3Don't

I was reading a post this morning on the new 3D gaming tech that's been unveiled at E3, and felt compelled to point something out. See, there's these industry types going on about how 3D is the future of everything an blah blah avatarmadealotofmoneyandwewantsome blah. And I'm sure that your fancy expensive new eye strain technology is all very nice. But when we're applying the concept to gaming there's something that everybody seems to be missing:

MOST GAMES ARE ALREADY IN 3D.

We've had games that operate in true 3 dimensional space since, let's see..... Starfox? On the SNES? In 1993? Even before that we've had the pseudo 3D of mode 7 graphics.

Now, the real 3D gaming boom as it were would have come in with the PS1, but the point remains. Games tend to operate by default these days in a 3 dimensional space, and the player is free to move around in these 3 dimensional spaces to the extent that physics and power ups allow. Some games only utilise a 2 dimensional space, but they do that for reasons of gameplay and stylistic choice.

I simply fail to see what wearing 3D glasses is going to actually ADD to a game.

So let's use an example here. This is a 2D game:

We're moving in 2 dimensional space, that is up/down and left/right. So far so standard.

This is a 3D game

We now have the added dimension of depth, in/out, forward/back, call it what you will. Stuff flies towards us, we fly towards stuff. We've moved out of flatland and everything exists as a fully 3 dimensional object within the game space.

Now, let's add 3D to our already 3D game

Oh yeah, that's so much better. I don't have a headache at all.