In Re:Play - The Future of Sports Gaming? "I'll Take it From Here...", I daydreamed about "sports simulations in which the state of the game at which the player starts is a duplicate of the state of the game in the real world". The idea there was that from the TV coverage of a game you could capture the state of a snooker table mid-frame, for example, or the lie of the ball from a couple of shots in to a par 5 golf hole, and then "play on" via your console.
Whilst we're not there yet, the launch of Halo 3 turns up this interesting snippet as it goes beyond gaming:
... Saved Films, allows players to save a copy of a game play to their console's hard drive so that it can be reviewed later on. Lots of games, especially in the sports genre, have a similar feature, but Halo 3 is the first console game to really implement it well. Interestingly, Saved Films are not video files but instead contain the actual game data [emphasis mine]. This enables users to replay the game at any resolution, and to change things like camera angles. Saved Films might seem like a minor feature at first, but I think it's really important for two reasons. Number one, it allows players to create clips and screenshots that can be shared with other players, effectively enabling mashups and remixes of Halo 3. Number two, it's the first step toward allowing players to script their own storylines and movies.
The ability to save game play as data also resonates with the idea of releasing music as Garageband 'source' files, for example...
The future is bright, the future is "Save As Data"! ;-)
Posted by ajh59 at September 25, 2007 09:15 PM