What is the future of Gaming?
In the not so distant past the vast majority of computer games were based on games consoles (such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sony Playstation) or on PC, Personal Computer, where games functioned on the system itself, such as Monkey Island with game play situated within the confines of a room. From then came the internet age where most PC games contained web based functionality with Half Life’s Counter Strike being one of the most successful. This change in the gaming world prompted console manufacturers adding internet connectivity to their machines, the first being the Sega Dreamcast. Although the Dreamcast was commercially unsuccessful Sega’s competitors followed suit and most second generation machines offered some sort of internet connection with the biggest advance being Xbox live. This offered fast console gaming over a broadband connection for the first time ushering in a revolution in console gaming. The Nintendo Wii will offer users the chance of buying games via the internet and saving them to the internal hard drive.
Whilst the internet grew in popularity with PC users so did the need for online gaming on PCs with first person shooters and role playing games being the most popular. The extensive use of online role playing games spawned the next “big thing” of gaming called Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, or MMORPG for short. These games brought forth millions of players from across the globe enduring dungeons and dragon like entertainment creating vast global communities and economies.
Some of these games are overtaking Hollywood’s top earners with World of Warcraft generating approximately $900 million a year and the top ten grossing films of all time being:
- Titanic $601 million
- Star Wars $461 million
- Star Wars Episode 1 $431 million
- E.T. $400 million
- JurassicPark $357 million
- Forrest Gump $330 million
- Lion king $313 million
- Star Wars Return of the Jedi £309 million
- Independence Day $306 million
- The Sixth Sense $293 million
(Figures taken from Istanbul to Sand Hill Road: Hollywood vs. The Video Game Industry)
With all this in mind what and who holds the key for the future of gaming?
The Future of Internet Activity on Consoles
In the next few months all of the big three third generation games consoles will be released with both the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii being demonstrated at The Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, in Los Angeles in May. Most games and functions that these new consoles are going hold will also have an internet function to it. With many classic titles from the second gen consoles being updated for the third generation, internet based change seems to be at the forefront, for example “you will be able to buy and download tracks for Singstar karaoke game, much like you can download music videos on Xbox Live” (Alfred Hermida,
With a predicted jump of the number of consoles that will be online in the U.S. by 5 million to the value of 8 million “As the big players—Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo—launch next-generation consoles that have better online capabilities.”(
In-Stat/MDR is an Arizona research firm which reported that online subscriptions will reach $650 million annually split amongst Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. One of In-Stat/MDR’s senior analysts Eric Mantion as made clear that “Online gaming is a real industry, which will make real money. There are a lot of companies that are working very hard to grow this industry quickly, so odds are, they will help to move things along faster than some suspect” (PC Magazine, Cade Metz, March 2003). He also believes that by 2007, 9% of all consoles will be online worldwide with most being in Japan, South Korea and the US where broadband is widely available.
Microsoft have announced that they are to also allow software manufacturers build on games and have an episodic feel to them with companies such as Rockstar designing new “episodes” for Grand Theft Auto 4 online which users will be able to purchase online.
Many, however believe that the future of gaming is with PC gaming due to the costs of making a new games console and the price it costs to make a game, some can cost more than £10 million to design and create. Some of the main players in console gaming have voiced major concerns about the future of gaming such as Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwatawho thinks “If we continue down the same path as we have in the past, people may be tired of gaming. We have learned that the people get tired of any entertainment form. In Japan, the gaming market is shrinking. There is still room to expand in the U.S. and Europe.”(
This prediction does not bode well for consoles, but could mark the beginning of a new more interactive gaming culture when the internet 2 is launched in the future.
Future of Online Games on PCs
The Yankee group has predicted that online games “will grow threefold to $1.1 billion by 2008” and “in the United States alone, there will be 5.2 million people subscribing to these games by 2008”( this is over double the amount of Americans that subscribe to online games in 2003. Yankee also predicted the MMORPG boom which is currently taking place in Asia, and believes that Western Europe and North America are next in the firing line for aMMORPG games boom.
