Sulphur on 15/7/2016 at 07:14

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FMV was a fad brought on by the sudden wealth of space afforded by the development of the CD drive, which is probably the real revolution you're looking for. Everyone universally acknowledged that FMV detracted from the gameplay instead of enhancing it, because there was too damn much of it at the time.

Myself though? Like you, I loved that shit regardless. For me it meant more opportunities for cool cinematics and meatier narrative. And well, it was deployed decently in a bunch of games that weren't A Fork in the Tale.

Gryzemuis on 15/7/2016 at 11:08

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Biggest revolution in gaming has been 1993-1998. The rise of 3D rendering first-person views. Doom, Quake1, Voodoo cards, Half-Life 1 maybe.

Before that, games were something that happened before your eyes. In front of you. Literally. Games happened on a screen in front of you.

Once we got first-person 3D rendering, you were *INSIDE* a game. The games we play now have technology that in the seventies and eighties would have been called "virtual reality". The idea is to try and drag you into another world.


The other revolution was a little related to that. It was also about trying to make you forget you are playing a game, and are actually living inside a virtual world. The biggest factor there were MMOs. Before MMOs, you would start a game, play it, then finish it. With MMOs you got a persistent world. Where you could live for years. With other people. Not something short lived where to goal was to score points. But a world where you could live and have adventures for decades.

The biggest example of that was World of Warcraft. During the first few years, it felt a bit like a real world. (Well, kinda, you know what I mean). Then more and more players started to try and maximizing their time/reward efforts. Basically turning Azeroth again into "just another game". And Blizzard catered to that. The dumb fucks didn't realize what they had, they didn't realize what made WoW a success. And they fucked it up, cannibalized their own success. Even though there are still 1-2 million paying players in the West, the game is dead. No future. No nothing. And as WoW has always been the example for other MMOs, it seems other MMOs also kinda lost what they had. They are now "just games". Not sure if that "this is another world" feeling will ever return.

Manwe on 17/7/2016 at 19:14

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I'm a console player first and foremost, so for me my big gaming revolutions happened there. First there was the N64 Joystick and the first full 3D console games that came with it. Later came the Dual Shock controller for the PS1 that would set the standard for controllers for years to come. To this day we still haven't found an alternative to be honest (haven't tried the Steam controller though). After that for me the next big revolution was the Dreamcast. Sure the PS2 was an all-around better console, but the Dreamcast was there first and gave you a taste of what the future would look like. Next-gen graphics, online play, web surfing (yes this was actually a thing), boob physics in fighting games, porn (I was a teenager), MMORPGs, Quake III Arena with PC players, etc. That thing was like a small computer.

One more important revolution for me was GTA III on the PS2. It was the first open-world game as we know them today, and set the standard for all future open-world games. Sure there had been attempts before like Driver or Omikron: the nomad soul but nothing as genre defining as GTA III. It's kinda sad that the template for open-world games hasn't evolved since...

After that I got into PC gaming and never looked back. I'd say the important revolutions there were physics engines, ragdoll for dead characters, and real-time shadows. We take all these things for granted these days but there was a time when we were amazed at a torch casting a simple shadow, or a corpse falling down a set of stairs. 2004 was the year of next gen tech for me. We had Doom 3, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, and Painkiller in the same year. All technological marvels in their own right. The next big graphical revolution came with Crysis I guess, and nothing's really topped that yet.

Tony_Tarantula on 24/7/2016 at 13:14

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I think one unappreciated change was online connectivity coming to consoles.

It's literally changed the entire landscape: long singleplayer campaigns were replaced by short ones that just train you for online, expansion packs became DLC, easter egg items were replaced with more DLC, and grinds were extended with microtransactions.

Of course some of this always existed but the size of the target market skewed the financial rewards of each path drastically in favor of the online sales model and multiplayer games we see today.