Technology over the past 20 years has taken amazing strides, bringing new resources to medicine, science, entertainment, social and ergonomic resources, allowing us to go boldly into what is now often referred to as the Digital Era.

One of the most booming slices of this era that has been taking advantage of these new strides that we’ve been seeing over the past few years has ben video games. But no… not JUST video games, they’re turning into a lot more than that. They’re turning into a virtual world that gives people the mental freedom to explore their curiosity and adventure. They give participants the unique possibility of exploring their imagination that to which previously was instrumented by board games and books.

Crysis, arguably the pivotal turning point of next-gen graphics. It has simulated war and combat like nothing else. It gives players the ability to experience almost every aspect of what it would be like in the hot seat of a special ops soldier. I mean … in all seriousness, who hasn’t picked up a coat hanger or other similar shaped object, ran around the house wearing a bucket on their head pretending to be the dude from Doom … wait scratch that last part.

The pivotal point to video games in my experience, whether it be graphics or story line, is to engulf the player with enough excitement and activity that allows the player to walk away saying to him/herself … “Now THAT was worth my one hundred bucks”.

You may not realize, but it’s a tricky task getting that right balance for the concept of graphics and content to match each other in perfect equilibrium. On one hand, the developers in particular of early strides of CGI movies/games put too much effort into graphics, so their budget was wasted on that concept and little thought was put into content, storyline, characters etc. (I would like to even put Star Wars 1, 2 and 3 in the same category but of the fear of stacking amounts of hate mail, I shall refrain.) You get the picture.

Now on the other spectrum of the equation, content and storyline may take preference. Prime example in my books, may look like Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Diablo, Starcraft … yeah … not so old for all you 30+ people but this is what I had in high school. You had an epic storyline that allowed the player to oversee the graphical impurities (yeah, we were all picky), it had us sitting up till all hours of the night building fortresses made up of a patechic four pixels, but to me, it was my kingdom.

Now developers have the satisfaction due to technological advancements of balancing this equation. Take World of Warcraft, for example, in 2004 its graphics were acceptable but not “ZOMG EPIC” material. Blizzard had already been milking Warcraft III for its money’s worth when they released WoW it only had them growing higher up the gaming food chain, devouring all companies that dared match its evil satanic master plan. The storyline and content gave users the ability to find that balance in the master equation and they happily enjoyed entering a virtual world that would more than likely take over their lives.

What can I say? It’s not the graphics that’s driving people to play, because if it were that, I’m sure more people would be switching off and going to buy a new system that could run every state of the art game that was put on the shelves.

Again, back to Crysis ... it has the ability to draw you in, make you think you are the one holding the gun, but in the end, was it a storyline that REALLY made you go “WOW”? Nah nah nah, it’s reviews were based upon it’s graphical improvements compared to other entry level games being released at the time and the need for a $3000 computer to play it made headline news on countless websites. Yeah, ok, wow. It wasn’t a game I could play over and over, but it made an enjoyable days worth of gaming. Have I touched it again? Nope.

Games are too short, too much time can be wasted and pondered about how a barrel can project over a 10m distance using a physics equation.

I will say I congratulate Blizzard Entertainment. I congratulate them on their plan to not implement drastic new graphic updates to their games, but rather provide a unique experience that can only be found within the imagination and experience of the person playing it to interpret and understand the game that’s given to them.

Grand Theft Auto, the primary and most profound reason that this game series has been so successful is due to its complex interactivity to a virtual world. It went from 2D to 3D and still retained it’s amazing quality that gave people the “WOW” factor. And to be perfectly frank, I prefer playing the 2D versions a lot of the time… dunno, maybe it’s just the radio stations.

In the upcoming future, we have a lot to look forward to. The next battle between Microsoft and Sony? The drooling GPUs that seem to be pouring out of NVIDIA and AMD’s factory in the sky for supreme world domination. The amazing progression for graphic advancement for the console and PC has been following an “S” curve lately. It starts off slowly, builds up, builds up some more and some more, then seems to rocket off at warp 8. Whoa ho ho, we’re in for a bumpy ride and we’re about to hit warp 10 with the almost once thought impossible task of having graphics match real life. I just hope game and movie developers have enough sense to not let it get to their heads ... if you know what I mean.