[Daishiman]

As a teenager during that time it feels easy to say that we idealize those periods of youth, but objectively speaking there was never a period in gaming history with such drastic speed of innovation between the late 90s and early 200s.

[jamesfinlayson]

Agreed! Not as stark a contrast as Doom to Half-Life, but even Quake (1996) to Quake III Arena (1999) was an insane leap technologically.

[Cthulhu_]

For sure; if you look at 15, 20 year old games now vs today's, you can see it's more evolution than revolution, in terms of gameplay mechanics, graphics, scale, etc.

Not that it's not impressive; look at the PS5 tech demos (large scale areas that players can go through fast without loading times thanks to fast storage), or the Unreal Engine demos, e.g. the Matrix one you can download to the PS5 or the one where they highlight generative level creation.

But it doesn't feel as revolutionary anymore. Mind you, that may just be fatigue, or "getting used to" things quickly.

[fullshark]

I think objectively 2D to 3D was a massive jump. Also the FPS genre which is maybe the most successful gaming genre of all time being invented. Can't even think of a new genre of game that's been created in the last 10 years. I guess the sandbox game Minecraft was a little over 10 years ago, that's one.

[bluefirebrand]

Even Minecraft didn't really invent the sandbox, it just polished and popularized it.

A new genre in the last 10 years? Probably nothing really. We're probably past the point of new genres being invented until the technology dramatically changes.

We'll see some wild Genre Fusion though. I'm excited for that. I can't wait to see what happens when we stop just stapling "RPG" to every genre and start to really innovate.

[soulofmischief]

That's not true, we now have strand-type games. ;)

[jamesfinlayson]

Maybe VR? But it hasn't really burst into the mainstream in spite of it being there and usable for the last decade or so.

[kridsdale3]

VR hasn't solved the problem of "legs". Which are pretty important in FPS.

It's great for playing games based on standing in one place and blasting, but that's the same genre as Time Crisis and Duck Hunt.

[sunnybeetroot]

VR was also a massive jump from 3D.

[kridsdale3]

Again, John Carmack.

[soulofmischief]

Nanite and Lumen are definitely witchcraft. That tech demo left me in awe at what humanity has been able to accomplish. "More evolution than revolution", what a fitting phrase.

I wonder if we will live to see another such revolution in the wake of mature generative AI tools? If creating a game of the density and caliber of Red Dead Redemption 2 becomes feasible with a modest team of 10?