If you’re using the internet the chances that you can read are fairly high. If you can read, you’ve probably read a book or two in your lifetime. You may even be aware of classic books, books that made their mark in literature.
Yet how many of these classics were pop-up books?
I could research the answer but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the answer is a big fat zero.
But why? Why hasn’t the medium seen fit to exploit the richness of advances that pop-up engineering can added to the act of reading? Why do authors not see the potential of conveying their works in this advanced format?
Sadly, we may never know. Perhaps pop-up is yet to have its day. Maybe a popular author like Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling or Stephen King can awaken the masses to the enormous benefits that pop-up can bring to literature.
Or maybe you’re reading this and thinking that you already know the answers to those questions. Pop-up books are a nice distraction and pleasantly engineered, they’re clearly very good at engaging the younger mindset, but they’re not really up there with the effective simplicity of well chosen words printed plainly on a page.
So, I ask you, why should anybody give two shits about 3D gaming?
Admittedly, I’ve not had any first hand experience with 3D gaming myself. My only exposure to current 3D technology has been in the cinema. The results have been ok. I guess. Like pop-up books, it’s a cute enhancement that mostly adds a degree of visual depth. It doesn’t make a bad film good. It didn’t make Avatar any less formulaic. It wasn’t the reason I found How To Train Your Dragon one of the most entertaining films I’d seen all year.
I’m acutely aware of the differences between books, films and videogames. I know what qualities define a videogame and I simply can’t see 3D affecting any of them in any significant way.
But, you know, we’ve been here before haven’t we?
Remember a few years ago when our worlds were going to be revolutionised? How motion control was going to radically alter how we play games, the games that could be created, where games could go. Remember all that wonder and excitement?
I don’t. Because I didn’t get excited. I didn’t see how it was anything more than a gimmick. A few years ago many people made efforts to correct my thinking and assure me my view was limited. That I simply was just a hater with no vision. Years on, I’m still waiting for the moment when, as promised, I would say “wow”.
What the easily led saw as pessimism, I regarded as realism. My restraint has been rewarded because, in my opinion, years on we’ve still yet to see anything of motion control that make a genuine difference to what gameplay is.
And this was all going to come about from the ultimate gameplay masters. The geniuses at Nintendo. Who would dare to doubt their promises and integrity?
I guess that’d be me.
So, yeah, 3D. Whether it’s in your hand or on a new TV screen: Will it turn bad gameplay into good gameplay? Will it introduce a, pardon the pun, new dimension in gameplay?
Again, I could research the answer but based on how I felt about motion controls and the years that have followed since their introduction, I’m just going to go ahead and say no.
Now, really, are you all such suckers that you’re going to fall for the same promise all over again?
..shame on you.