Gaming's Next Frontier?

[MetalFRO]

Something occurred to me recently. Video gaming has gone from a fad in the late 70's & early 80's, to a bit of a "geek" thing in the late 80's and early 90's, to a multi-billion dollar industry over the past 2-3 decades, as it has become a lot more mainstream. But thinking about "gaming" as a larger, more nebulous concept, people have always played games of one sort or another. We as people have sought to monetize that over time, with the proliferation of playing cards at the beginning of the 20th century, the introduction of puzzle game toys later in that century, board games around the same time, and electro-mechanical games stemming from around the WWII time forward. Electronic games made their debut in the early 70's, with the advent of the 1st computer & arcade games, Pong and its inevitable string of clones, the Magnavox Odyssey, etc. "Video games" as a more structured thing started to appear through the 70's, and really began to take hold in home markets in the late 70's, along with early iterations of home computing devices. The 80's brought further innovation, with arcade technology advancing quickly, even to the point where we essentially had playable movies with LaserDisc games. We also had rapidly advancing home video game technology, constantly pushing to keep up with arcades. And computers advanced quickly then as well, going from early 8-bit architecture to 16-bit, standardized Intel x86 chipsets and beyond. The late 80's and early 90's brought us CDs and Redbook audio, polygons, and 3D gaming. It attempted to bring us virtual reality, and helped us take our games with us, whether in 4-color pea green, or in bright & brilliant color. The 2000's brought us both DVD and BluRay, more polygons than ever before, and more cinematic experiences. And the 2010's finally brought us virtual reality in a more realized form, as well as augmented reality, and the proliferation of mobile gaming on a wide scale.

With all that said, now that we're in the 2020's, what do you think the next frontier for gaming is? I wonder what might be the next wave, or the next technological breakthrough/advancement that might push gaming experiences into another direction, or expand the possibilities of how/where/when/why/what we play. Anyone have thoughts on what we might be seeing emerge as the decade moves forward? Anyone want to wager a guess as to what might be the next big thing?

[Crabmaster2000]

It's starting right now. Cloud based live service focused gaming. I find it very gross, but that's what we've got to look forward too. With things like Gamepass, Stadia/Luna and Ubisoft's new direction for Assassin's Creed it's just getting started.

[Mr_Stubbes]

I'd like the next big thing to be further advancement into virtual reality with a focus on haptic feedback and a more true sense of immersion. There are already examples of walking platforms that can be used in conjunction with a VR headset that allows user to walk/run in place to move them through a VR world. I feel like potential direction this could lead to would be to develop an input device/controller that would react the same way as in game items that the player is holding. I'm thinking this could be achieved by a type of pulley system that could apply digital weight that could simulate holding/lifting or swinging an object (like the weight of swinging a sword at an enemy or holding up a shield to block.) Another thing would be to develop a peripheral that would react to in game stimuli (like taking damage) and apply a rumble to the effected area. (Kinda like the Aura Interactor for the Genesis but more of widespread instead of just a, for lack of a better word, back pack. However, I feel like this is just wishful thinking and that we are a ways off from this.

In reality I agree with Crabby and that "next frontier" will be the further development and inevitable transition to a digit/subscription only based gaming experience. Which will likely lead to an oversaturation of game streaming platforms (kinda like how digital movies/TV is now where everyone and their brother has a streaming service) due to exclusives titles/rites only being on X platform and yada yada yada

[Crabmaster2000]

I'd like the next big thing to be further advancement into virtual reality with a focus on haptic feedback and a more true sense of emersion. There are already examples of walking platforms that can be used in conjunction with a VR headset that allows user to walk/run in place to move them through a VR world. I feel like potential direction this could lead to would be to develop an input device/controller that would react the same way as in game items that the player is holding. I'm thinking this could be achieved by a type of pulley system that could apply digital weight that could simulate holding/lifting or swinging an object (like the weight of swinging a at an enemy or holding up a shield to block.) Another thing would be to develop a peripheral that would react to in game stimuli (like taking damage) and apply a rumble to the effected area. (Kinda like the Aura Interactor for the Genesis but more of widespread instead of just a, for lack of a better word, back pack. However, I feel like this is just wishful thinking and that we are a ways off from this.

