The Future of Gaming
Posted by admin on June 20th, 2008
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Future games will become the ultimate playground for our minds
In 1977 when famed mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot uttered the phrase, “as a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also to seduce,” little did he know that his brainchild, fractal geometry, would become seductive to the point of being addictive.
Over the past decade, fractal geometry, the science that reduces the patterns found in nature to mathematical formulas and also enables us to create artificial forms of nature using the same math, has become the numerical engine driving much of the gaming industry, and more specifically, the hottest technique in gaming - procedural generation. Placing key creative elements in the hands of the player, procedural generation means the game doesn’t store millions of characters and background images, just the methods by which they can be built, leaving the gamers free to focus on creating the worlds in which their next adventures occur.
Where brilliant thinkers like da Vinci, H. G. Wells, and Mandelbrot inspired much of the world around us today, the world of tomorrow, the very world where we will be spending the later years of our lives, is now being imagined inside the young minds of today’s gamers as they learn to harness the awesome power hiding in each gamer’s toolbox.
