We’ve spent the last roughly two months talking about how gaming has evolved over the last decade and how we, as gamers, have changed, as well.  A lot has happened in these past ten years, some good, some bad, but one thing is for certain.  Gaming is going stronger than it ever has before, reaching even more people as our favorite franchises expand not only in popularity, but to movies and theme parks, as well.  But we’ve spent enough time dwelling on the past.  It’s about time we ended our festivities with one final collaboration discussing where we think, and where we hope, gaming is headed over the next ten years.

The Duck of Indeed

As we already discussed weeks ago, gaming has changed a lot over the last decade, for better and for worse.  And so it’s safe to say that I can only hope that the good just keeps getting better, and the worse, well, that it course-corrects itself.  To start, the AAA sector of gaming has become less innovative, and less trustworthy, as the years have gone by.  Creativity has often been thrown out the window in favor of formulaic games that we’ve seen thousands of times before.  Because, why risk all this money on something new and groundbreaking when they already know tons of people will buy more of the same, tried and true kinds of games, no matter how predictable they’ve become?  Likewise, big budget games being sold for $60-70 are being released buggy and unfinished because, again, they know people will still pay for it, and they can always patch it later.

But just as I’ve seen people growing tired of boring, uninspired movies made by big studios, I can only hope that the next ten years will see gamers growing bored of paying top dollar for products that no longer deserve those high prices.  Indie games have blown up in popularity over the years, and as more and more people move away from AAA games for games that are more creative, and also far less expensive, perhaps these big developers that used to dominate the industry will be humbled and forced to start respecting their customers again or else become irrelevant.

Will that actually happen, though?  Will AAA developers start striving for excellence again now that they see that much smaller developers can make better games on smaller budgets?  Well, I can’t say I’m terribly optimistic.  I guess only time will tell.

But let’s focus on a few exciting developments that could truly come to pass in the coming decade.  I hope that VR games will become cheaper and more accessible to the average gamer.  I hope video game movies continue to see success (with the huge success of the first Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, a sequel is already in the works).  And I hope video games see a greater presence in theme parks.  We already have the Mario-themed Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios, which is going to expand to include Donkey Kong Country, and possibly Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda, as well.  Who knows what other franchises could find themselves moving from the digital world to the physical?

Now let me just throw one more wild idea out there.  I know there are always going to be competing consoles.  But now that consoles have become so powerful, I have to wonder if there’s a chance we won’t have to update console hardware so much in the future.  You know, like imagine a world where PlayStation peaks at, I dunno, a PS6, and you just maintain and upgrade that one console for all your PlayStation-gaming needs.  Think about it, no more console generations.  I know that’ll likely never happen.  But one can dream.

Hatmonster

I suppose I echo some of The Duck of Indeed’s thoughts. I too would like to see creativity come back to the AAA sector of the industry and would like to see the good  aspects of the business continue to get better. I’d also like to see console generations come to an end, but I don’t think it’ll happen in a way that we, as gamers, will actually like.

Mostly though, I want the independent side of gaming to become even more accessible. What I mean by that is that I’d like to see development for consoles become easier for indie developers. As it stands, porting your game to PlayStation, Switch and Xbox is both very time consuming and very expensive.

Games have to go through a lot to get on these platforms’ store fronts and developers have to pay a lot of money for the privilege. (This hasn’t stopped shovelware from showing up on all of them, so I dunno). I suppose what I mean to say is that there are so many great games that are only available in the PC environment, and I’d like to see that change. I’d also like for the games to get the attention they deserve (so long as that success doesn’t turn an indie dev into a AAA dev.)

I’d also like to see the whole GaaS/Fremium model collapse and the AAA sector contract into something more realistic. No more budgets in the hundreds of millions; no more 1,000 man studios with ridiculously overpaid (and redundant) leadership sucking the fun out of every project, and no more games made solely for badgering players into dumping money into them. Is it realistic? No. It only goes away if gamers stop dumping their money into these games, but it’s what I hope for nonetheless. In short, I want gaming to be about fun games again.

Cary

I’m with both Hatm0nster and The Duck in believing that the AAA gaming sector has to change. But as things are going now, I don’t see much change happening even within the next decade…unless there’s major failure in the system. That’s something that certainly could happen, but should it? I understand that it’s hard to love AAA gaming right now, and there’s something to be said for wanting to see the industry perform a reset. As it goes, gaming is still a very young industry – most mainstream entertainment has been with us for centuries; mainstream gaming is only 40 years old, on the verge of 50, depending on where you start counting. Its rise mimics that of household computers, though in a small niche comparatively. It makes sense that it’s now experiencing growing pains, what with AAA gaming becoming so bloated so quickly. Scaling things back makes sense; utter implosion doesn’t.

That said, whatever comes of big-budget gaming, over the next decade, I absolutely see indie gaming only growing stronger and stronger. With so many game creation tools freely available at one’s fingertips these days, it doesn’t take much to make an experience that will attract others. And while being in it for the money is motivation enough, we’re also seeing the rising independent development of games just for the sake of gaming. These creative, unique, and fearless entries into gaming have changed the landscape for the better. It’s admittedly easy to picture the future of games as a monoculture, but with the assured addition of indie games, gaming’s future looks as polycultural as things can get!

My primary hope for gaming’s future is that it will become further integrated into what we consider as regular entertainment. Regardless of the strides gaming has made, the popularity of eSports, and sheer availability of games, there remains the stigma that it’s not a hobby worthy of, well…anyone. There was a time when gaming was considered as something “for kids,” but now opinions about it seem more polarized, that one either fully accepts them (no matter the age of the players) or decries them. That’s likely a reflection of the current state of our culture at-large, but it’s something gaming has been unable to fully shake. Some of the rifts that are occurring these days between the industry and players are resulting from wide-scale efforts on the part of industry leaders to make integration happen by making games more accessible, more easily available, and less confined to consoles. Video game players are an admittedly possessive group, and you can’t really blame anyone when it looks like the industry is just taking misstep after misstep, and I certainly wouldn’t expect that players and game-makers will suddenly see eye-to-eye one day. But, maybe there will be a point where gaming becomes just another normal, fun pastime, one without limits, agendas, or judgment.