's choice, the character will become a good or evil person and his appearance will reflect these choices. Fable is one example of the next generation of games that the games developers will offer to customers.

The other big demand from players is the multiplayer option available on games. PCs have supported multiplayer games over Local Area Networks and the Internet (for example, QUAKE3) for quite a while. The Sega Dreamcast was the first game console to support online multiplayer gaming. Microsoft now offers Xbox Live, which allows players via an Internet kit to play games online against other players. This multiplayer option in games has become a requirement for players, because they can compete against other players and share their game experience.

What can we expect for the future? More powerful platforms? Virtual Reality?
Rumours have circulated on the Internet that Sony and Microsoft are already working on their respective next generation home gaming console: the PS3 and the Xbox2, both more powerful than their predecessors, but these rumours predict no improvements in the games and the graphics, just a faster game console. Players have shown a growing interest in playing their favourites games on mobile phones or PDAs, but due to the limitations of mobile phones they do not allow, for example, Xbox games to be played. Virtual Reality already exists as Sega proved by releasing their virtual reality goggles called Virtua. To support virtual reality companies are working on the development of 64-bit graphics processors for home game consoles but they are still too expensive to make them available for players' use.

I wish virtual reality was affordable so that I could experience what Colin McRae does when he drives his Citroen in the Rally of Monte Carlo. But I believe game developers and hardware companies have not stopped surprising us, only the future will tell.