Over the years I have realized that gaming has become a more serious matter than before. No longer do people judge on how the game is just fun, but rather than how well the production values, graphics, and presentation are. Many developers are now taking this under consideration and work on the production values a lot higher than before. But a problem is that there are less people who are interested in the imagination presented through the games, which is a shame, considering how imagination is what brought gaming to what it was.

Back in the days of the Atari 2600 the developers didn't have much to work with in their hands, all they could make were little shapes of color doing small actions like "shoot" or "punch" and it was apparent that realism is out of the question. However, they did have one thing at hand and that was creativity. Look at this picture:

What does it look to you? If your answer was a man with two ladders then you are wrong. In the minds of these developers it was an adventurer searching for treasure with two passages leading him to the unknown, while surrounded in a fearsome jungle and a huge log that he can't pass through. This is what had people coming for games besides the simple gameplay, the imagination through the graphics. These games are what sparked and fueled our minds wit endless wonders. You had to think beyond of what is presented in front of you.

After the reign of the Atari 2600 and later consoles, a new era of imagination has begun. No longer were you guessing what the graphics were telling you, you had a clear vision of what was presented to you. Basically, what you saw was what you got. This era came in the form of a console called the Nintendo Entertainment System. The imagination used in the console was limitless and it was in the form of the graphics, just like the Atari 2600 but different. The imaginations presented were about plumber consuming mushrooms to turn bigger, jumping on turtles, going through pipes to get closer to a princess he is trying to rescue from a dragon. Sounds stupid, but it was made into one of the most revolutionary games of all time.

On paper, this is the stupidest idea ever

The whole basis of creating and imaginative game is by creating something unreal, something that can only happen through the mind of the gamer playing it, something that will make the gamer think and see the wonders of the product. This was the basis for most of the games, providing a fun and imaginative experience that you can't get from the real world.

What will be in store for us in the future?

This basis was used for many consoles to come including ranging all the way to the 7th generation of consoles. Though many games have no sense of imagination (most sports games), the imagination has always been within the games, much less graphically these days, but more gameplay-wise. Imagination is something that will always be within games, in some form or another. People may ask how? My answer is that games like infamous, Fallout 3, and even Call of Duty 4 may seem "realistic" graphically, but it is oozing in imagination gameplay, story, and setting-wise. Seeing how imagination in gaming has evolved, who knows what will be in store for us in years to come. Thanks for reading, feel free to leave a comment