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Tomorrow Now!
By Jim "Twitch" TittleArticle Type: Comment
Article Date: February 21st, 2001
The Secrets of the Ages are Infinite. (Artwork by Millmore)
When Disneyland opened in 1955 there was an exhibit in Tomorrowland called the "House of the Future." It was all electric and had many conveniences and appliances to make life better, easier. Guess what? No computer of any kind. It was never predicted.
In the fifties computers were the size of Hitler's bunker and their "software" was the quaint little cards with holes in them similar to Florida's ballots in the last presidential election in America that caused so many problems. They were understandably expensive and had few uses that John Q. Public could identify with.
We're Sci-Fi
Lets fast-forward forty-six years to 2001. Most of us have this PC (personal computer) thing in our workplaces and home. We generally like its attributes but they can be cantankerous as can any machine. It has been a while since I've been really "angry" with a computer but the next problem lurks around the corner, no doubt.
The year 2000 was looked upon in the fifties as some magical era when the world would have all this sci-fi stuff going on. One thing futurists got wrong was how we'd be working. They predicted we would all be working fewer hours per week since all the neat hardware that certainly would be developed would make things easier for us. Wrong! We are working as many, and in some cases more, hours than we were in the fabulous fifties. And the computer revolution was never predicted.
Devices overall have become less troublesome and nearly maintenance free. Vacuum tubes have been replaced not only with transistors, but also with printed chips. Your auto no longer has ignition points in the distributor and tune-ups every 10,000 miles are memories. Of course when these "wow" things break they are much more costly to repair. Mostly it is cheaper to buy a new one than it is to repair the old one. So it is with PCs but not because they break.
It Does Not Compute
We've gone to the moon, could have been to Mars, but have sent robot probes to and beyond the outer reaches of our solar system but we can't get a damned piece of entertainment software to work in our PCs!
We have all purchased a new combat simulation to find it crashes our system or runs lethargically. This even though it says right on the box that our system should run it. There is no parallel. Your five-year-old microwave still cooks your "new" food, your ten-year-old VCR can play a year 2000 movie and your seven-year-old auto still gets you around even though newer models of all these devices with more features have been introduced. So we swallow hard and spent some of the kid's inheritance for a new, faster computer, right? The old computer didn't break it just can't run B-17 II.
Computer technology is growing by leaps and bounds but it is leaving us in the dust unless we constantly fork over money to update every two years or less. Much of the problem is better graphics and the muscle it takes to present it on you monitor. It still isn't anywhere near the holo-deck on the Enterprise though.
I do not advocate a standstill in science and technology. I simply say that we need a moratorium on some things. No matter how good graphics get we are still squinting at a box in front of us that is supposedly immersing us in a fantasy. Bullhockey! It will not be total immersion until VR (virtual reality) devices interface with our software. I want to move my head to the right and see my wingman at four o'clock. I want to see my schwarm with peripheral vision as we fly line-abreast. I do not want to see my desk or glance the traffic passing outside. Sure it will take power and dollars but it would be a substantial step to what we really want.
Just Perhaps . . .
Maybe entertainment software companies should work on a happy medium of, say, 1-1.2 GhZ CPU with 256k RAM and a 32MB video card as a platform for titles to be released in the next two years. This configuration is not top-of-the-line but should offer everything desirable to the consumer for a reasonable price in the coming times. They develop titles on next generation machines that only corporations can afford and expect us to run them on our year-and-a-half-old system with half the power. By the time that hardware is affordable to us in another year-and-a-half they're working with new titles on machines that require still more power.
I always feel like Engineer Scott on Star Trek, "But Captain, Aye don't have the powerrr!"
It seems to be part of the master marketing plan of "new and improved." It's always the next title that's going to be the coolest yet. "You don't want that old sim. That's last year's." Companies abandon us quite quickly. Open the architecture, release the codes (what good is year old code?) and produce plug-ins and add-ons to make the title perpetuate for several years.
How many banal, similar gaming ideas are there? There is a finite gene pool, so to speak, of viable concepts. Brainstorm sessions at software companies must be wild.
"Ok. Hitler and Saddam Hussein meet in a time warp and have an ongoing car chase and use weapons from the future to battle for world domination. Ok. Pac Man meets the Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong and they have to find the Laura Croft in the underground caverns." Stick to the basics! It doesn't have to be outlandish.
I had some real simple games twelve years ago. Flying combat helicopters, armor battles, naval destroyer combat, and such, were the good themes. The themes remain good. Mostly the graphics have improved. Flying a combat helo in 2001 is the same as 1989. There aren't that many more features, other than vastly improved graphics, that make it better. And sometimes the new ones can be worse than the old ones. They don't function on your system well and/or playability is unimaginative. Sometimes features are left off to meet release deadlines. And eye candy alone does not make a good combat sim anyway.
Use The Force Luke
If your system was viable for five years instead of about one and one half years, and your favorite entertainment titles could "grow," what would you do with the money you'd save? That couple of grand you throw out every two years?
What if a combat sim could be played online in a pay-per-play mode or you could buy it and download it? What if patches and add-ons were obtainable the same way? New campaign? Download it for $15. Improved graphics module for stronger machines? Download it for $25. You could have different levels of add-ons depending on your hardware so you could still enjoy improvements in your sim without spending for a whole new computer or new, unimproved titles. Older graphics could still work with the new campaign. You would see something for the money you spend. Perhaps you would end up spending more for all the add-ons than buying a new title for $80, but the sim/game would be crash proof due to inexpensive online distribution of fixes and you'd have more features that actually work. There would be an incentive for developers to hone the mechanics of the title. They would ultimately reap more revenue than via the old style of selling.
The cost of packaging, marketing, distributing and paying for retail shelf space is the real cost of a product. Let's use the Internet to its true potential and give up our "gas-guzzler" ways of thinking.
Is a software title really that much better if it will only run on a 2 GhZ machine with 512k RAM? And you have that ancient ten-month-old 900 with 256. Even word processing programs are like that. A new version comes out to perpetuate profits many times with dubious additional features that you wouldn't use. Why pay for them? Buy and download them online only if you want them. Maybe then you could open a document created in the 2000 version with your 1997 version. Reverse compatibility doesn't exist and it should.
I agree with the notion that if a title doesn't run well or you do not like it that you should be able to return it for refund. We are getting conned into thinking we need a $3,000 machine that runs Word 90% of the time and sims the other 10%. There must evolve a happy medium. Remember how Windoze 95 was going to put an end to compatibility problems between devices and software? Now go to forums anywhere and see the number of pleas for help to get some rinky-dink game to not crash.
Computers and software have come a long way in a short time but have a longer way to go before they seek their real potential and truly earn their place in the "House of the Future."
Cash Register Entrance Gate at 1939 World's Fair. At least they predicted that part right!
