What exactly is a 3D game ?
By today's standards, a 3D game is game where the player is immersed in a construction that copies reality in its form as closely as technically possible (while remaining fun to play). That implies that anything that can be visualized in the game must be based on a polygonal construction which accepts the notions of width, depth and height. In return, the player can adopt any position in this virtual world that does not conflict with the basic rules of reality (normally, the player cannot be underground or in walls).
Of course, technology - software and hardware - have placed serious limitations on the possibilities of 3D gaming. Although wireframe 3D has been around almost since the beginning, true textured polygons have had to wait much longer to be displayed in real-time, full screen glory. And when they did make it (with the Voodoo 1), forms were blocky and pointed, bearing only a distant ressemblance to real-world constructions and items. It was much more realistic to draw the corridors of spaceships and tunnels than it was to place the settings in a forest or on a mountain side. Things have gotten better quickly though, in barely four years all technological restraints have been pushed far back and, with games like Half-Life and Quake III, the player has encountered realistic outside worlds full of (strange) trees, mounds of earth and big boulders.
While still a bit blocky, game engins have done wonders to model architecture correctly and modern games need no tweaking to display rounded arches and doorways. Buildings have become more and more realistic, man-made environments more and more various. The new generation of 3D cards have introduced new programming possibilities, giving insights on how the world will be modelled tomorrow. Texturing is going to get better, while the number of polygons making an image will increase dramatically. All this ensures that, in one or two years, games will present virtual worlds that will be extremely impressive and realistic.
While placing certain constraints on the construction of the virtual world, this type of game has reaped immense interest in the gaming community. Before 3D games, playing on a computer was commonly viewed as "wierd" and being a gamer was something one did not boast about openly at work - not to the uninitiated at least. Today, playing on a computer is commonly accepted as a new activity with its billion-dollar market, multiple rules and numerous providers. How did this change come about. Well, when you get down to the essentials, it all started with a small shareware program called Wolfenstein 3D, from a wacky group named Id.
Okay, given the definition at the top of this very page, Wolfenstein 3D was not truly 3D, but a 3D-like representation of a 2D plane. Textures were more than basic, they were downright ugly by today's standards. Enemies were sprite-based, bitmapped images with a basic animation. Yet, the game caught like wildfire among the students. Something was lacking though, something that the next game from Id would give : multiplayer.
DOOM was the name. DOOM (December 1993) did not do much better as far as 3D technology was concerned, but it delivered multiplayer via LAN and it was the first to do so. The rage for this game went so strong people started to play it at work. Of course, home LAN owners were more than rare at that time. In spite of the lack of true height, the environment had stairways and areas that seemed to be "above" others. It also had a very addictive gameplay, the success of which decided the fate of gaming for the end of the century.
Therefore, DOOM has set the rules of many of todays games. The 3D environment has been improved from a 2D representation to a true 3D construction. Texturing has become more and more complex. Gameplay and network usage have been severely optimized. Quake, Half-Life, Unreal, these are games that have built successfully on the technological heritage of DOOM, and have brought around other types of gameplay, such as Tribes, Starship Troopers and Max Payne.
Yet, the increasing reality of the rendering engines will not, in my opinion, play a role in increasing the types of gameplay. It is up to developers to find new ideas to bend the rendering to, and it is up to editors to accept projects that are not mainstream and might not always work. Aside from these technicalities, dividing game prices by two would be a good thing to do for everyone. I do not buy into the excuse that R&D needs to be paid for. The material cost of a CD with box and all is less than a dollar - at 40 bucks a pop, that's one hell of a turnover. I think piracy would be severely cut down if games were at 15 bucks. Who would hesitate at that price ? I would buy at least two games per month, and would even willingly try games that, at current prices, I do not dare purchase. At todays prices, you cannot afford to buy a game that might disappoint you. Much too expensive.
But these considerations, and many others, are just the start of this exciting - virtual - universe.