Marek Walton of The Mustard Corporation believes that the future of online gaming is one without scripted cinematic sequences, but with the gamers themselves performing the character position during these sequences he said “I think players are very adept at stripping a game and knowing its mechanics. So if we interact with a human being, we instantly know it’s a real person – which ups the ante [of engagement] a lot” ( game column, November 17 2006). Marek believes that most games in the future will be similar to the nature of World of Warcraft with script writers being moved to the role of “Dungeon Master”.
Scott Jensen, a marketing consultant, feels that due to the increase in computer game piracy that many titles of the future will be freely available online and that the revenue that will be generated could be from advertising. The reason that Scott believes that games will have to be free is due to the low sales of titles, meaning companies will not pay to advertise in the game and that software houses could be pushed to this avenue due to piracy online and p2p network systems will speed up the time it takes to get hold of “cracked” games. He deems that:
“Product placements are ideal for almost any computer game. The amount of involvement players have with their games is massive. More massive than with any other medium. As a result, you would think that major advertisers would be very interesting in getting product placements in these computer games” (THE P2p REVOLUTION)
He also feels that it will only take one innovative company to “take the plunge” and allow a sequel or expansion pack to go for free and allow advertisers to pay for product placement, citing the Sims and MMORPG as the best possible avenues for change and that any company who does not do this in the future could face falling revenues.
This could also solve the problem of p2p piracy in MMORPG games.
MMORPG: The Future of Gaming?
There have been many things written about the MMORPG genre and the “new breed” of criminal that has emerged, but is this the beginning of widespread change sweeping gaming and the internet itself.
The market in Asia seems to be at an all time high which could mean that the market has been saturated. If this is the case many software houses may turn their attention to westerners who have high income where internet access is available in most homes. There are many reasons these games will catch on in the western world much like it has done in eastern Asia one being that it builds on internet successes such as chat rooms where people get to converse with people outwith their city and country whilst adding a competitive and playful element. This does bring the problem of “lag” comes from “all of these people interacting in one world in real time, user’s connection can make his movement appear much slower or jumpy” (Internet Gambling Regulation Present and Future , this could get worse if the MMORPG craze comes over to the west. This could halt growth in the future and make role playing games unpopular and gamers may look to other genres with less “lag times”. This may be solved by separating gamers into regions especially with the “Final Fantasy” series starting global communities on consoles signalling the addition of console gamers to the virtual RPG world. Another reason for gamers to transfer to online gaming is for status and be seen as “golf of the future” and a “meeting place of the upper-middle class” (
MMORPG’s also bring an educational factor to gaming and has presented psychologists with another avenue to study human behaviour with pioneers such as Nick Yee ( and Sherry Turkle ( Virtuality and Its Discontents) already providing studies into the psychology behind MMORPG users. Due to more anonymity in games users show their real behaviour and attitudes which allows psychologists to view human behaviour online to see how this mirrors society. Other illnesses such as schizophrenia and personality disorders can be treated using MMO software which may be further developed in the future.
The manufacturers behind MMORPG titles may focus on the genre in the future because of the vast ways in which a company can increase revenue after the sale of the CD or software. There have even been calls to have rewards for online gamers when they use their credit cards, very much like air miles which are in use in the present time. It is believed that user could be attracted to a specific title if there were increased benefits associated with using credit cards as reported by Make Magazine earlier in the year stating “It’s not a matter of if, just when – credit card companies, Pay Pal, Amazon and individual “gaming” companies eventually bridge the real and virtual currencies with loyalty programs and private label credit cards – there’s too much money out there to-not-do this.” (MAKE Magazine). This, of course, is true if this earns both credit card companies and software developers increased revenue, there is no way that this venture can be ignored and may push MMORPG’s into the mainstream solidifying its place in the market.
