Regardless of the area in which one might conduct an analysis, the conclusion will always be the same: things evolve. They get stronger, wiser, they expand or contract depending on the needs, but whatever happens, every little change results in a step forward, a step closer to a better version of its previous self.

This applies to games also, so comparing the game industry from ten or fifteen years ago and its products with the current one can only lead to one conclusion in my opinion: things are whole lot better than they used to be. But that doesn’t seem to be the general opinion as I have not once and also recently heard that the old games, the classics, are clearly superior to the mélange of mainstreamed ideas we are currently playing. “Back in the day games used to kick ass and now they just suck balls!” Wrong! This is only a matter of gamer perception and education. Back in the day the impact of a new feature a game introduced was overwhelming because it got added to the lift of three things a game should contain. As the years passed new games were released, new genera invented, new features added to that list and it grew larger and larger. Now, when a new element is added to that list, we can no longer hope to be as breathtaking as it once was because we can not help to see the big picture, the big list, and when compared to that, one small feature rarely makes the difference in our trained gamer’s eye.

This also opens up the matter of relativity. One feature onto a list of three makes a world of difference, while the same feature onto a list of one hundred such features has as much impact as trying to stop waves by snapping your fingers. But it’s not only about quantity, it’s about quality also. When man invented fire, the world went from pitch dark to light and the improvement was significant. When man created Pong, the world went from slow fun to instant fun and we were delighted. And then came the first racer, the first shooter, the first RTS, the first combat game, the first platformer and so on. Each and every one of them had a huge impact because it always meant taking a step across the border between darkness and light. But as it normally happens there are not so many praises for the guy that invented that hole in the ground that prevents the fire from spreading and burning down the huts and the nearby forest. The analogy applies to all the developers that added features to the list, things that made our games feel more natural, run more smoothly, look and sound better. Their names are lost in obscurity simply because their inventions did not have the power to shock.

“Games looked great in the old days and they still do even when you compared them to the ones we play nowadays.” No, no, please don’t say that! If anybody tells you this, slap the guy, take away his computer, his PS3, his 360, the Wii and the mobile phone and let him play Dizzy for few months and see how that changes his feelings. Beauty, as many other things, is relative to a lot of factors. A few years ago a brick with legs would have been enough to represent a main character and you thought of it as state of the art when you compared it to the brick with no legs from the previous game. Even more, it would have looked like a magical creature if that was the first game you have ever played. So the brain got stuck on that feeling you once had and now passes it on as reliable information without taking into account that the feeling that game gave you was relative to the gaming experience you had at that point, which as a matter of fact could have been close to nothing.

So things do evolve whether we like it or not and the same goes for games and the gaming industry. No matter how you look at things, they do get better. Maybe with smaller steps than they used to, but there is improvement and denying it is the first symptom of mental blindness. Evolution is a lengthy process as any anthropology professor would assure us, but it can’t be denied, it can’t be stopped. Maybe we can’t regard every little improvement as groundbreaking, but they are necessary steps towards the next evolutionary breakthrough. What would that be when it comes to games? Who knows, who can tell for sure? Headset VR maybe. Or maybe some sort of implant the size of a peanut that we can switch on with just one thought and that instantly takes us into a fantasy world of our choosing. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s worth waiting for, without blaming the game industry that we are moving too slow.