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Roundtable Discussion: Genre Design Evolution

Roundtable Discussion takes the intrepid 61FPS blogging team and pits it against itself in the search for deeper truth. The moderator for today is Derrick Sanskrit.

Hey kids, I think it's time for another roundtable chat. I've actually been wanting to ask this of you guys for a few weeks now, because I've noticed that lately I've been playing a lot of games I never would have even considered playing as a kid. Am I alone in this or are we all doing it?

What sorts of games are you playing now that you didn't play during what I assume was the glorious childhood heyday of gaming we all experienced? What sorts of games did you play then that you don't now? Have our tastes changed or have we merely opened/closed ourselves to certain experiences? What is fundamentally different about how these games are made now and how has overall design changed over time, affecting us as game consumers?

I know that's a bit of a loaded series of questions, so I'll kick things off.

I pretty much never played racing games as a kid. As a lifelong urban New Yorker, I never romanticized the concept of driving a car and have veered away from it for as long as I've been able. My college roommates pressured me into playing Gran Turismo, but it was Need For Speed Underground that made me a convert.

Need For Speed is Hilarious: Return of the Live Action Cutscene

First, the tiny confession: I have never ever played a Need For Speed. I’m no racing fanatic, but I’m shocked I’ve managed to avoid them this long. I tend to play one racer obsessively every couple of years, a cycle that began with Rage Racer way back in, yes, 1998. (It actually came out in mid-’97, but I didn’t play it until a full year later, curious after reading previews for R4: Ridge Racer Type 4. That year really was awesome, wasn’t it?) The arcade-style delights of Ridge Racer are really what appeal to me in a racing game, something Need For Speed has in spades, so it’s surprising I’ve never played one of its fifteen different entries until this week. If Need For Speed: Undercover is anything to go by, I haven’t been missing much. The game’s something of a poor man’s Burnout: Paradise, giving you an open world to drive your licensed rides about but not letting you do much interesting inside of it. You can’t just stumble into races, you’ve got to select them from a menu or press down when driving near them, prompting load times and cutscenes. The driving is no great shakes, either, fast and presentable but with none of the edge of your seat spectacle that makes the aforementioned Burnout such a treat. I’m going to keep playing Need For Speed, though, for no other reason than to keep watching it’s hilarious live action cutscenes. Check out the goods after the jump.

Alternate Soundtrack: Need For Speed: Underground vs Justice's †

Written by Derrick Sanskrit

Until 2003, the most serious racing game I'd played was probable F-Zero. This became a problem with my roommates, who LOVED racing games, and so I was baptized into the world with Need For Speed: Underground on the Playstation 2.

Now, if your experience with this game was anything like ours, you loved every minute of gameplay to be found in NFS:U. The characters felt human and you felt genuine affection for Samantha and disdain for Eddie. The city felt alive, and oncoming traffic was a plaything to use to your advantage. Circuit races were intense, drift races were ego boosts, and drag races separated the hardcore from the wimps. Everything about the game just bubbled with glowing, neon awesome.

Except for that soundtrack! Ugh!

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.