Looking at video of Battlefield 4, it's pretty impressive how much game graphics have improved, in the last 20 years. A frame by frame analysis of the compressed 1280x720 videos available reveals no difference between the PC & PS4 versions, as some kids have claimed.

The improvements have been slow & incremental, since the 1st Duke Nukem 3D game came out. The polygon count is getting to where the outcome is going to depend more on the quality of the artwork than any improvements in the game engine. It's not easy to make artwork that shows off the high polygon count while still looking like the real world. Motion capture has also contributed to better character animation.


The camera motion is a lot higher than it used to be. Games have gotten more nauseating because the camera moves around a lot more. 12 hours of Quake II were bearable, as it only moved in 2 dimensions. Battlefield 4 becomes unbearable after a few minutes, as the camera constantly rotates, shakes, & zooms. Where movement used to be continuous, it's gotten more jerky.


They've gotten rid of the extreme violence of Quake II. They don't show the enemy guts flying around, anymore. Views of the enemy getting shot are always kept very far away or off camera, with no blood. Even the knife slitting is kept off camera. Quake II must have been the peak of violence.


Female players have gone away. That peaked around 2001.



There are 2 dream games:

1: a rocket construction set

There hasn't been an easy construction set since the 1980's, with pinball construction set. It's very hard to create custom spaceships in Orbiter. Players should be able to easily make custom spaceships by dragging & dropping historic parts, strapping together shuttle boosters, Saturn V stages, Delta IV stages, Atlas V stages.

There should be some imaginary parts, but they wouldn't be as entertaining as making new creations from real historic parts. Maybe the customization would have tiers like using an S1-C stage, dragging & dropping F-1 engines to make a new stage or creating new engines.

Then they can fly the spaceships in a simulator like Orbiter. They should be able to preprogram a set of maneuvers with some kind of graphical interface & play it back over & over with minor tweeks to optimize a mission, which Orbiter didn't support. Orbiter required manually flying the spaceship, which made it sort of useless.


It may be that some kind of autonomous flight simulator that executed autonomous flights based on a user defined program instead of manual control would be more interesting that current flight simulators.


2: a fun FPS


No way to die. Unlimited weapons & ammo. More powerful weapons than reality. Supports the rocket jumping & ballistic guts of Quake II. Open ended levels which can be finished many different ways & explored. Score is just based on how fast you finish the campaign or how many enemies you kill. Camera movement is minimized. Bring back female player.

Players liked seeing Tomb Raider's body on the screen & it solved the problem of camera queeziness.

The mane limitation is creating decent artwork.

Where have you been, play PS3 BF3 and come against some of the meanest female player on the planet.

S

Looks like you'll find your first dream game in Kerbal Space Program:
https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/