How do you imagine the future of gaming in 10 years from now?

Wait a second...I just realised this thread is about "gaming" in general. Sure, video games are implied, but bear with me for a second...

Board games are on somewhat of a renaissance since the zeroties. It's kind of strange to say it, because obviously cardboard and plastic hasn't seen much of a change outside of accessibility. But perhaps that is enough: kickstarter has exploded with interesting designs by creative people who need little more than their imagination (reason: regular and 3D printers can provide working products almost effortlessly, and thanks to desktop simulator, most board games can be tested online thoroughly before even anything physical is created).

...and one of the more recent hypes (say...since a year or two) is the inclusion of assistant apps that increase the availability by providing background music, make bookkeeping easier or act as dungeon master. I've played an 'escape the room' board game that reminded me more of a point-and-click game than I think to be coincidence, and a popular detective game (chronicles of crime) has you scanning cards to question suspects, check out objects or go to another area.
I honestly think that blending of 'video games' and 'board games' will continue. Whether it'll be successful is another story, but some prototypes of large 'board game' tablets speaks to the imagination (quick example). It's only a matter of time before developers truly realise that almost literally anyone has a smartphone on hand, which could mean a whole new genre of gaming.

For clarity: I don't think it'll be the dominant gamer market segment in ten years. Once I started learning about board games, I was surprised to find how many board game developers made video games and vice versa. So they've co-existed for many years already. The only thing I think there'll be different is that in board games, apps will become as natural as score blocks for scoring right now.

 

The way things are going now...

I see it crashing hopefully

 

I think in terms of interface, it'll probably still be the same basic controller concept for the vast majority, even if VR is cheap and safe, I think it's a big enough departure from standard gaming for them to exist side by side.

We may have hit a ceiling in visuals, the last gen (for me atleast) didn't seem like a significant jump and 4k is probably as good as the human eye is going to be able to appreciate.

I'm going with a stadia style environment, via tv connected boxes or service on a PC. People will still grumble about lag.

Maybe there will be 3 distinct fields: Current (streamed), Retro (CPU/GPU in a box) and VR.

 

Thers so many good games out ther including new ways of playing like vr - you obviously kno nothing about gaming

 

Every game will run under Intel Managment Engine, and you'll be able to play your game when your pc will be turned off or during a start-up.

 

Thousands of games out ther tht don't use this - people just making up to many excuses and are probably getting bored with games - gaming has never been better with so many platforms to play on and great value for money with discounts becoming available more often than years past

 

I am not bored with games (I hang around here still, read news, keep up with goings on, hack games... and beyond all that I got myself a 360 the other week and have been going through its library thoroughly enjoying it) but this last console generation has been a fucking slog and I have essentially nothing to show for it, not even "like this but slightly better still" that was most of the GBA to DS transition.

Some of the big devs are doing slightly better this year (the new COD is not great and playing it a bit safe but returning somewhat to form, and while I have not played it yet Need for Speed is also heading there too) and the low end of the indy market have some interesting things (though last go around it was the high end indy devs that gave me the good stuff) but I am anything but enthused about the state of gaming today. That said rather than a bleak future if major pub gaming does decide to disappear up its own arse in a puff of coloured hair dye the colours of which are normally only seen on poisonous frogs then I can see hardware capabilities meaning low barrier to entry, mods and open source rushing in to fill the gap. That said I am sure some investor will either run out cocaine funds or sober up for long enough to realise "people like good games, good games might not have the 9000x return of the current fad but 6x is still better than 5% of the stock market" and get things back on track.

 

Just read something interesting in regards to board gaming : apparently they're working on a way to play ticket to ride with Alexa (https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/96969/alexa-can-now-teach-you-ticket-ride). It's one thing to have the thing explain rules, but keeping track and acting as an opponent is something I couldn't have predicted.

 

Give or the usual take possibilities/AI difficulties (don't know what it would be, or what a simplified AI would look like for ticket to ride at this point) is it all that different to verbal chess or something like that? I recall speaking/light up LED (or maybe still light up bulbs and mechanical fun at that point) chess boards in the early 90s and you could probably find ones further back still. I don't know if any of those had hinting options but it is not a radical step to turn around and have the AI try to guess an effective move for the human player.

 

Once upon a time you actually had fun playing games, but… as humans become greedy, things started to change...

Steam and other digital stores join the crypto revolution. You earn crypto credit while playing games (sponsored by gaming companies), making use of those idle 30 cpu cores, because games haven’t been optimised yet. Finally developers are proud to have found a way to use those beloved cores!

AI will be so advanced, that gaming will be redefined once again. Populous is now on an entirely different level, making justice to its name. You just command, no controllers.

Cloud will end the second hand market, as nobody will own anything. First hand market to follow in the new few years ;/
The combination of cheap hardware + cloud streaming + bandwidth catchup bringing exciting new things. Second Life a-likes will surrogate once again, but this time taking over facebook. Because who doesn't love a 3D social media profile.

