It’s the time of year that every gamer loves: the shops are filled with brand new PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo releases and you can’t switch on the television without an advert for some blockbusting sci-fi shooter attacking your eyeballs.
But if you’ve resisted the lure of the latest games consoles for the last two years, is now the time to dive in?
Here are five reasons why the answer may quite possibly be yes.
Developers are getting to grips with the hardware
Just after the launch of PlayStation 4, the machine’s designer Mark Cerny said it would be three years before we saw studios starting to truly exploit the capabilities of the hardware – for example, using the graphics processor for other tasks such as collision detection and physics to boost performance. This, he said, would hugely increase the depth and accuracy of game worlds.
“It takes a while before the software development kits – the applications that developers use to make games – really come into maturity,” says independent developer Byron Atkinson-Jones. “It’s even longer before developers fully learn how to exploit the hardware. This means less constraints on your imagination – I certainly expect to see leaps in artificial intelligence, physics and graphical realism”.
Right now, we’re getting the first wave of big titles – Witcher 3, Star Wars: Battlefront, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate – that are leaving the last-gen machines behind. Coming up, Uncharted 4 is set to really push PS4 in its use of physics and graphical shaders, while on Xbox One, Quantum Break is promising state-of-the-art rendering tech and Crackdown 3 is using cloud computing to create 100% destructible cities. We’re also seeing interesting experiments with online multiplayer gaming, including hugely ambitious projects like No Man’s Sky on PS4 and Elite: Dangerous on Xbox One.
There are already lots of great games
The first year of a console’s life is usually pretty low on truly excellent titles. Developers are still getting to grips with the hardware, while the manufacturers are busy making desperate tweaks to the user interface and operating systems.
Two years after launch, however, things are really picking up for the current generation. Xbox One and PS4 have several bona-fide classics including Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, Batman: Arkham Knight and Bloodborne (a PS4 exclusive). There are also strong second tier offerings likeDragon Age: Inquisition, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Far Cry 4, Until Dawn (PS4 only), Forza Horizon 2 (only on Xbox One) and Destiny.
Both machines also support a large vibrant indie community producing beautiful offbeat titles like Shovel Knight, Guacamelee, Ori and the Blind Forest, N++, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Resogun and Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time. So it’s not all shooting serious looking men in the face with licensed firearms.
Nintendo’s latest machine was slow to start but now it has a beautiful collection of family-friendly titles like Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, Super Mario 3D World, Super Smash Bros, Super Mario Maker and Pikmin 3. There are also choices for older gamers including Bayonetta 2 and a great update of cult action role-player Darkstalkers II. It’s not a vast library that’s for sure, but you’ll get many hours of pleasure out of all of these – and you can’t play them anywhere else.
Alternative view: most of the big PS4 and Xbox One releases are also available on the PS3 and Xbox 360. They don’t look as good and are missing some of the more sophisticated features, but you’re still getting roughly the same game experience. Indeed, a lot of well-reviewed Xbox One and PS4 titles – including GTA V, Last of Us, Dishonored and Tomb Raider are merely graphically enhanced versions of last-gen titles. If none of the new or forthcoming releases interest you and you’re not a big online gamer, you could hang on for another year.
This is a pretty good Christmas for new releases – and more are on the way
So far this quarter, we’ve already had Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain, two great football sims (Pro Evolution Soccer and Fifa 16), Forza Motorsport 6 (on Xbox One) and the game-changing Destiny: Taken King. Coming up there’s the vast apocalyptic adventure Fallout 4, anarchic sandbox stunt ’em up Just Cause 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Rise of the Tomb Raider and the long-awaited online shooter Star Wars Battlefront. As for exclusives, Xbox One is getting Halo 5: Guardians, while PS4 owners will need to wait a little longer for promising biggies like space exploration sim No Man’s Sky and rollicking action adventure Uncharted 4: Thief’s End.
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On Wii U, we’ve seen the gorgeous platformer construction kit Super Mario Maker and the super cute Yoshi’s Woolly World – there’s also a nice version of Skylanders Super Chargers which adds Donkey Kong and Bowser to the cast.
