KAsiUNblog

Unkasoft's blog, where we talk about mobile games development, gaming industry, agile methodologies and all that matter we're handling every day

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Any past time was better

I remember when I started my video-gaming adventure. It was 19 years ago, my brand new Amstrad screamed loading tapes letting me enjoy for hours, even days.
They were games, made for entertainment; nothing more, nothing less.
We were young and ignorant, we didn't know nothing about bits, bytes or even megahertzs (megawhat??). Our only desire was to get that new game which everybody talked about (everybody who owned a home computer) and try it at home.

Funny or not, that was the question; graphics or sounds were not important enough. Games like Sir Fred, Goody or "La Abadía del Crimen" were made by good programmers with good ideas.

After a few years, 16 bit computers appereared; some people didn't even get to know what meaned that "bit" thing but graphics and number colors started to fly over our heads. Now, it was important that the game was made to run at hi-resolution or with 4 sound channels in stereo. Games were funny enough.
Pc computers were still work-oriented, poor sound and poor graphics; even games were not
as good as they have to be. But little by little, pc computers started their plan; it consisted on growing micro speed and manufacturing what years later drove us mad: cards.
Users started to talk about a new word, megahertzs; by this time I discovered that a Commodore Amiga 500 used a Motorola 68000 at 7 Mhz (well, games are funny, why should it be better??).
New games arrived with more power hunger, flight simulators, first person shooters (oh DOOM) and so on... New video cards capable of more colors and higher resolutions...

Now, we know too many technical words; people that have nothing to do with computers (also called "users") talk about bits, bytes, hertzs even about "monitor response time". A game now is better the more FPS it has, or the more triangles it moves per second. We've lost our innocence. There are a lot of games that are very beautiful, but very boring, what are they made for?

But not everything is lost, mobile games have arrived. There are mobile users that don't even know which brand or model they have. They still don't know what the heap is or if they have a 128x128 display or better. "People just wanna have fun" (as the song says).

It's our time to make funny games again, to let people enjoy gaming unworried. Mobile games have taken us back to the 80s/90s and users will ask for enjoyment, not overwhelming graphics only to watch sitted on the sofa.

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