The Ghost of Gaming Future

Keira Peney

Posted on Mon 8 Dec 2008 by Keira Peney under Community , History .
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What role will gaming play in your familial relationships in 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Having already explored both the past and the present, this month’s round table asks us to turn our eyes to our future gaming expectations.

Video Games are mainstream. In the past week I’ve had co-workers in my office job discuss Rock Band and Wii Fit, I’ve seen four-year old children called upon to say what they want for Christmas and asking for a Nintendo DS or PSP games, and I’ve watched a virtual affair in Second Life make headlines across the country. Our local McDonalds has an Xbox in the break-room, and video games are now an integral part of a party.

If I was going to point at one thing that helped this explosion, I would say it was community. It’s about both competition and team-work, guilds, playing rockstars with your best friend, and teaming your sniper with a tank. In short, it’s about connecting with other humans, which is something we all like to do in one way or another.

It helps that the technology became easier to use, more portable, and more accessible. It also helps that an entire generation has grown up with PC’s, internet, cell-phones and gaming systems. We’re better at creating intuitive interfaces, and mice, keyboards and game pads have become extensions of our minds.

Video games have returned to the centre of relationships - which, truthfully, is where they belong. Games have always figured strongly in human relationships, we are disproportionately loyal to ‘our team’, we play cards with strangers, strike up conversations over chess, let our children win Monopoly, go bowling after work. It’s just that now we are just as likely to play bowling on the wii.

So what’s going to happen next? As people get married - and betrayed - in virtual worlds, as families compete in the living room, as avatars and user icons become our ‘face’ to the world? Well - both good things, and bad things.

People from across the world will talk to each other, meet-up, make friends. Cultural bias will become less prevalent, especially in academic and intellectual circles. Alliances in World of Warcraft will form the basis of a long-lasting friendship. Our genes will get mixed up a bit more.

Conversely, relationships will become more shallow. Friendships will be forgotten over loot disputes, we’ll have 2000 people befriended on each of our gaming profiles, and we’ll never know anyone’s real name.

Families will have more in common, sharing triumphs and losses in video games. Kids will play with their parents, and everyone will have fun.

Conversely, many parents will stick their children in front of a PS3 to shut them up, whilst kids will find an easily accessible fantasy world in which to drown their fledgling identities.

Like everything else, a balance will have to be struck. Commercialism and arty experimentation will both clash with and compliment each other. Private joys will have to be placed against the thrill of being part of a well-oiled team. Mass victory will be accompanied by sessions of the blame-game.

There is one thing we can be sure of - it won’t be boring.

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48 Responses to “The Ghost of Gaming Future

dreamhunk Says:
December 11th, 2008 at 4:32 am

I think if you make it shallow it will become shallow but i’m sure there will be new ways to improve community.

GoNintendo » Blog Archive » The Ghost of Gaming Future- What are you waiting for? Says:
December 14th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

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Henry Harris Says:
December 14th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

This is such an interesting topic because it’s an entirely new cultural paradigm for the human species. You wake up one morning and find you’re on a different planet—planet cyberspace. When, exactly, did my life become science fiction? I’ve been walking the new PS3 metaverse fascinated with the question of how people can possibly relate without any physical context whatsoever. But then the beauty of it all hit me. The only thing that matters here is the naked human mind. What a beautiful concept, a human being stripped of everything except his thoughts. Meet cyberspace, the great equalizer. In the old west they achieved it with a gun. I like this way better.

Technology Says:
December 14th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

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