Data collection makes its enter into gameplay. Analyses the way you play the games and how you think. Esports will be too competitive for players sanity. Eventually everyone will give up to AI and we will be watching robots playing. Meanwhile ads become normality in single player games, just like TV a couple decades ago. The good thing is that DLCs is no more!

Alexa and Siri will evolve their own personalities, and you will be able to play with them. No more forever alone! Google Assistant will basically continue to be the same cold one we love.
Your list of friends on steam will consist mostly of virtual robots. And they will challenge you in ways you’d never imagine ^.^

Few decades longer and humanity will no longer be moving fingers, the mind does everything. Good for accessibility, but bad for creativity.
Streaming has redefined itself. This time people stays put while their minds play at will.

Reality is too dangerous to think about. I will just go back to enjoy my collection of DOS games

Disclaimer: I am not responsible if something discussed in this post actually happens.

 

time to dig out my blobby and tango cd's

 

I'll be fair, a lot of it sounds like a rather fun transhumanist utopia - befriending robots, exploring endless virtual worlds, and abandoning our frail and flawed human bodies <3

 

Sure, chess computers aren't new. The new thing is that people don't buy Alexa for a board game teacher /play partner. It's more that if this becomes easy enough to do, it might gain reaction. I've already mentioned that board games start to blend more with apps and video games. This could become a pretty normal situation in ten years : playing games against a computer opponent in a non - video game format.

Edit: I also second @Henx 's notion. The field of AI is steadily increasing. It's probably still too early to have an actual thinking computer, but games that mimick human like behavior could become a trend in gaming (1).

(1): dedicated gamers will attest that not that many games have actual human - like boots. More so : developers often strike a balance between dumbness and what they can code (it's not that hard to create an aimbot. Bots that properly act as humans in terms of aiming, running, seeking cover is a lot harder)

 

Between stuff like https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/duels-planeswalkers-all-about-ai-2014-02-13 , things like we have seen for backgammon (the AI essentially found better ways to play that blew what was previously known out of the water), the stuff google et al are doing for chess algorithms and general neural network style learning and general purpose computing (or at least something the other end of a network connection) I am still not at the point of it being that radical.

Sure I doubt the 90s peeps would have predicted exactly that (you might have got future supercomputer predicting all the possibilities a la more traditional chess stuff rather than what has allowed games far far far more complicated than chess to be played well by fairly modest computing power) but I am still not at radical notions the likes of which were never dreamed of before.

On board games blending I recall playing trivial pursuit with a VHS at one point so there is that. DVDs by virtue of having some measure of computing power did more still.

Similarly the first thing various people thought of when they saw those shine a projector in your eye glasses a few years back was virtual board game wherever you happen to rock up.

I am also excited to see what becomes of all this, though I imagine it will make games more disposable/ephemeral than they already are -- at least today if I want to play something that stopped being made 30 years ago and still gets notes I can crowbar open the wallet and get it done, or if you prefer how many "apps" for hardware have you met that no longer work with current versions, indeed it is a reason not to buy a tool if it claims support for such things. That said as far as radical and unexpected I am going to need a bit more.

Now when the AI becomes an integral part of things and allows both the more free play of board games and things only computers can reasonably do then we can talk.

 

I want to see it come back to me and my buds sitting on the floor next to each other playing on the tv with a half empty pizza box between us.

The actual reality will be me, by myself, with sensored gloves, boots, and goggles, flailing all extremities while shouting at my teammates all the while not knowing when the pizza guy will arrive, because you know, I’m not paying that fee to pause the game.

 

While there are few greater advocates of local co-op than I (same for "I am not paying for online games") then I do have to ask whether that could happen even if we got "like N64 but modern gameplay and graphics that don't cause headaches". Or if you prefer then since becoming an old man (or 18+ as the case may be) how hard is it to get one of your mates to not have significant others, kids, housework, late shifts... and get a pass to come over, never mind 3 of them? Secondary to that is even if that logistical feat is managed how likely are they to want to "waste" it playing games instead of road trip, holiday, bars, cinema, or whatever meaningful or expensive thing people seem to want to do these days?

Or are you one of the lucky ones that had friends with kids that grew up, got divorced, got sociable hours jobs or peter panned it?

 

One thing I can definitely seeing happening is a console with a VR headset where the video is streamed wirelessly to the set.

 

We will lose a lot of games...

Due to the digitalization more and more games are getting lost like satellaview thing or the Sega channel they closed Wii shop recently in case of that most of games are avaible on internet and you can play them on hacked Wii or use emulator but in case dsi shop there's no dsi emulator and i am not sure if every dsiware game has avaible rom and when they close psn on PS3 we are not gonna be able to keep up and we will lose a lot of games!

Remember preservesion is important.