Videogame Ideas and Future Trends

Just read a great article over at Guardian: Gamesblog titled “Ten Interesting Ideas in Videogames”. While the article may not be all that cutting edge, most of the ideas are quite good and trends I believe we’ll see both within videogames and without.

All ten have writeups associated, but here they are in a list:

1. Augmented reality

2. Location-based gaming

3. Creative gaming

4. Communication gaming

5. Personalization

6. Spontaneous multiplayer

7. Ad-hoc networking

8. Emotional gaming

9. Pervasive gaming

10. Multiple perspective gaming

What I find so interesting about the list is that while they are about videogames, they’re really more trends that will result from living in an always-on world. These are the trends that we’ll see from being constantly connected to the internet at home and on our mobile phones/portable game units. These are the trends we’ll see as mobile technology becomes smarter and adds things like GPS to track our location. These are the trends we’ll see as we get even more comfortable with our mobile devices and they further integrate with our lives, becoming even more of an extension of self.

As we get more comfortable with the possibilities of our newer technologies, these things we understand with other media (like multiple perspective in movies), will begin to make sense in new places.

June 2, 2005