Big up the gaming philosophy massive, your time.
Something I've been pondering on. Gaming has progressed a lot in the 20 years I've been into it - for better or for worse. VR is now a thing, digital distribution is default, online connectivity is obligatory, consoles have refused to die out, day 1 patches plague most releases, graphics have sky-rocketed, DLC has replaced mission packs, casual gaming and interactive movie games have brought in billions (of plebs, and dollars).
Things are moving "forward" whether we like it or not. But some aspects we might like or be hyped for, yes??
So, look towards the next 20 years:
What do you think will happen in terms of gaming overall?? What aspects / genres / features etc are likely??
And....what do you WANT to happen?? What aspects / genres / features etc do you hope will be realised as gaming progresses??
......
A couple of desires from me.
1. I hope for general accessibility of games, i.e. all games to be accessible to all players. This means no more exclusives, games made for / ported to all main platforms, fully featured control systems (key rebinds, controllers supported, etc), fully featured graphics options. I guess this is pretty much a pipe dream but it's the main thing I think is still missing from the industry.
2. Gaming franchises being big and deep enough to provide GOOD different genre games in the same universe. Games Workshop games obviously do this but that's a bit of an outlier as that universe is so huge and deep. But there's been mixed success elsewhere. Mechwarrior did it great with Mech Commander (2 at least), but Halo (Wars), Syndicate, XCom cross-genre pollination has been less successful. I'd like to see if devs could do a good job with some franchises out there. Doom4 turn-based squad-tactics (why not? got the weapons and bestiary for it). Starcraft covert-ops FPS (could be great). Dark Souls ARPG (halfway there already).
3. The furthering of the graphical stalemate to allow a focus on strong styles / themes, and on gameplay mechanics. This is already happening that games generally look great these days so you can't make something stand out with fancy water or fog or whatever, but there's still that last push to photo realism which may or may not occur in imminent decades, but if/when it does, and every engine looks broadly comparable, hopefully devs will have to focus on striking art styles on the graphical side, and intriguing gameplay too.
And a couple of predictions:
1. VR will keep being a thing. Because companies can sell VR machines.
2. Errrr, that's it.
I don't have that strong views about this, so hit me with yours, yo! |
