The Citizen Soapbox is an area where we throw out topics to the users of Citizen Game. When we record the podcast on Sunday night we take the previous week’s Soapbox answers and use them in our own discussions. We think it’s a great way of involving you guys in our stupid arguments!
The Setup:
With the announcement of the 3DS and this weeks release of a 3d-infused special edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum, are we stepping closer to a 3D gaming world? The film industry has all but convinced us that wearing stupid, black glasses is the future of their media, so will gaming take a similar route?
The Questions
What do you think of 3D gaming?
Can it add enjoyment to the games we play?
A f*ck, my graphics card must be broken.
I remember setting up my pc to play games with the NVidia 3D tech. It was pretty cool in games like Oblivion and Counter-Strike, adding a bit more to the immersion, until a friend of mine pointed out it would be impossible for anybody else to view it in the same without the glasses, which I feel indeed is a fundamental obstacle to 3D.
If 3D technology becomes more accessible and affordable, possibly becoming as essential to some games as a gamepad is, I’ll then have no problem giving it a go. Hopefully it won’t suffer the same fate as 3D in the movies, when it was used as a gimmick in the 50s, 80s and nowadays to try to recapture their audiences from from competition.
@dsvella
Yea a friend of mine had one of those kits back when we were in college like 4 years ago. Worked great with anything with a fixed perspective (racing games especially). I remember playing Flatout and blowing my mind that the car looked like it had actual depth. I think 3D is easier to enjoy on a PC’s which is generally a 1-person tool. If your loaded with cash, its not a bad bit of kit.
I played the Nvidia 3d Vision at last years Euro Gamer expo and I thought it was amazing. On the train back home I looked up how much it would cost for me to make my computer do that.
£360. Thats roughly 400 euro. Now I know that being a PC gamer I can be expected to pay a large sum of money for almost any upgrade. This pack keeps to that idea because it requires me to replace my monitor as well.
If you think about the bundle
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/Monitors/22inchMonitors/Samsung/sam-2233rzplusNV-3dglassbundle.html
You are getting a lot of kit for your money. But its still a lot of money you need to fork over.
I hope to see the prices drop but I don’t know what will keep the interest in the mean time.
Although I would love to play EVE Online in 3d. Oh yes!
Pyro: Google “3DS”.
I’ve heard the new gameboy is ment to be 3D… without the need for glasses, gonna look more into now today in work and see what I can find.
I think thats a waste of time.the glasses are a design fuck up and they hurt everybodys ears and gives me headaches.It will be harder to play first person games with bullets flying at you.
Now all i can think of is 3D porn. Thanks for that repulsive image Dan.
I don’t want things protruding from the screen towards me, i will feel the need to wear a sea world-esque plastic sheet.
Also will i need to designate the first few rows a splash zone?
People pay for porn?
Considering the expense I don’t see 3D taking off, unless someone like Valve decided to not just use it in a game for prettieness reasons but built it into the game mechanics from the ground up. I’d be really curious to see what they’d do with the technology if they put their minds to it.
If it hangs around long enough to be a standard in every computer so I don’t have to actively choose to buy the equipment I’ll use it. But I’m not hunting it down.
I really hate 3D.
First, the fact that I have to wear fucking glasses to just even enjoy that is just annoying. God does not punch everyone in the face like those wearing glasses for regular sight; and I therefore shouldn’t be forced too.
Also, even without glasses, it is just gimmicky. What, every five hours or so I’ll see a little explosion ‘seemingly’ jump out of my screen but in actuality it’s more of a nuisance.
Thirdly, the price of making this crap is ludicrous. If I wanted to spend thousands of dollars, I would buy something good and useful. You can fill in the blanks.
The main source of this hatred of 3D is when I was Jaws 3D as a kid; and it turned me into the cynical bastard that I am.
Porn in 3D though, that I would pay for.
I think it’s a fad led by corporate fear and a cul-de-sac in technology. How else can you explain so much money being spent on a technology with little to no demand.
TV companys can only make screens slimmer & more HD for so long. Eventually they need a new technology to step in. As there is no obvious turning point, 3D has been brought back. Problem is nobody realy cares about it – and with good reason – its novelty and only works as novelty. People wont wear glasses every time they have to watch a TV screen and 18% of the population cant see 3D due to any number of eye issues.
So they call on their friends the media creators (film directors and video game developers) to support this emerging technology with any number of business incentives. Nothing like this gets put into a game without a good reason.
In spite of the way 3D makes movies worse (unless they are bad movies – case in point Avatar), mechanically I believe 3D could add a lot to how we play games. From simple depth of feild tricks you can do right now with an nVidia card and some glasses to entire new genres of platforming and physics puzzles. However, call me crazy, I think the real floodgate for games design will come with VR glasses. Somthing like the Sony move could be blow out of the water once you take the TV away and stick the screen on a pair of specs that can calculate facial & limb position.
rant over
I played Metro 2033 in 3D at PAX and while it was incredible experience (when it worked) the glasses seemed to flicker considerably and had trouble adjusting in some cases.
Frankly 3D technology for the home is going to be far too expensive for the foreseeable future. I don’t see it being taken on anyway near as fast as HD, so its unlikely to have a major influence on the games we play any time soon.