Future of Games

#1 I still play near over 90% of my time on my PC gaming. I have many other platforms but I constantly come back to the PC. Maybe because I can do more than one thing at a time, or because I have a more compelling experience. Maybe the full user input (I still find multi-touch nice, but limiting on control options.)
There is a HUGE market for games and application in the mobile market, far more open than on PC as there is a deeper audience adoption.

#2 I don't see mobile killing PC, and handheld consoles will probably linger a bit longer, but not too long. They'll get replaced by multi-core smart phones (that will be try to become laptop replacements), with the means to play games on small screens almost as well as we can on big screens. Tablets will be a bit better, but there comes a point when someone will need to stick a fan in one- and I already bought a dual-core Kiosk tablet back in '08, so I sense where that's going (wish the batter hadn't died, the plug is kinda short)...

Of course, PCs continue to push performance, and anything handheld will simply not hold a candle to what they'll be able to do. I think the best movement will be cross-platform development where Indies can port to multiple platforms with very little effort (ie, Flash, HTML5). Engines that take advantage of those things stand to benefit.

#3 For as long as I can remember technology-x was going to displace PC's and make them irrelevant.

where technology-x includes but is not limited to: Time sharing, Sun network os's, web browsers, thin-clients...

Taco resigned from Slashdot... Steve Jobs, RIP(if there is more after I hope he finds the peace he never found in life), Sun was purchased by Oracle. Do you really think linux is going anywhere?

Can we let the Microsoft hate go now??? Please???

#4 The thread title inspired me to sday this.

Imo games, like everything else, evolve based off fads. In terms of popularity, it will go up. It will go down. It will stay the same, but in what order depends not only on your game, but the consumer also. If they don't like it they won't play it and the same goes for the opposite.

I've heard a lot of developers and gamers complain over the years about how they wish a game was like this, or had this feature, or whatever. Imo, this is where indie developers both come from and come into play. I know the reason why I'm an indie developer is due to the fact I think a lot of games, mainly RPGs, are just the same thing different world and developer.

Whew, I've wanted to say that for a while now. :)

#5 I'll just say this:

The casual market share is superior in size and buying power than the hardcore gamer minority. So, thus, games will be made for the majority, which don't have beefy PCs, or the time or money for consoles, but just want a tiny time waster for a dollar on their phone, or their tablet.

p.s: Garagegames needs to think about their future, and I believe that their first step forward is a new forum, that is clearer to read and search, and be more familiar to other forums. eg. phpbb, the Unity forums, etc etc. The moment users can help eachother easier, is the moment they work for you as giving people reasons to stay / start / migrate to Torque.

#6 @Markus

Thanks for your comments. I agree with the casual market comment. Although the most lucrative products seem to span both hardcore and casual markets like Starcraft 2 and Call of Duty. There seems to be room for both high budget AAA titles and casual titles. This makes the platform wars interesting. Both Crytek and Blizzard have stated that they will continue to lead on PC...certainly in Blizzard's case, their titles cross over from hardcore PC gamers to include casual mass market players. My 7 year old son plays a ton of Starcraft 2, so it is easy to play.

We don't have a roll out date for forum updates, but I can say we agree and we are working on it!

#7 What to say.. Probably shudnt say a thing :)

I've messed around with the Phones, not bothered with the tablets..
Personally I see them as one hit wonders that will change to the next
gadget in a year or two.. (Aka the wonders of a sheet of plastic material
that works as a pc and acts as a phone etc.. Recent development).

Yet for some reason the PC hangs in there.. And it probably will for many
years to come. Far more flexibility with a PC. I also moved into Indie to
DO something about the cloned games rather then complain about it :)

#8 I think that, for the most part, phone and tablet games are going to continue to cannibalize the casual web-based games market; stuff like Bejeweled and Farmville. PC gaming is slowly dying out, but not for any reasons related to phones and tablets (it's being gutted by the console).

#9 @Michael,

Actually I am surprised at the tenacity of the console market. This is the longest cycle ever for consoles and sales are surprisingly good for Microsoft and Sony...not as good for Nintendo.

I'll have to think about whether this is a sustainable trend.

I don't agree with the PC gaming dying out. As far as industry sales (which have been skewed by a lack of accurate digital sales) it has historically been a $4 - 6 billion industry worldwide minus MMOs and inclusive of digital sales. As far as I have seen, it continues to be in this range and more than double this if you add up MMO sales to this. This does not include social games. PC is very much alive and sustaining its market share.

However, I do recognize the explosive growth in other platforms has affected growth and the PC growth story, minus social games, is not impressive...

#10 I see the PC as still relevant today and in the future. More people are playing the casual games nowadays because they're so much easier and cheaper to get into as well as there being "more people" having access.

Handheld gaming seems to be more about time wasting than a full fledged game experience -- just something to do while bored waiting in a line, or in between text messages. Developers for the various handhelds are able to use the tagline "innovative & unique" controls, but no matter how cool and spiffy the controls are, gameplay designed to appeal to the attention deficit is still boring gameplay.

I've yet to find any social or casual game that I want to play for more than 5 minutes. There are some good ones, but most of them make me feel like I'm not dumb enough for the intended audience. And that is the scary thing to me: that the future of mainstream gaming seems to be geared to appeal to minimum intelligence and skills. Anything that is designed to be more socially "acceptable" or appealing I usually hold in disdain. But then I'm also cynical and elitist about all forms of media entertainment.

