OT: The Future of Computer Strategy Games

[Phoenix-D]

The fun part about voice recognition is you can program it to ignore things like stutter.

Of course, then no one else will be able to play your copy of the game, because it won't be trained for them.

[Suicide Junkie]

Voice is going to be much slower and less accurate than a mouse. Its fine when there are only a few objects to control, with lots of independence such as other players in a shooter.
But something like SE? Or even just a windows desktop?

IMO, it would be better to have something like a touch sensitive screen, with a button on your thumb. That way you can reach over, and pinch the air to click and drag as if you were picking something up and dropping it somewhere.
Using two hands would make for an obvious way to stretch a window for example.

Still low on the precision, but at least it would be quick and easy to use. And it would be really useful if we ever get hologram type 3D.

[JAFisher44]

Well, in the vein of limited AI interacting with you in a game I think it would be pretty cool if in a 4x type of game you actually had AI officers. It would work kind of like strategies in SE, but instead there is a full AI that follows your orders within the scope of doctrines you set up. So, for example, you tell Fleet Admiral Jelal to take Alpha fleet to the Jubrup System and attack the aliens there. From there on out the AI handles it.

Individual AIs could have different "personalities" as well. For example, Fleet Admiral Jelal tends to be a little flamboyant and is a bit of a risk taker. He is also likely to push further than you tell him to as long as he thinks he can get away with it, where as Fleet Admiral Brix is very conservative and tends to pull back if things don't seem to be going swimmingly.

[dogscoff]

Regarding all that massively multiplayer stuff I was just talking about, take a look at this:
http://www.metaplace.com/

This could be the future of MMO, and I think has the potential to usurp closed worlds like second life.

[Artaud]

Phoenix-D said:
The fun part about voice recognition is you can program it to ignore things like stutter.

But there's no way to eliminate the internal stress that a person with a speech impediment experiences. That's the problem--not the software.

I avoid speaking over the phone or into a microphone whenever possible.

I don't know why people would even want voice capabilities in games. Many older gamers snatch an hour here and there to play--and sometimes the only hours available are when the wife and kids are asleep.

And many people have jobs that require them to wear a headset or talk a lot on the phone. Why such people would want to talk all day at work and then come home and talk talk talk during a game is beyond me.

But hey, some people like to talk. Good for them.

The computer game market has for the most part moved beyond me, so voice technology is just another nail in the coffin.

Everything these days seems to be fast-reflex FPS type games for people less than half my age. Those games that look more like interactive movies than games.

I like deep strategy games like SEIV, and I am not in love with 3D graphics because they take more away from the game experience than they bring. I've played many 3D games and have never encountered one where I thought the game experience would be worse if it was 2D rather than 3D.

I know I'm in the minority. So I just don't spend much money on computer games any more.

[Renegade 13]

Artaud said:
And many people have jobs that require them to wear a headset or talk a lot on the phone. Why such people would want to talk all day at work and then come home and talk talk talk during a game is beyond me.

On the other hand, some people have jobs where they don't need to talk for 8 hours at a time (*raises hand*), so talking during a game wouldn't be a large ordeal

[Randallw]

In my opinion the most pleasant form of work is when I spend several hours doing data entry or coding without talking to anyone let alone my boss. I tend to turn off and while my fingers do the work I think about stuff.

It's weird because I've been playing this minigame card game and I sometimes turn off and just keep hitting the equivalent of "hit me" and all of a sudden I realise I just got Blackjack again. It's seems to be some sort of luck meditation (or maybe it's because it's a Star Wars game and I'm using the force. I have the force ability to turn time back to before I lost a game. It's called "Force save/load turn" )