Things are looking healthy in 2016, too – especially if you like huge sequels. New Gears of War, Mirror’s Edge, Dark Souls, Crackdown, Hitman, Doom and XCOM are all on the way, with Zelda, Star Wing and Mario Tennis heading back to Nintendo’s console.
Alternative view: We’re yet to see any incredibly innovative, vastly experimental ideas on the current consoles. These machines are still relying on the same familiar franchises and well-worn genres from the last generation. If you love sci-fi shooters and open-world action role-playing fantasies, you’re going to be fine. If you’re waiting until we get an absolutely pivotal, epoch-shattering moment of transcendental genius – erm, keep waiting.
The prices are pretty good
The PlayStation 4 is around £300 with a one terabyte hard drive. Xbox One is £280 with a 500GB drive or £320 with 1TB. The Wii U is between £180 and £200 for a basic box. There’s also a vast range of decent bundle deals which come complete with big new games – often for no extra cash. Look out, too, for the nice limited editions and exclusives around big games like Halo 5, Destiny: Taken Kings and Metal Gear Solid 5. Retailers are really looking to undercut each other this winter so check around for good deals.
“Both Xbox One and PS4 are now around 20-30% cheaper than their original launch prices on the original specification machines with new, improved models on the way,” says Debbie Bestwick, the managing director of Team17. “These include the 1TB Xbox One with a 20% faster boot up time and the new 500GB CUH-1200 series PS4 which uses 25% less power, running cooler and quieter, as well as a 1TB model too.”
Alternative view: OK, these things are still not cheap. If you just want to play games alone or on the sofa with your family and don’t care about keeping up with your friends, the PS3 and Xbox 360 still have plenty to offer – and can be picked up used for less than £100 each. You’ll get a Wii and a shed-load of games for half that.
There are intriguing new things on the way
Playstation 4 is about to enter the virtual world with its PlayStation VR headset, due next year with a large list of supporting titles. There’s no firm release date or price yet, but even if it’s £300, it’ll still be one of the cheapest ways to get in on the virtual reality craze.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s incoming Hololens augmented-reality headset will be compatible with Xbox One – as is the Windows 10 operating system which introduces cross-platform play between computer and console. Oh, and this winter, the Microsoft’s machine is getting a huge update. The New Xbox One Experience will update the look and feel of the interface and add new features such as backwards compatibility with over 100 Xbox 360 titles.
Conclusion – or “hey, what about the PC?”
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If you have the money to spare, then yes, it’s a good time to buy a console, particularly if you enjoy playing online with friends. We have three really strong machines that have large varied software back catalogues and plenty of intriguing games on the way. Developers are starting to test the hardware, especially the PS4 and Xbox One, leading to intriguing advances in areas such as physics, visual effects and artificial intelligence (advances that mean the PS3 and Xbox 360 are gradually being left out of release plans). There’s also a thriving indie community with lots of offbeat unusual titles like Grow Home, Beyond Eyes and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, which don’t fit into the well-worn genres.
“Both the Wii U and the PlayStation 4 now have a great selection of games to choose from, and the Xbox One has a great Christmas line-up ahead,” says Keza MacDonald, editor of Kotaku UK. “Shops are starting to get aggressive about pricing, too, so you’ll inevitably get a better deal – and be able to pick up more games for less money – than the early adopters.”
If you just can’t afford to spend £300 on a games machine though, there are plenty of beautiful, compelling experiences on Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 that will keep you and your family entertained for a good while.
And of course, the consoles don’t exist in a gaming vacuum ...
Alternative view: “It’s worth considering making the jump to PC gaming,” says Oli Welsh, editor of Eurogamer. “It’s not much more expensive to get a console-equivalent machine, the games are cheaper, and you get all the big cross-platform releases and much, much more besides. The online service Steam –- which has a special mode for use on TVs and with console controllers - has a bigger, better library of games than either Xbox or PlayStation will ever have. It’s the most exciting platform in games right now.”
Monday, October 5, 2015
Saturday, October 3, 2015
What the Rugby World Cup can teach game designers
This weekend, thousands of households are likely to become good natured war zones as families and friends argue over whether to watch the Premier League football or the Rugby World cup. 300 years ago, lucky sports fans didn’t have to worry – because there was no such thing as football, or rugby, or American football for that matter – they all existed together as one sport: hugball.
