Looking back into the 90s, we can remember the games that can fit into mere diskettes: that’s right: 16 MBs for a game. If that’s not enough, that’s ok, we can have more (i.e. DOOM95 requires more disks to operate more levels). This nonetheless showed that games started off at low sizes, low calibers, and of course, in a sense, low demeanors.
There has been an urban legend that the entire Super Mario Brothers Game was smaller than the typical GIF of today. Imagine that – an entire video game, so much smaller than a simple picture. What has the world come to?
You see, that’s what the world has become: Size has become the lightning rod for credibility. Come the CD ROMs with their 700 megabyte sizes, and then the DVD ROMs with their gigabytes of power, surely, games got bigger and bigger, and of course, better.
But what actually makes the sizes so pivotal to the success of the video game?
Let’s face it: a good video game is a LARGE video game. No video game has ever been so small and yet so immersive. Even the Java-based games of today that lack immersion have certain sizes that dwarf their earlier assembly cousins.
Even the GTA V (Grand Theft Auto 5) is an epitomical example of this. Maybe another example would be Max Payne. 120 GB to install, 60GB to save. That’s almost a full entry-level SSD! Who would need that? Oh, at first, you’d think, no one – until you realize, it’s actually everyone.
The better games are bigger games. A big game is a good game, as they say now these days.
But why exactly?
This is because of one simple fact: People trust their equipment! Gamers trust their hardware to work at par by their games and their video game superiority! Well then, what is a video game that requires very little computing power? “Obviously not a good one!” one might be heard saying.
This generation is now a generation of size. The bigger the better, as they always say