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On this day of Repentance and Prayer, @SimonDeDeo's thread about cultural stagnation in gaming since 2005 got me thinking about gaming innovations I've personally seen over the last decade. 1/12
First, Minecraft. Adventure, survival horror, construction playground, virtual clubhouse, spelunker. But my favorite aspect is redstone circuitry. 2/12 ( https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Redstone_computers)
Physical blocks can build simple redstone logic gates. Redstone logic gates means you can build redstone transistors. And if that's true, you can build redstone anything! 3/12
Inside Minecraft, I've been working through Charles Petzold's book of simple computers towards an 8-bit 8080 microprocessor (in the game, the size of a small city).
In other words, the biggest game of the last decade is teaching how computers work on a *physical* level, from basic "telegraph relay" principles defined by von Neumann, Turing, et al. almost a century ago.
As @replicatedtypo says, open-world gaming (largely influenced by Minecraft) has enabled people to essentially make their own stories within a particular setting. Some streamers doing this are now bigger than most TV shows.
From a cultural evolution standpoint, "let's play" broadcast gaming is a sea change in knowledge diffusion. My children each have their favorite streamers, who also serve as hubs for new ideas. I'm constantly learning things from them nowadays.
Maker culture is everywhere in gaming too. Watch this guy tear down a NES controller, then create a simulacrum out of spare parts and hook it up to an oscilloscope.
Scale is also incredible. Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 now uses the whole world, and with the right setup, this game teaches real piloting skills.
VR: I have a colleague who plays a game called Elite Dangerous in VR, which represents a 1:1 scale of the Milky Way galaxy you can zip around in having VR space adventures with friends.
Connectivity also allows new ways to play games: tool-assisted and competitive speedrunning, and turning games like 1989 Tetris on the NES into a modern tournament using networking software
So, is computer gaming stuck or stagnating? Certainly the genres have become more defined since the Zork era, but I don't see it at all. Trolls aside, it's rather an amazing time to be a gamer. /thread