Perhaps the purest of all ball games, legend has it that hugball (also known as Shrovetide Football, Mob Football, or la soule in parts of France) used to be played with the head of an executed criminal – though Fifa regulations now generally discourage this. But, no matter the name or the nature of the ball being used, the rules (or lack thereof) were always pretty much the same: two vast teams would rampage through a town or field trying to get an object into the opposing side’s territory.
By many accounts, hugball was once played rather widely across Europe, and similar sports were popular worldwide. Why did it fall out of fashion? There’s a simple answer: it’s boring to watch. There’s no final whistle, you can’t tell what’s going on, and it’s pretty dangerous (though arguably that’s also the best part). Since the participants can do anything, with essentially no limits, it’s uninteresting. It’s too close to real life.
What a good game does is introduce friction – a limitation that holds you back, and consequently makes the game more challenging to play and fun to watch. Video games offer hundreds of possible frictions. In Super Mario titles the strongest friction is probably Mario’s jump, which is just long and high enough to reach certain platforms, but limited enough to ensure that players often have to be pixel perfect in their timing when navigating the platforms. This friction is so integral to the series that Mario’s first game, Donkey Kong, was originally titled Jumpman. If that jumping mechanic was easier or bigger, the game wouldn’t work. The meticulously designed limitation is what makes it so compulsive.
By adding friction to an otherwise limitless activity, you get a game – and with hugball, each different friction added over the years created a different sport. You can’t use your hands: football. You have to stop play between each tackle: American football. You can only pass the ball backwards, but you can kick forwards: rugby.
In football, not being able to touch the ball with your hands opens the game up and spreads the players around the field, creating a fluid and constantly shifting playing area that resists rigid strategy and defies statistical models. In American football, the friction leads to a rather stilted game where tactics have to be carefully pre-planned.
Rugby, though, is one of the most fascinating sports from a game design standpoint. The core friction of being forced to pass backwards when you need to go forwards creates a fundamental tension that is released when someone makes a great run, a strong hit – or a perfectly weighted kick forward resulting in a moment of chaos followed by relief or jubilation.
Passing backwards forces teams to line up across the field, each player inches behind the other in a gorgeous collapsing human wave, receiving the ball and laying it off in what the All Blacks consider to be a single motion: the catchpass(not dissimilar to what the Barcelona FC academy refers to as ‘a mig toc’ – half a touch). The regularity of this motion, punctuated by moments of unforeseen brilliance or all-too-predictable failure, is what makes the sport so captivating.
Rugby has a long history of tweaking the rules to adjust the game in response to different issues. Take the try, for instance. Coming from the phrase “try at a goal”, the original rules stated that touching the ball down between the posts did not give you any points, but rather gave you the opportunity to try for a goal by kicking the ball between the uprights. After 120 years of twists and turns the rugby world more or less settled on five points per try only in 1992.
Another example of the development of rugby is the scrum, which has been part of the sport since its beginnings at the Rugby School in the 19th century. Arguably the most visually striking aspect of the game, it is also the least interesting. Awarded most often when a ball is passed forward, the scrum involves eight players from each side locking heads and pushing against each other to try and gain a position of advantage over the ball. It’s even more dangerous than it sounds. If the scrum collapses, as it does very often, it must be restarted (or if a team is deemed to have collapsed it on purpose, a penalty is awarded).
Somewhere around half of all scrums fail for one reason or another. It’s the main part of the game where players get injured, and the constant resetting can take up to 20% of the game time. It’s incredibly boring to watch, and only rarely offers any strategic advantage to either team. However, the rugby world seems to be catching on to this – the rules for the scrum continue to be tweaked, resulting in some slow improvement, but more importantly there are signs that many teams are avoiding the scrum entirely whenever possible. In many ways this is game design in action: if a certain way of playing does not provide any advantage, it will eventually die out. Perhaps the scrum will one day become a vestigial part of the game, like the uncaught third strike.
