Does the Future Count?

Note: This was written in and refers to 2012, so just fucking go along with it, eh?

Legacy. It’s a word, in this year of the Olympics, we here in the UK have been hit over the head with at almost every opportunity. Turn on the television and WHACK! we’re treated to a face full of legacy-mania. It really makes a guy long for the good old days of nostalgia. Where before it was, “Wasn’t it great when…” now it’s, “We need to preserve…” and, “What will this say about us…?” Not that there’s anything wrong with that, apart from the vague future fatigue it brings on.

Though not enough fatigue to stop me thinking about what the current crop of games will be leaving behind for future generations. I mean, I know lots of games have opened up innovative new ways of doing things, leaps forward in graphical capability, wonderful ways of pushing systems to new heights, storytelling that’s never been seen before and interesting, compelling game mechanics. All that stuff’s a given. We’ve gone through some of the biggest changes in computer gaming in the last ten years; that means the influence of games designers and programmers will be felt for several decades to come. That’s all just dandy, but not what I’m talking about – I’m talking about the games themselves.

You’ll have got it into your head by now that I’m some sort of retro gaming nut. I’m not really. I remember some games from my youth (and a little beyond) with great fondness and would love to play them again, but it’s not a carpet love of the past. I’m not one of those weird people who loved (and still love) Manic Miner. I’d heard this game hyped for years when I was a kid. When I finally played it I wondered if the whole world of Spectrum journalists were in on a big prank at my expense. It was terrible in the way that only Spectrum games of that era could be: bright, noisy, stupid and ridiculously hard. There was one of those shaking my fist in anger at the world moments. And, almost thirty years later, who plays Manic Miner? No one, that’s who. I’d bet even the people who claim to have an almost inappropriate love for the game don’t even play it. Or they’re simply crazy people^*.

There are, of course older games that I still play, but not many of them are from those far off days of the eighties. Sure, I’ll fiddle about with Chaos if I find it, but so many of the games are so bad, fair poorly against games even a decade older or are simply broken. It’s interesting to discover that when a game won’t work almost instantaneously, it’s just as frustrating as the first time you tried it and, after five minutes of squeaking and wheezing from the tape, you find yourself horrified to be stuck on the loading screen. Sometimes we grow in the wrong ways, I suppose, but I like to at least have a chance of being disappointed by a game. Ah the disappointments: games that promised to be something other than what they were (Blade Warrior by Codemasters still infuriates me to this day, there were no damned blades!) or were missing important and advertised features (like the game in which you were one of two rival wizards looking for spell ingredients without the ability to use the ingredients! now there’s game design for you^**). You might offer the excuse that it was a simpler time of experimentation. I think it’s because the eighties were inherently bonkers and a tiny bit slipshod.

Some console games have fared better; Super Mario Bros is a good example, Legend of Zelda and Metroid, but they’re rarefied. They still have life because they were created as franchises that still allow life to flow into characters that would have shrivelled away to nothing (and that’s not even mentioning the fact that they worked). It’s amazing SMB survived the awful Bob Hoskins film – that’s how hardcore the franchise is. You don’t have people picking up the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game or Fester’s Quest, do you?

Of course there are loads of games from the nineties that still have followings. The Final Fantasy games from then are still well-loved and often played. I have Resident Evil sitting on my PS3 hard drive, waiting to release the power of dreadful voice acting on me in a wave of nostalgia-repulsion. I’m fairly sure there are myriad N64s, SNESes and Megadrives, held together with duct tape and Blutack, weeping to be put out of their misery and playing one more game of Star Fox, Super Street Fighter 2 or Sonic the Hedgehog. From the nineties I can feel the love.

This brings me to now, right this second^†. Who will be playing the games of the moment in ten, twenty years time? Which games from now-times will people be playing?

Halo and Call of Duty will still be about, but will many people be playing Modern Warfare or Halo 3? Certainly the online play option, sitting as a sad remnant of a glorious time of shooting some stranger halfway around the world, will go unused. Or worse the mad purists who want the unfettered experience of an earlier time will haunt ancient levels murdering the final remnants of the original game’s fanbase like an online version of Highlander that will never end…^‡

Games that try to force online and community play will suffer, no doubt. A prime example of this is Little Big Planet. Try playing an online cooperative game of the first one now, go on. All you’ll find are the mad and the terminally annoying. It’s a game that tells you everyone’s supposed to be working together and having fun, but that feels like someone forcing a laugh at a terrible joke made by the boss who’s one bourbon away from sacking a whole department. It’s a game that’s amusing as a platformer for while and it’s supposed to come alive when more people play. What it really makes you want to do is smash your console to bits with your own spleen because the twitchy loons who’ve hooked up with you can’t stop themselves from slapping you. Imagine what the online community’s going to be like in a few years time – a gulag in January would be more fun.

There are scores of games that will last and last thanks to the future iterations of XBox Live and Playstation Store. I’m sure as the years and generations of consoles pile up, so will the games of yesteryear, scrambling for the attention of the game-playing public, hoping beyond fevered hope they won’t get forgotten and lost in the mix. I’m sure publishers will be thinking the very same thing. Will we see a second remake of the Monkey Island games? Are they working on them right now to be encoded right into your brain in 2069? Could be, although I actually hope they’re not, it’s a creepy thought.

We’re in the middle of a golden era for computer games. It just remains to be seen which games from now will carry on into the future and whether they’ll be truly representative of the gaming times in which we live. Then again there’s always the chance tastes will take a huge leap into unexpected territory and everyone in the future will be into games all about sweeping driveways and everything from now will be abandoned, leaving future games columnists to lambast us people from the twenty-tens as a bunch of mental cases who wasted their time on games with action and story. I already hate those future people.

^* Okay, I’ll admit I’ve heard of some people who play, but I can’t help thinking, “For fuck’s sake why?”

^** I don’t remember the name of this game, and if someone could supply the name I’d be most appreciative.

^† Or over a year ago. You know, whatever your level of pedantry.

^‡ At least until the someone notices the lecky bill and pulls the plugs on the servers.


Will