Thoughts on the Future of Gaming

the majority of this post was originally a comment that I left on my friend Namaste's blog. To see the whole conversation, go to http://namaste.soylentsoft.net/2006/04/01/future-game-design-methods/

So the topic is the direction of game design and emergent systems. Namaste's proposition is that increases in computer speed are allowing for more and more emergence in contemporary games, but also that a game designer can embrace emergence in his/her outlook from the beginning. Namaste uses the example of Will Wright's philosophy towards the upcoming game Spore and how he used a rapid prototyping model instead of the more traditional "2 years of whiteboarding" approach.

The idea is that you can get emergence from the rules of the system, but you can also get emergence through a more elastic, dynamic creation of the system in the first place. If you approach the problem with an open mind and some imagination, a designer can actually encourage emergence.

Scott Cronce told me that EA can afford to produce two “risk games” each year. These “risk games” are defined as games that do not closely follow the archetype established by a previously successful archetypal game. Spore is one of those games.

What is really interesting is this: the only reason that EA can afford to gamble on 2 high risk ventures per year is that they produce so many bland, lifeless rehashes. Not that these games are bad, in fact I believe that the vast majority of EA games are in the “good” category, they are just unimaginitive. For those of us that highly value imaginitive games (which Luke, Namaste, and myself certainly consider ourselves to be), this means that we can get what we want (spore) but only as long as the people who dont value imaginitive games (see anyone who obsessively plays counterstrike) also get what they want.

It is only because there are millions and millions of people paying 50 dollars for a coat of new paint on Madden each year that Spore exists in the first place.

Make whatever you will of this situation, but I see it as a good stepping-stone towards the time when virtually all gamers have seen the light and when game companies can make only great, original, high-quality games (and I believe that this is EA's long term philosophy also). If game companies can get enough creative games out the door, I believe that a paradigm shift will take place. Eventually, after playing many games like Oblivion, the public will refuse to pay so much for the next version of Madden. It certainly doesnt cost as much to produce Madden ‘06 as it does to produce Oblivion, yet they cost the same.

Only truly ignorant gamers (read 99% of the gaming population of Earth) will continue to pay more for less. Eventually, even a process as slow as natural selection will run its course.

Projection: Either we have a speciation of gamers into Homo-sapiens and Neo-sapiens, or we convince all those who play mediocre games every day to get a clue. I think the movie industry is going through the same growing pains right now. We are smarter, though, cause it took them nearly a century to figure it out


Imagine that you came up with this great experimental game idea that would most definitely produce emergent behavior. You work on one version with 10 million dollars and you produce an amazing skeleton of goodness. You ship it out there or zap it to the nets, and people eat it up. It's good stuff and everyone is in to it.

Now go back in time and imagine if you started the same project with 200 million dollars. You could develop the same code and then, at the very least, buy a boatload of supercomputers and a small building to put them in. You set up your system on the computers and let it run for half a year, THEN you release it. With the extra manpower that you could afford on the side, you could probably complete the whole process in the same amount of time.

The amount of content that would be produced with the second model would be exponentially larger than the original. People would have a ridiculously huge would to explore right from the getgo. When you come into the world, it is fully formed for the most part. You can create your works and then you die, but you dont start out in a void, or a nearly blank canvas. Now, I agree that there could be an amazing design that did start with a blank canvas on purpose, and it could still be a mode in the second version, but you would also have the other crazy computer-rendered world there for those who wanted to explore it.

I think the projects that you are working on will eventually lead there, as I hope mine will, but what we hope for is a SYNTHESIS of the two. The games industry is massive, and it can easily support a full cornucopia of ridiculous games in only a few years. If we can get the major studios and the major funding sources towards the good stuff, then we win. Gamers everywhere win, and the payoff will be big-time.

I hope your goal is to create the stuff at the beginning, but work towards something larger, something bigger than what exists elsewhere. To do something like that you need people. Our civilization is what makes us strong, and if you get a bunch of brilliant artists together the result is magic.