And even though I'm still predominately a pc gamer, consoles sure do make it easy to enjoy a fragfest on our bigass tv while kicking back on a comfortable couch :)

#11 I think my claim that the PC gaming industry is dying out is mostly based on game developer comments about piracy and hardware variety. It just seems like a lot of studio's are talking about how much easier it is to develop for the Xbox or PS3 compared to PC's. Add in the perceived threat of piracy, and it just seems like the overall attitudes are changing.

I think PC gaming will never really go away, but I do see it kind of stagnating into a cesspool of console ports and Korean-styled MMO's.

Another interesting aspect of PC gaming, and usage in general, has to do with the original topic of tablets and phones. For the last 15 years, the internet has been the primary driver for PC sells, which allowed for a PC gaming market to really pick up in the first place. The internet was new and there was this possibly misguided belief that everyone could have a hand in creating a little corner for themselves (complete with gif star backgrounds and under construction signs). Now that the internet has been more about consumption rather than creation, we're seeing shifts in how people choose to access the internet.

PC's aren't going away, but they are being marginalized. I think it's only natural that PC gaming would follow. I'd say we have a good 10 more years of PC's in the current form. Past that, I believe the lines will start to blur with consoles, televisions, and computers.

That's just my opinion though.

#12 @ Michael

I agree the challenges on PC are great and there is a lot less piracy on console because it is a closed system. A lot of developers spend a lot of time thinking and trying to alleviate the piracy problem on PC, so spot on.

Having said all that, we are still seeing 10 million+ unit sellers on PC for $59 games like Starcraft 2. Any video game platform would love to see a game sell this well, so I would argue despite all the problems, PC games are actually going into a growth spurt with games like Battlefield 3 having better features (more multiplayer support, better graphics, faster loading with SSDs, etc.) on top of exclusives like Blizzard games.

Yes, these are just my opinions as well. :)

#13 Eric Schmidt (from Google):
"By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded in it."

If true, that works out to about 100 million Google TVs in 2012 alone.
I'm sure that number is inflated, but still it's a platform worth looking into.

www.google.com/tv/apps.html#games

#14 I just dug up an old conference video that has some pretty cool information related to this topic. Still fairly relevant, especially about how games are being incorporated into cars and other things.

http://www.g4tv.com/lv3/44277

#15 I missed this one. Jesse is great here. He makes some good points about authenticity in products, having clever ideas and the general trend of surprises in our industry the past few years.

Although I do disagree with his jab at the iPad. I realize this is an older video, but the iPad has been a winner since day one and there is no end in sight.

I still believe tablet gaming will continue to rise for years and be a legitimate alternative to handhelds for the foreseeable future. I am actual more worried about the handhelds sticking around 3 or 4 years from now.

#16 I just finished a game for the PC which sold a whopping zero copies. I'm willing to bet the full version of the game was hacked off of my server and is on BitTorrent.

Fad or not, I think I need to target iOS devices if I want to sell any games, which I do begrudgingly. At the risk of sounding incredibly rude, the sheer amount of shovelware out there on iOS is jawdropping (not to mention the outright theft and reselling of other people's IP's), so I'm not looking forward to trying to compete with it all.

Adapt or die, right?

#17 I play PC games 95% of the time, the only games I play on mobile (android) are ok but very casual and nothing too exciting compared to what you can play on PC.

I don't think I want to make games for mobile or tablet because I want to make games I want to play and they just don't have the input for that.

Also unless you can make your game stand out really well with heaps of marketing it'll disappear.

But in the end I think its about making games YOU enjoy.

#18 @Anthony As with any business, the easier it is to get into, the more competition there will be. Yes it is a zoo in the iOS world because of the sheer volume of titles that are being put out. In the PC world, we typically saw about 1000 titles a year come out at retail and it is about 100Xs that on iOS. That is not to say every game is easy to make on iOS, but many genres are a lot easier than on PC...certainly compared to PC retail titles in past years.

On "adapt or die", I think there is no clear answer here. The only consistent thing the past 5 years has been change. Indies, mobile and social games are all new trends...PC, especially digital PC, is making a strong comeback this year. MMOs have been stagnant for years but Star Wars and now Skyrim are making it an interesting thing again.

@Edward, I really like your last comment.

#19 Believe me, Dexter, I like Edward's last comment too and the ultimate justification for what I do is the fact that I like making games and I like playing the games I make. It's just that there's that one part of me that tells me I'm wasting my time if I don't at least try to put what I make out there for others.

#20 Security of IP will definately have a major affect on development leaning toward apps over exes. However I see handhelds supplementing desktop rigs and laptops as well as consoles. All of these platforms are evolving, though, so the future will most likely be a hybrid of these existing technologies. Having said that, I can't see the world StarCraft tournaments being held on iPad. I can see the audience for these competitions having a scoreboard/viewer app to watch the games on though. Hmmm....

I'm more concerned about content. Games seem to be dumbing down across the board. With a few brilliant exceptions. I also wonder, in light of the whole EA/BioWare vs fanbase "I want MY ending!" fiasco, if this is paving the way for end user created content for studios' IP? I hope not. I like my ideas and visions. Sales matter, but not THAT much.