Many other sports are very reluctant to significantly tweak rules, resulting in stagnation and angry debate – look at the confusion in football about whether a player can commit a foul even if he or she gets to the ball first. The world of rugby, however, seems to welcome rule changes with open arms: there have also been alterations to the line-outs, the yellow and red card sanctions, and many other elements. Perhaps this is as a result of there already being a number of variations on rugby – most famously Sevens and Rugby League – so it is easier to imagine how the game could be changed or improved. Or perhaps it is as a result of being a very physical and potentially dangerous game, so a watchful eye must be kept on the rules to make sure injuries are kept to a minimum.
In any case, it seems to be working. This year’s Rugby World Cup is breaking viewing figure records worldwide, and it offers a particularly interesting approach to tweaking the game off the field. Since 2003 the group stages have had a relatively unusual points system – wins are worth four points, draws are worth two, and there are two ways of getting bonus points: by scoring four tries in a game and by losing by fewer than eight points. Experimenting with points systems like this can lead to some bizarre and disastrous results – see what happened, for example, when the organisers of football’s Caribbean cup tweaked the rules in the 1994 qualifiers.
But the Rugby World Cup rules are working, and they lead to a tantalising possibility - that a team can lose a game and still get two points. In the recent South Africa v Japan upset, the Springboks managed this very feat despite their stunning loss, while Japan only received the minimum victory tally of four. It’s not outlandish to suggest that the points system helped produce such a thrilling result because it encourages teams to score tries, rather than grind out dull victories based entirely on penalties. It also gives teams something to play for all the way through a match even when they are losing, and it goes some way towards evening out some of the huge mismatches in quality between the top tier of teams and everyone else – one of the more intractable problems with international rugby union (the shock Japan result notwithstanding).
Developing a points system like this is exactly the kind of thinking that goes into video game design, and in many ways the game world would do well to pay attention to rugby. The major sports that we now watch on TV or take part in down the park have had hundreds of years of iterative development and play testing – and game designers are engaged in a similar process. Just as hugball developed into rugby and football, tic-tac-toe has developed into Agricola and Puerto Rico, the ancient randomised maze game Rogue has morphed into Don’t Starve, and Donkey Kong, after many twists and turns, became Canabalt, Fez and Tomb Raider.
Perhaps the purest of all ball games, legend has it that hugball (also known as Shrovetide Football, Mob Football, or la soule in parts of France) used to be played with the head of an executed criminal – though Fifa regulations now generally discourage this. But, no matter the name or the nature of the ball being used, the rules (or lack thereof) were always pretty much the same: two vast teams would rampage through a town or field trying to get an object into the opposing side’s territory.
By many accounts, hugball was once played rather widely across Europe, and similar sports were popular worldwide. Why did it fall out of fashion? There’s a simple answer: it’s boring to watch. There’s no final whistle, you can’t tell what’s going on, and it’s pretty dangerous (though arguably that’s also the best part). Since the participants can do anything, with essentially no limits, it’s uninteresting. It’s too close to real life.
What a good game does is introduce friction – a limitation that holds you back, and consequently makes the game more challenging to play and fun to watch. Video games offer hundreds of possible frictions. In Super Mario titles the strongest friction is probably Mario’s jump, which is just long and high enough to reach certain platforms, but limited enough to ensure that players often have to be pixel perfect in their timing when navigating the platforms. This friction is so integral to the series that Mario’s first game, Donkey Kong, was originally titled Jumpman. If that jumping mechanic was easier or bigger, the game wouldn’t work. The meticulously designed limitation is what makes it so compulsive.
By adding friction to an otherwise limitless activity, you get a game – and with hugball, each different friction added over the years created a different sport. You can’t use your hands: football. You have to stop play between each tackle: American football. You can only pass the ball backwards, but you can kick forwards: rugby.
In football, not being able to touch the ball with your hands opens the game up and spreads the players around the field, creating a fluid and constantly shifting playing area that resists rigid strategy and defies statistical models. In American football, the friction leads to a rather stilted game where tactics have to be carefully pre-planned.
Rugby, though, is one of the most fascinating sports from a game design standpoint. The core friction of being forced to pass backwards when you need to go forwards creates a fundamental tension that is released when someone makes a great run, a strong hit – or a perfectly weighted kick forward resulting in a moment of chaos followed by relief or jubilation.