Nevertheless, there is one other avenue which MMORPG’s can take in the future which is personal virtual worlds. This is where role playing games can set the standard for change. In the past it was possible to design and upload a personal arena for FPS games such as Team Fortress, but building your own virtual society on your own homepage could be the next step in virtual society. Other than conversing in chat rooms on Bebo or My Space whole groups could gather as characters and gamble or battle as they see fit.
“User-generated Content is going to be huge. It’s one of those questions that’s more a matter of ‘when’ than’ if’, because it’s coming, and it’s coming big time. Players talents and creativity can be harnessed like it has been with FPS mods and the like it will be a huge step forward for MMOGs.” (Brad McQuid – Original Producer/co-designer of Everquest,
Mobile Gaming
In Japan there has been arrangements made between Sony, Sega and a Japanese Mobile firm NTT Do Co Mo over the summer months. The first change has been with Playstation adding a function to allow i-mode compatible phones access to the hard drive, displaying wap content onto a TV screen, and now with the announcement that “it will make games that use the connection, some of which will be modified Playstation titles” and also revealed that they will try to create “an advanced Playstation 2 console for use in arcades.The advanced PS2 will have “major enhancements”, including monitors and video cameras to send additional video images over broadband connections to other arcades”( Future of Gaming, 21 Feb 2005) this signals Sony’s intention to invest into the mobile gaming market although Reuters does not believe that the new platform will catch on or that it will generate enough profits to divert the interest of the big players like Microsoft. There have however, been location based games developed in a small scale like Undercover which exploits GPS mobile utilities to track down other players. If these pastimes become popular one of the big firms may take notice and develop a similar project at a larger scale.
Unless phones are made with gaming in mind it may too cumbersome playing detailed games via mobile phones in the near future.
Concluding Points
There is argument to say that gaming could be headed to a sort of virtual realism that may amalgamate from the MMORPG boom which is currently griping eastern Asia. However, this is probably only a stop gap to augmented reality which is being worked on in the University of Singapore and by American projects such as ARQuake in which all content is shown on a translucent screen and observed in a real-world setting so that the game appears to be “taking place in the everyday world” (Guardian Unlimited) which leads the belief that gaming will contain real life players, such as operation London in which players had to track down teams using mobile technology as well as messages from observers who were viewing the game via the CCTV available vie the internet, and attack opponents with laser tag style weapons or robots such as NetTransistor which is a robot controlled by Wi-Fi with a web cam attachment. Whatever the future brings in gaming it should bring people from all corners of the globe together with the same love of gaming and bridge the gap of real world and virtual world closer.
Bibliography
Textbooks:
Business Functions, An Active Learning Approach, The Open learning Foundation, Blackwell Business.
Papers and Articles
Confessions of an Aca/fan: The official Weblog of Henry Jenkins
Reported by sky news, Games and Finances, 30th December 2005 –
The McGill Daily, March 29th 2004, Volume 93, Number 44
MMORPG: A review of social studies Marco Chiuppesi
Reuters August 14 2006, Microsoft warns of security risk
Guardian Unlimited, Technology Section, The future collision of robots and gaming, Keith Stuart, 9th November 2006
Phillip Torrone, MAKE Magazine, February 2006
Internet Gambling Regulation Present and Future – Technology Outpaces Legislation as the MMORPG Problem Emerges, Prof. Mark Methenitis, 12 December 2005
THE P2p REVOLUTION Peer-to-peer networking & the entertainment industry, a free-to-distribute white paper, Scott Jensen, 2003
Web Resources
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Future of Gaming, 21 Feb 2005
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The Future of Massively Multiplayer Gaming A Visionary panel, Dave Kosak, 13th November 2003
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Virtuality and Its Discontents
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Class Begins In…, terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2005/10/class_begins_in.html
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game column, November 17 2006
Q&A: The Future of Gaming, 11 May 2006
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Study: Online-game revenue to skyrocket, 12 July 2004
Study: Online-game revenue to and more online development in the near future
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Innovate or Die, Chris Morris, 21 May 2004