During the nineties, the technological sectors experienced an unusual acceleration in their processes and development due to the constant advances that were obtained and their rapid application to all types of products. This achieved, in addition to an infinity of possibilities, a greater diffusion of products that just a decade before were limited to very specific sectors of society. The same thing that happened with computers happened with video games, a sector that would revolutionize itself and use all these developments to become the entertainment giant that it is today .
One of the first paradigm shifts occurred with the popularization of personal consoles, both portable and desktop. These had emerged in the 80s (the NES appeared for the first time in 1983) but it was in the following decade that they began to become a common element in many houses . Advances applied to new generations allowed developers to create titles that not only broadened horizons from a mechanical and style point of view, but also presented stories with deeper and more complex plots that little by little took advantage of elements of the narrative and the movie theater. It went from watching Mario run from level to level searching for his princess to following Link’s epic adventure and growth as a hero in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time . This title is especially interesting because it established the use of 3D in video games and became a benchmark for future open world titles .
Video games still had a lot of blank canvas and this caused the different genres to be defined as titles (today iconic) conquered the public and marked the way forward. From the 2D worlds, it went to a polyhedral 3D and later to an increasingly photorealistic one until reaching the works of art of the last generations, which cast doubt on what has been created by computer and what has been captured directly from the real world . The sets were bigger and bigger and able to support elements that gave them life and realism and video games began to look more and more like a movie or a novel. Players’ own tastes changed and they began to demand careful and comprehensive games in which a good story and appropriate character development are as important as good gameplay .
And from this starting point there are a thousand paths, almost all of them explored. Companies like Nintendo chose to focus on the “democratization” of video games and enhancing the group experience with consoles such as the Wii . Technological advances and the greater versatility of video games allowed the emergence of independent development studios that have focused on releasing titles in which the original proposals prevail. And in the first decade of the 2000 titles of the stature of Dark Souls showed the gamer world that video games could put even the most expert on the ropes .
From this point on, it is difficult to determine where the video game industry will go. It is very likely that the next steps will lead us to an improvement in the interaction between player and game , to delve into the possibilities and freedom of the former, and perhaps to a definitive introduction of virtual reality as a way of making the user “Enter” in the story. In any case, the presence of videogames in current culture is undeniable both due to its diffusion and its weight and society is granting it more and more weight and recognition comparable to that of other more established media such as cinema.
What will the next level be? Only time will tell.