Passing backwards forces teams to line up across the field, each player inches behind the other in a gorgeous collapsing human wave, receiving the ball and laying it off in what the All Blacks consider to be a single motion: the catchpass(not dissimilar to what the Barcelona FC academy refers to as ‘a mig toc’ – half a touch). The regularity of this motion, punctuated by moments of unforeseen brilliance or all-too-predictable failure, is what makes the sport so captivating.
Rugby has a long history of tweaking the rules to adjust the game in response to different issues. Take the try, for instance. Coming from the phrase “try at a goal”, the original rules stated that touching the ball down between the posts did not give you any points, but rather gave you the opportunity to try for a goal by kicking the ball between the uprights. After 120 years of twists and turns the rugby world more or less settled on five points per try only in 1992.
Another example of the development of rugby is the scrum, which has been part of the sport since its beginnings at the Rugby School in the 19th century. Arguably the most visually striking aspect of the game, it is also the least interesting. Awarded most often when a ball is passed forward, the scrum involves eight players from each side locking heads and pushing against each other to try and gain a position of advantage over the ball. It’s even more dangerous than it sounds. If the scrum collapses, as it does very often, it must be restarted (or if a team is deemed to have collapsed it on purpose, a penalty is awarded).
Somewhere around half of all scrums fail for one reason or another. It’s the main part of the game where players get injured, and the constant resetting can take up to 20% of the game time. It’s incredibly boring to watch, and only rarely offers any strategic advantage to either team. However, the rugby world seems to be catching on to this – the rules for the scrum continue to be tweaked, resulting in some slow improvement, but more importantly there are signs that many teams are avoiding the scrum entirely whenever possible. In many ways this is game design in action: if a certain way of playing does not provide any advantage, it will eventually die out. Perhaps the scrum will one day become a vestigial part of the game, like the uncaught third strike.
Many other sports are very reluctant to significantly tweak rules, resulting in stagnation and angry debate – look at the confusion in football about whether a player can commit a foul even if he or she gets to the ball first. The world of rugby, however, seems to welcome rule changes with open arms: there have also been alterations to the line-outs, the yellow and red card sanctions, and many other elements. Perhaps this is as a result of there already being a number of variations on rugby – most famously Sevens and Rugby League – so it is easier to imagine how the game could be changed or improved. Or perhaps it is as a result of being a very physical and potentially dangerous game, so a watchful eye must be kept on the rules to make sure injuries are kept to a minimum.
In any case, it seems to be working. This year’s Rugby World Cup is breaking viewing figure records worldwide, and it offers a particularly interesting approach to tweaking the game off the field. Since 2003 the group stages have had a relatively unusual points system – wins are worth four points, draws are worth two, and there are two ways of getting bonus points: by scoring four tries in a game and by losing by fewer than eight points. Experimenting with points systems like this can lead to some bizarre and disastrous results – see what happened, for example, when the organisers of football’s Caribbean cup tweaked the rules in the 1994 qualifiers.
But the Rugby World Cup rules are working, and they lead to a tantalising possibility - that a team can lose a game and still get two points. In the recent South Africa v Japan upset, the Springboks managed this very feat despite their stunning loss, while Japan only received the minimum victory tally of four. It’s not outlandish to suggest that the points system helped produce such a thrilling result because it encourages teams to score tries, rather than grind out dull victories based entirely on penalties. It also gives teams something to play for all the way through a match even when they are losing, and it goes some way towards evening out some of the huge mismatches in quality between the top tier of teams and everyone else – one of the more intractable problems with international rugby union (the shock Japan result notwithstanding).
Developing a points system like this is exactly the kind of thinking that goes into video game design, and in many ways the game world would do well to pay attention to rugby. The major sports that we now watch on TV or take part in down the park have had hundreds of years of iterative development and play testing – and game designers are engaged in a similar process. Just as hugball developed into rugby and football, tic-tac-toe has developed into Agricola and Puerto Rico, the ancient randomised maze game Rogue has morphed into Don’t Starve, and Donkey Kong, after many twists and turns, became Canabalt, Fez and Tomb Raider.
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