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why the gaming industry destroys imagination

Hi all,

I guess after reading this article the one or the other may regard me as awfully old-schoolish, heh.
But I couldn’t care less ;-) .
Today, after a short conversation I realized what bothered me with a lot of “modern” computer games. It is that so many of them are destroying the players abilities to imagine. And there are three things I want to point my finger to, to illustrate my belief:

1) Graphics

Maybe “destroy” isn’t the right word. Maybe “hindering” is better. Todays’ games often hinder ones’ imagination to flow and grow. To explain why I think so, I have to go back in time many years…

My first computer was a C-64. It was released around 1982, was equipped with a whopping 1 MHz-CPU and its’ highest resolution was 320×200 pixels, showing 16 colours at the same time at best. If you look at the resolution of modern computers, you can probably imagine (if you *can*, heh), how tiny and blocky all the graphics on this old computer must have been. In fact, at least in the first few years of the C-64′s existence, so many games showed barely more than just a few obscure lines and weirdly coloured graphic-patterns. One had to use the own imagination to fill out the holes the graphics left in the world the game-designers created.

And this, imho, was the main reason for the need of using ones’ own imagination. The fact, that the graphics were so poor (though, on later developed games, graphic designers did brilliant jobs in creating oh-so-beautiful graphics, sometimes one wouldn’t believe that this was the same computer as the one on which a few dozen lines (or pixels) represented game-characters just a few years back). But sorry, I am rambling, so back to the point.

The problem I have with soooo many modern games is that they leave absolutely no room for imagination. *Everything* is shown in high-detailed brilliant graphics or (even worse) shown in lengthy video- sequences that show even *more* details and fill out even more “gaps” in the story. And in becoming more and more sophisticated, the game graphics gradually removed the need to imagine *anything* because *everything was presented on a silver tablet*.

2) Stories

Again, back to my C-64 days. I fondly remember text-adventures from a company named “Infocom”, which quite likely produced a bunch of the best text-adventures *ever*. These games were interactive novels in the true meaning of the word.

3) Riddles

This aforementioned point is highly connected to Riddles. Nowadays, even if there are “adventures”, they have “riddles” that are so often illogical (meaning: one can’t possibly think about the solution by thinking logically, without trying totally ridiculous things or trying all possible “combinations” (which often means: just click endlessly on everything you find until something works). Or, the other bad possibility, the riddles are laughably easy, so one can just run through and the game is over too fast. Now, I certainly know that especially the last point can’t be fulfilled satisfyingly for *everyone*. Tough puzzles could be way too tough for an adventure-newbie, but back in the times of the C-64 there was enough variety for everyone. Nowadays it seems, about the only type of player that is satisfied is the action-oriented type (and don’t tell me that looking for secrets in Doom or similar games is on the same level as solving a riddle in an Infocom text-adventure game. It’s not, it’s not the same level of complexity and it’s not even playing in the same *galaxy*, imho. And you do absolutely not know what you are talking about, sorry).

So what does all of this rambling boil down to? The thing is: I miss games that let my imagination flow, I miss games that provide a sophisticated story that truly represents the electronic equivalent of a books’ novel and I miss riddles that I can solve by thinking logically (or “logically” in the context of a game, meaning that ridiculous actions could be “logically” right because of a certain game-scenario).

That’s it, now tell me what an old fool I am, not appreciating nowadays oh-so-stylish game graphics and fast-paced action, heh.