I am charmed by the uncertain future of video games
The video game industry changes a lot, and it’s always looking forward. It’s that time of year again when we’re excited to see all the new trailers, and we’re thinking about the future not in terms of days, weeks, or even months, but years. With every new title that releases, we’re looking forward to seeing how the graphics, gameplay, story, art, and music are going to push games even further, showing us something that the medium has never done before. The constant clamor for new consoles has become even more prominent with the scarcity of new hardware from the ninth generation.
There’s a constant force driving us forward, and while that’s exciting, the sentimental side of me wants to slow down and smell the roses a little bit. I get whiplash just from looking at a side-by-side of video game graphics from almost thirty years ago to now. It’s probably why I’ve been playing so many cozy community simulators recently.
Final Fantasy Glowup from gaming
This sentimental mentality has me thinking about how transient and impermanent games can be. I’ve compared video games to live theater before, because live performance is the closest cousin we have to games. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the one I want to hone in on here is how, like every performance of a play, musical, show, etc. will be unique to any other, no two playthroughs of a game will be the exact same.
In the same way that different actors who take on famous roles like Hamlet will express the same character in a manner that only they could, different players can ever so slightly alter the most linear of game stories just based on how they like to play.
A classic example of this is a pacifist-versus-genocide run of a stealth game, which can lead to a
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