In reality I agree with Crabby and that "next frontier" will be the further development and inevitable transition to a digit/subscription only based gaming experience. Which will likely lead to an oversaturation of game streaming platforms (kinda like how digital movies/TV is now where everyone and their brother has a streaming service) due to exclusives titles/rites only being on X platform and yada yada yada

I like your future better

[Mr_Stubbes]

I like your future better

You mean to tell me you aren’t excited to spend 30 minutes scrolling through multiple apps to find a new game to play to only give up and go back to an old game that you’ve beaten 20+ times, because it reminds of you better times and having too many choices thrown at you all at once will inevitably lead to a growing sense of existential dread that will haunt your every waking moment?

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[MetalFRO]

This thread took a dark turn quickly 

The all-digital future is inevitable, no matter what we do. But I guess my focus is more on innovation, pushing the limits of what the tech can do, introducing new ways to play, etc. Mr_Stubbes may have a good point with a more "full body" gaming experience, though I tend to agree, we're some way off from that. Until I can buy a suit that looks like I'm doing mo-cap for a movie or game, and have that suit give me all kinds of feedback, I'm not sure we're there yet.

[Mr_Stubbes]

Until I can buy a suit that looks like I'm doing mo-cap for a movie or game, and have that suit give me all kinds of feedback, I'm not sure we're there yet.

I'm holding out for a light suit .

[Disposed Hero]

I don't know what the next frontier of gaming will be, but if it requires putting on a full bodysuit then I'll probably check out of that pretty quick. I noped out of motion controls and VR for similar reasons. They're all intriguing ideas, but honestly I just want to sit back with a controller in my hand and play a game, not strap a contraption on my head and flail my arms around. I'm sure the experience is rewarding for those who are into it, but it's just too cumbersome for me.

Like you guys, I was staunchly against digital streaming of video games for years, but the more cumbersome (there's that word again) modern gaming gets and the less I care about collecting physical media, the more ready I am to embrace gaming on streaming platforms. Based on my personal experience with it, the technology isn't quite there yet and likely won't be for years, but once streaming is indistinguishable from playing locally, I'm all in. As modern AAA titles continue to get bigger and bigger and are starting to take up hundreds of GBs of storage space, the idea of just being able to select what I want to play from a menu without worrying about installs, updates, downloads, or disk space sounds like a dream come true. The need to spend hundreds of dollars on new hardware (if you can find it, that is) would be a thing of the past since it would all be streamable from an app. As someone who has sunk hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on physical movies and DVD boxsets of my favorite TV shows over the years, I've fully embraced video streaming and have no intention of going back to physical DVDs/Blu-Rays. I know it probably all sounds like a dystopian nightmare to you guys, but I'm on board.

[Crabmaster2000]

I don't have a problem with digital or even streaming. What I dislike about that move is that it encourages games as a service style games, microtransactions, dlc, seasons passes, and other gross ways of monitization. If we are all digital at some point so be it, I'll adapt to play cool single player story driven games or new versions of old classics. But it seems that most new big games are becoming intent on milking every dime and second from their players than delivering an interesting experience

[MetalFRO]

I don't have a problem with digital or even streaming. What I dislike about that move is that it encourages games as a service style games, microtransactions, dlc, seasons passes, and other gross ways of monitization. If we are all digital at some point so be it, I'll adapt to play cool single player story driven games or new versions of old classics. But it seems that most new big games are becoming intent on milking every dime and second from their players than delivering an interesting experience

I think it also further incentivizes broken games on launch day, or passing off a "near finished" game as early access, and then using all the feedback from players as a way to actually fix and finish the game, versus spending the time to do so before it's released. The flip side of that coin is that the game comes out with feature functionality that players want, but ultimately, games become even more of a commodity than before, and for larger games especially, very little of the development team's artistic vision may be retained by the time it's actually out. And of course, preservation is always the looming issue, particularly for licensed games, or from small indie studios who may not last long. If a game isn't published by a solid company with the ability to keep those publishing rights into perpetuity, smaller games in that scenario just go away, unless they're made available to download to PC or console for free at some point.

[Crabmaster2000]

Agree with all of that. As a point about preservation too, even huge games have serious issues with that. There was a pretty big deal in the Minecraft community lately when a patch update that was thought to be lost for the past 10 years was miraculously recovered off of a player's old hard drive. That's one of the biggest games in history and still it has issues with preserving its legacy