Video games have evolved significantly since they were first invented.  It is hard to see these developments if you are a young citizen in today’s generation because we are only growing up with today’s technology.  If we are able to look at the past, however, it is not hard to see how much gaming has changed. But are all the changes that have come with technological evolution for the better?

Playing a game used to be as simple as picking up a controller or two and playing with a friend or alone on the spot. Nothing fancy, no extra accessories, nothing. However, as video games have gotten more complicated and expensive to develop, they have also gotten more complicated and expensive to set up and/or figure out how to play and comprehend.

“Games were made to escape reality,” CHS sophomores Alex Ford and Conor Martone agree. “People want excitement when they play games because reality is mundane. If entertainment isn’t over-the-top, it isn’t a far cry from what can happen in the real world.”In this day and age, the visual aspect of gaming has become extremely prevalent. Martone believes that because of this trend, some developers tend to invest more cash in making their games look good than making the games themselves have interesting or innovative game-play.  “Developers do not care about how the games work. Their mentality is not so gamers have fun while shooting terrorists, but so their on-screen avatar looks good while shooting terrorists,” he says.

Gaming is also a huge source of competition in the current generation. When multi-player gaming was first introduced, it was all about having fun with no focus on winning. It was entertainment, plain and simple. But competitive gaming has not necessarily changed the industry for the better. “With the addition of online play, it doesn’t take a gaming expert to enter its world,” Ford says, “players make excuses whenever they lose a match, such as that the connection was bad or they were off that day, and make a big deal out of nothing. It’s no fun; it’s only about getting the highest score or getting the most achievements.”

Early video games only featured a couple modes because their creators did not yet have the technological expertise to feature additional modes.  To make up for this shortcoming, however, they put as much effort into the core game as possible, making sure players had fun with what they got rather than what they wished for more. “Nowadays, it’s quantity over quality,” says Ford, “various features are put into games to simply lure the player in. But instead of having fun with a well-done game mode, you end up wasting your time trying to win it. It wasn’t like that before.”

Not all changes over the years are for the worse, however. With today’s game engines, the potential to make a game realistic and play well are there. Everything improves over the years, but you just need to find out how to maximize the quality of innovative features while still ensuring players are entertained. Genuinely engaging games are out there, but we must play for ourselves rather than judge by the public image. “As we technologically advance, we get more to do and more to be able to do,” Martone says, “but we have sacrificed substance for flash. Because we can do so much more with what we couldn’t do anything with in the past, game developers forget to include what made games so fun. That’s why it’s a rarity that a modern game is balanced.”