I found a beautiful summary of video-game history. Of course it `d better to go to the Computergame-Museum in Berlin where you can see the most of the here highlighted milestones in reality but it gives the best overview I found on the web so far.
Presented by Online Education
I just saw the LA Noire production trailer by Rockstar Games where they present their incredible motion-face-capturing–system. With this technique they can translate facial expressions from a real life actor onto a video game character nearly without a loss of credibility. I was really stunned by in-game results and was further thinking about how such a technique could influence the game-market in the future especially in case of storytelling.
I think we all agree that until todays game-makers were primarily limited in making realistic characters through the technical limitations in animating authentic emotions. They got very clever in compensating this issue through atmosphere, storytelling or even break down game-mechanics to simplicity (all what moves wants to kill thus be faster) and therefore until today we got incredible good and also clever games.
Regarding the technique presented in the trailer I consider a dramatic shift in the market. No need to say that this technique is a borrowed principle from the movie-industry and practically fills a gap between games and movie industry by pushing the skills of an actor into video game worlds. With this technique the played emotion of an actor now unfolds in an interactive story. The right usage of this technique could bring love, sorrow or better to say real empathy in the game. The imagination that decisions in videogames in future could be based on your interpretation of feelings is really inspiring and will bring us a new generation of games – I hope.
But what does that mean for the market? This technic doesn’t seem to be available at our next department store. If emotional storytelling will be too expensive for small studios (you don’t have to pay the technic, actors must get paid too) then emotional storytelling will be a privilege to the big players of the game. The market could even more split up into the two segments storytelling and game-mechanics. The independent developer could be forced to focus more an innovative gameplay or clever mechanics than in trying to compete with such an untouchable and expensive storytelling procedure. I just want to say if such a technic gets state of the art there will be a lot of pressure for small studios. Because what today still works as a compensation will then be neglected. No complaining about the good old times where emotion still was a creative product of design will help us out. So I suggest let’s prepare and make quickly some friends in drama school 
.
“By the end of the Christmas season, Americans will have bought some 3 million of them this year—at least ten times as many as in …”
…huh – 1975? Right this is an abstract of an article from the TIME Magazine. It’s absolutely worth it to read. If you wouldn’t know the article was written in ‘76 you would assume it has been published some early weeks ago. Sounds pretty like the Wii revolution or the youngest Kinect reports. Some notable quotes about the pixeled living room invasion from `76 by the TIME Magazine:
“The screen keeps score. Pong and other games
emit an exultant plonk! or ping!”“…there is Indy 500 (list price: $130), which comes with a vrooming sound track that may make parents wish the children were watching Captain Kangaroo.”
“…another system that uses cartridges to extend the range, may be a valuable teaching aid when it comes on the market next year. It flashes questions about history, science or literature onto the screen…”
“The manufacturers are also considering games that would involve the intellect as well as cognitive skills.”
“The possibilities seem limitless.”
“Meanwhile, the games that exist are bringing kids and kids’ friends and families and neighbors back into the cathode circle…”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918545-1,00.html#ixzz19KJMoR5t
The Gamer, a resplendent mythos, one of the last living legends on our earth, a multi-faced, so to say a more dimensional hero in different worlds. He hunts dragons and aliens, knows about unrevealed future technologies and necromancy, strolls in here and now and hereafter and before, rides on unicorns and navigates starships, has more lives than a cat and more teeth than a shark, he builds civilizations and leads his armies in an unbroken success from one battlefield to another, he is a hero, he is a mythos. Does he exist or is he just a piece of imaginary code in our matrix?
I found two speeches that complement each other very well. Jesse Schell assumes that really successful games took a switch from virtual to real life experiences and shows how a world could look like if we are getting rewarded for all our actions.
Seth Priebatsch extends this thought by proclaiming a new decade of gaming, showing that game mechanics are already present in our daily real life and are expandable to higher levels of social interaction.
A few month ago I held a lecture about the origins of the word “Killerspiele” [1]. Here is a sum-up of it, including a video how lurid the German TV-Press polarizes through their depiction of the word “Killergames”.
On monday the BBC was airing their report “Addicted to Games?” on their TV-Show “Panorama”. They praised their report through a quote of one of their award winning reporters:
“[…] Panorama has been investigating a more worrisome side to the games industry – whether or not some people find video gaming – in its many forms – addictive.”
As the subtitle for panorama praises again itself as investigative[6], the audience actually should expect an educational and professional documentary with new revelations and inside-views of the game scene.
