Gamasutra - Defining "Next Gen"

Dhruin

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Turning away from Bioshock for a change, Stormfront CEO (and legendary developer, including the original online NWN for AOL) Don Daglow has spoken to Gamasutra about defining "next gen" and next gen cycles:
Daglow's seen a lot of "Next Generations", dating back to his role as director of game development for Intellivision during the first generation of video game consoles, and shared his opinions in a panel going in-depth on the ubiquitous phrase, what the definition of a "Next Gen" game should be, and how developers can create more unique kinds of player experiences for future generations.

"NextGen Magazine was founded in about 1995, so the idea of next gen was already being used in the 90s," Daglow noted at the session's opening. Reminiscing on the first generation of consoles in the mid-eighties, Daglow touched on some of the limitations that developers have trotted out over the ages -- first, it was the number of colors, then it was the limited hardware.
Thanks, Magerette.
More information.
 
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A fascinating article. His wealth of experience and history give him a unique insight which most industry people I think would miss.

It seems his definition of "next gen" is more along the lines of paradigm shifting design, or put more simply, completely new concepts; ideas never thought of before.

When I think of "next gen" it's usually in terms of hardware and when applied to software, what is done to exploit that new hardware. ie. 16 bit over 8 bit moving to larger sprites and more colours or using hardware rendered 3d instead of 2d.

To me next-gen doesn't mean innovation at all but the opposite which is why I never liked it as a buzz-word. The move from 8 bit to 16 bit in arcade and console games meant very little to me as they were all the same Japanese fighting or shooter games.
 
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As a play with that hype, I once invented at the Larian forums a thread called "Next Generation Spiele News (NGSN"). :D
 
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