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| MARCH 12, 2008 |
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Along those same lines, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man are the equivalent of silent-film stars,
and, for a number of LucasArts executives, the Citizen Kane of 3-D video games is Nintendo’
s Super Mario 64. Released in 1996 for what was then the groundbreaking Nintendo 64
game console, and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, who has created some of the most
enduring characters and games in the history of the industry, Super Mario 64 was not only the
first true 3-D video game, according to LucasArts vice president of product development Peter
Hirschmann, but also the game that established a number of conventions—“such as how
you navigate a 3-D space and how a camera moves in 3-D space,” Hirschmann says—which
game designers still use today.
But when it comes to mimicking real-life conventions—the laws of physics, the squishy
dynamics of biology, the unpredictability of human behavior—video games are still struggling
with their technical limitations. Take an action as simple, or at least in gaming as
commonplace, as throwing a villain through a wooden door. No matter what combination of
moves or punches the hero uses, the bad guy usually breaks through the door in the same
stiff and unconvincing way—usually uttering the same stilted grunt or scream—each and
every time the gamer plays through this point in the game. That’s because, in essence, most
video games are composed of a series of brief, inter-related animations that are cued by the
gamer. Some games provide multiple animations for a particular action, to give the illusion of
spontaneity, but that is an expensive proposition.
The player’s suspension of disbelief is also tested in the way the door itself gives way when
the villain flies through it. Instead of splintering in a way that resembles actual breaking
wood, the door will typically come apart like separated pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
But these barriers to a much more realistic gaming experience, and, perhaps, a greater
public interest in the medium, are about to fall, as I learn during an eye-opening two-day visit
to Lucas’s Presidio campus. To observe the men and women of LucasArts in action—aside
from noting their propensity to wear their security badges on bright yellow lanyards—is to
realize that the process of making a video game is really the fulfillment of French
mathematician and philosopher René Descartes’s dream of putting “the world into
equation,” in the words of LucasArts lead software engineer Cedrick Collomb. Over the
quarter-century the company (originally Lucasfilm Games) has been in business, that has
become an increasingly complex and difficult proposition, as video-game consoles have
become faster and smarter. The last generation of consoles, Sony’s PlayStation 2 and
Microsoft’s original Xbox, were each outfitted with a single central processing unit (C.P.U.)
and a single graphics processing unit (G.P.U.), but their successors, the PlayStation 3 and
the Xbox 360, have the benefit of multiple C.P.U.’s and a much-advanced G.P.U. This means
that the video games that run on them can be more complex, more challenging, and more
three-dimensionally realistic. (Although Nintendo’s Wii does not have the C.P.U. and G.P.U.
firepower of its competitors, it engages players in a level of interactivity not seen before in the
video-game world by requiring them to mimic the action on-screen.) [read more]
and, for a number of LucasArts executives, the Citizen Kane of 3-D video games is Nintendo’
s Super Mario 64. Released in 1996 for what was then the groundbreaking Nintendo 64
game console, and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, who has created some of the most
enduring characters and games in the history of the industry, Super Mario 64 was not only the
first true 3-D video game, according to LucasArts vice president of product development Peter
Hirschmann, but also the game that established a number of conventions—“such as how
you navigate a 3-D space and how a camera moves in 3-D space,” Hirschmann says—which
game designers still use today.
But when it comes to mimicking real-life conventions—the laws of physics, the squishy
dynamics of biology, the unpredictability of human behavior—video games are still struggling
with their technical limitations. Take an action as simple, or at least in gaming as
commonplace, as throwing a villain through a wooden door. No matter what combination of
moves or punches the hero uses, the bad guy usually breaks through the door in the same
stiff and unconvincing way—usually uttering the same stilted grunt or scream—each and
every time the gamer plays through this point in the game. That’s because, in essence, most
video games are composed of a series of brief, inter-related animations that are cued by the
gamer. Some games provide multiple animations for a particular action, to give the illusion of
spontaneity, but that is an expensive proposition.
The player’s suspension of disbelief is also tested in the way the door itself gives way when
the villain flies through it. Instead of splintering in a way that resembles actual breaking
wood, the door will typically come apart like separated pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
But these barriers to a much more realistic gaming experience, and, perhaps, a greater
public interest in the medium, are about to fall, as I learn during an eye-opening two-day visit
to Lucas’s Presidio campus. To observe the men and women of LucasArts in action—aside
from noting their propensity to wear their security badges on bright yellow lanyards—is to
realize that the process of making a video game is really the fulfillment of French
mathematician and philosopher René Descartes’s dream of putting “the world into
equation,” in the words of LucasArts lead software engineer Cedrick Collomb. Over the
quarter-century the company (originally Lucasfilm Games) has been in business, that has
become an increasingly complex and difficult proposition, as video-game consoles have
become faster and smarter. The last generation of consoles, Sony’s PlayStation 2 and
Microsoft’s original Xbox, were each outfitted with a single central processing unit (C.P.U.)
and a single graphics processing unit (G.P.U.), but their successors, the PlayStation 3 and
the Xbox 360, have the benefit of multiple C.P.U.’s and a much-advanced G.P.U. This means
that the video games that run on them can be more complex, more challenging, and more
three-dimensionally realistic. (Although Nintendo’s Wii does not have the C.P.U. and G.P.U.
firepower of its competitors, it engages players in a level of interactivity not seen before in the
video-game world by requiring them to mimic the action on-screen.) [read more]