GameSpot data producer Andrew Anderson's decision-making process usually leads to catatonic sessions of MVP Baseball. Send player archetypes and therapy requests to [email protected].

　　Of course, I've got a whole ton of games that I'd absolutely love to see remade now, especially with the technology we have today. The top of the list is actually a tie between a new TIE Fighter (which, in my book, is the greatest action game ever made) and a new X-Com. Now, the problem with X-Com is that it has had sequels, but virtually every one of them got away from what made X-Com great. All I want is the original game remade with modern-day graphics, and I'd die a happy man. X-Com's gameplay is perfect the way it is, and the formula still holds up today.

　　It's about time game characters started using one of these.

　　But would that formula really hold up today? Sometimes it's good that we don't get everything we think we want. This is the problem with nostalgia: What was great is only great because of who we were and what we were doing at the time. Memories, which shape our evaluation of past games, are simply pieces of time, captured by the essential need to escape to some other world. Some games are better at it than others, but graphics will never be able to replace our own minds' ability to formulate images and memories to suit our needs. I don't want a remade Chrono Trigger with better graphics. I want the next Chrono Trigger, complete with captivating gameplay, decent graphics, and great storytelling. X-Com was a great game, but as it continued to grow and change, it failed to stay true to what made it great. It was never about the graphics, and it probably never will be. The next generation will give us more graphical power than we can fully imagine at this point in time, but is that what will separate one generation from the next?

　　Ultimately, the precipice that we stand over is not a divergence from one standard of graphical power to another; it's about a new medium for creative minds to express advancements in fields ranging from anthropomorphic design to artificial intelligence. The first batch of games across all the new platforms will most likely be graphical reinterpretations of what has already come and gone. Graphics are a known quality that we can most easily associate with, but it's the unknown qualities that will bring us to the next level of games and game design. Consider the latest batch of DS games, like Nintendogs, Ossu! Tatakae Ouendan, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, for instance. I expect, as will the developers of those games, that a year into the next cycle, next-gen developers won't obsess so much over graphical content. They will instead try to reinterpret what the machines can and can't do to create new interactive concepts, which may lead to franchises that will--five years from now--come to be considered design canon.

　　My favorite next-generation obsession is processing power (assuming anyone can figure out how to move beyond a single processing core), which will allow for advanced artificial intelligence and truly interactive characters and environments. The ability to process a story is currently restricted by the rail-like dimensions that characters must take. In sports, this ability is confined to a gradually growing process by which calculations make up for limited resources. Your offensive line blocks a certain way based on a predetermined play call, instead of assigning blocking on the fly, as it would in real life. Baseball players take the best route to the ball, instead of calculating whether they are capable of making a first step like an Andruw Jones or a Randy Winn. If you want to make a game more immersive or more real, stop making it feel like I'm 50 times smarter than the game. Make it feel like everyone in the game is on nearly equal footing, providing for both a challenging and immersive experience. Thankfully, the fields of psychology and electronics continue to converge, as more and more-advanced minds continue to look for new ways to remap how a machine makes decisions in a fashion similar to the human brain. All we need for that next drastic step is time and processing power. The ability to create mathematical principles that can actually fall within the scope of the machinery--to create formulas that can give us that next level of realism--is what truly makes me yearn for the glorious days of the future.

　　Even today's games are starting to push the limits of what a character is and isn't, as well as how characters interact with their environments. We have moved past the highly trained, bullet-catching, cannon-fodder monkeys of games like Delta Force: Black Hawk Down and have gone on to the almost-passable simian behavior in games like Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood. If I'm supposed to be in combat or on a sporting field, I expect to be surrounded by a large group of different characters. I may actually expect those group members to be as smart as me, or to at least use the environment in a way that I can't, or may not have thought of.

　　Here's an idea: Let's not stand out in the open and get shot today.

　　In real life, things aren't fair. You are rarely the smartest, the toughest, or the most capable. You have talents, abilities, and different views on how to avoid or interact with obstacles, so why do we expect such limited archetypes of characters and interactions in games? One of the most traditional ways to make an interesting game is to have a paragon archetype. But villains must also be just as exceptional. So why does it still feel like our villains and allies are limited to basic bullet dodging and running into obstacles? We are amazed that we're starting to have realistic physics in games, yet we continue to see games with AI that is less than realistic.

　　Maybe the issue isn't so much the lack of AI development as it is our constant and myopic obsession with better graphics. We let shiny objects and explosions compensate for our demand for immersion. Graphics are naturally the first thing we notice about a game, but they're hardly the most important. There are plenty of classic games that are just as playable today as they were at release. And even though they don't possess cutting-edge graphics, plenty of people still enjoy them--even to this day. These are games that not only had great gameplay, but also challenged us. There have been games that made us think, that made us grow, and that made us care. These games are timeless, and they're beyond the concerns of per-pixel shading and specular highlights.

　　So, we must wait to see where processing power and mental energies converge. Will characters in games start using thought processes that seem genuinely human? Or are we doomed to a lifetime of people standing out in the open while repeating their less-than-genius-level routines? I want to expect more from my games, yet I too keep coming back for more of my favorites, which perhaps don't have all the advancements I'm looking for. Then again, it's said that a sign of insanity is when you repeat the same action over and over and expect a different result.

　　Next Up: Gamecons by Bob Colayco