For the last discussion of this week following up on last week’s Develop Conference I want to ask one simple question. It was the final question asked to the panel of Ben Hebb, the Art Director at Zoe Mode, John Nash, the Studio Design Director at Blitz, and Neil Thompson, the Studio Art Director at Bizarre Creations and a very simple one. If you had one wish for the future of gaming what would it be?
To be honest I’m going to keep this discussion short and sweet, because there isn’t a huge amount for me to say, I want to know what you have to say on the topic. All three members of the panel agreed that they wanted more acceptance of gaming. Each wanted slightly different kinds of acceptance, but in general they just wanted acceptance of gaming, and I’d have to agree with them on that.
Neil Thompson wanted more acceptance of gaming by the government, something that seems to be slowly coming the industries way. In particular with a wealth of new, younger MPs coming in at the general election maybe we’ll see this acceptance from the government. Hopefully the new intake of politicians ‘get’ gaming on at least some level, and we’ll see a real acceptance of the industry as a ‘real’ business in the next few years.
Ben Hebb asked for acceptance of social gaming as ‘proper’ games by the industry and gamers alike. I think he’ll certainly get his wish in the next few years, with social games and gaming exploding ‘core’ gamers will be vastly outnumbered and probably already are. It won’t be a question of social gaming needing to get acceptance, in all likelyhood it’ll be the exact opposite.
Finally John Nash just wanted to have everyone playing games. I think this is as likely as Ben Hebb’s wish, and may be something we’ll see within the next twenty years. Last year Lorcan reported that this was pretty much already true over in Japan. This is the wish I’d like to see come true the most and if I have to make my wish narrower than just acceptance of gaming this would be it.
I want to walk down the street and see people playing on their phone or their DS or device of choice. I want home consoles to be as pervasive as DVD players. I want to be able to strike up a conversation with a random stranger about games, in the same way I can with TV shows or movies.
So let’s ask again, what’s your one wish for the future of gaming? All I ask of you is that you think big.
mcduff1979
the irony is that the uk games industry has a higher revenue than the uk film and music industry… and they get all sorts of tax breaks and gov funding. all we need to do after that is to re-learn to play all the sports we invented as a country and yet oddly cant ever win. oh and world peace.
only one of these targets is attainable and thats tax breaks for gaming ( sometime, fingers crossed)
GodDarnKat
One wish is a very difficult thing in any creative arena, although mine would run along the lines of… May the future continue to bring innovation in hardware to enable the vision of games and gaming to continue to expand and entertain, educate and communicate… to involve people in a way thats not the mindless passive grazing that was and on a sliding scale, still is television… to push thought provoking ideas and constructive envolvement back into the livingroom… bringing families and friends together, across the genders and age groups… yes, brothers and sisters I have a dream… I have a dream… [applause, crowd goes wild] – Failing that, my other dream would be to push the editorial team at gametrailers off a rather high cliff in a burning bus of prepubescent wish fulfillment for featuring a section called ‘booth babes’. Sad sexist neanderthal attitudes – perhaps as the focus of gaming changes, the core demographic will bring a level playing field for everyone – so if I ever get to E3 in years to come… they’re maybe some guys dancing in their swimwear selling me a shooter title where the main character is female, kicking ass and bashing heads together.