Disclaimer: This is a personal opinion based on my experiences on what I’ve seen in later years and any of these could be wrong at any point, as I can’t really say what will actually happen in the near (or far) future.
Humans are obsessed with the future, we always want to predict it, to see where we’re going next and try to anticipate it. But lately things have been odd for the video gaming industry. One of the biggest industry of the world (movies somehow can’t compare anymore), it keeps trying to predict its own future but in a way that harms the end-user and only goes upward from there. So I decided to do the same, predict the future about the future of gaming.
Now, I must discuss some concepts that exist currently in the gaming industry and how I don’t (or do) think they are the ‘future’ of gaming.
Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality is nice, cool and all sorts of things. It’s quite mind-blowing to experience it but there are problems with it.
The same way that motion controls didn’t capture the end users (you know, the people that buys the products), Virtual Reality fails to impress, but not in the same area. It fails to impress with the experience that it provides because some games aren’t made with it in mind thus making sound like it was just tackled on. Games aren’t using the technology available to its fullest to make sure everyone can enjoy them and people that experienced VR games will tell you that the experience is great and it’s definitely the ‘future’, but it’s impossible to determinate if personal anecdotes are right because people can be unreliable.
The thing is, it’s also very inconvenient. The first thing is the price. It’s way too expensive and you need an excellent computer to run it in a high refresh rate to make it usable. Second thing, it’s a hassle to install and use it properly. Gaming on a computer needs a small place, like a desk. Gaming on a console needs a small place, with a TV. Gaming on a phone needs a smaller place, like your hands. VR Gaming requires a large space to put all things and so one can move around.
The ideas behind VR are great but right now, I can’t consider it the future of gaming, simply because it’s inconvenient to the masses (both in price and usage). The technology is cool and all but right now, it doesn’t replace what we know as standard.
Just disregard the fact the Valve Index sold out in 15 minutes… At 1000 USD.
Motion Controls
I briefly talked about this in the previous part but let me say it out loud. Motion Controls aren’t the future of gaming, period. Nintendo has tried again and again to push it to us, and even other companies got on the ball, like Microsoft with the Kinect for the Xbox 360 and Sony with the PlayStation Move, but in the end, the Wii died, Wii U was a failure and only a few Switch games use it (like first party ones). Kinect also launched with the first version of the Xbox One, nowhere to be seen today. PlayStation tried their go with VR instead of Motion Controls, which feels like a natural evolution but have you read the previous section?
Until Motion Controls can replace the convenience of pressing a button to do an action, it’s doomed to fail again and again.
Games as a Service
I don’t know who had the idea to call it like this. But I’ll roll with it. Games as a Service isn’t the future of gaming because games are finite experiences, like books or movies. There is a point where you simply can’t update a game anymore simply because it becomes a hassle to do so.
There is also another problem with GaaS. Publishers think that it’s fine to make a game act like a service and release a new version of it in the next year. Call Of Duty has a very VERY short lifespan. From release until February or March of the next year. After that, expect the game to slowly die down as people go to play other things and abandon the game. This has happened for years, and it kills the games very quickly, as they get ‘outdated’ after the new one comes out. This also happened to FIFA and many yearly released games, as they can’t be both yearly and a service. There’s simply no time for maturity and thus causing games to feel that shouldn’t be released so early.
Finally, the last issue. Games as a Service are starting to feel like checkboxes that need to be marked.
For example, Anthem is:
– Open world
– RPG
– Looter shooter
– Possible to customize your armors
– Impossibly unfinished
Meanwhile, Destiny 2 (at launch) was:
– Open world
– RPG
– Looter shooter
– Possible to customize your armors
– Impossibly unfinished
See what I mean? There is a lot of differences between these two games but other games used to be even more different than each other. More so than this. They themselves are turning into rushed excuses (to be released) and are being rated lower than before because they are starting to feel completely soulless. I’m sorry to say, but these games are going to die off (eventually) because the ratings are low and the playerbase, which is absolutely necessary for GaaS to thrive, will shrink even lower.
Oh look, Anthem is already dead and Activision-Blizzard dropped Bungie’s contract because it’s not profitable enough.
Game Streaming
Google presented its solution for gaming woes that no one needed. Streaming games from servers. The latency is small and the quality great. It all sounds amazing… Except for one fact. It’s a demo and only a few places in the world will able to reach the same quality. This technology should be used for single player games only, multiplayer ones can’t handle both the input latency and the server latency at the same time, just like you can’t make a dedicated server in your own machine and expect it to have people halfway across the world to have a decent ping.
Also, Google is known for killing projects because they can’t compete so that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Is it the future? Well, Microsoft, Google, Sony, Nintendo and even Valve got on the ball, so it’s up in the air.
I believe it’s not though, I’d rather watch people playing while I play games that exist digitally on my hard drive. Plus there is the issue with bandwidth, infrastructure, ISPs. They can all have a say on this and it’s generally not a positive one (especially ISPs, they hate having to make speeds faster).
Subscriptions
EA Access, Origin Access, Xbox Game Pass. These three (actually two) are subscription-based systems that allow players to pay for a small fee to have access to their games. PS Now also combines this with streaming and makes effective use of it.
Is it the future though? I think that this is the closest indication of the future of gaming as I see it. Instead of buying games at full price, get a subscription and get more games. Similar to what Humble Monthly does. But the key difference is that most of the games that get put in these aren’t… all that good.
EA/Origin Access isn’t a total failure, but you can see that EA has been struggling, thanks to the Games as a Service part. Only if they made some quality stuff… Plus, if you can safely ignore EA’s output of late, so for those that do that, EA isn’t winning any favors.
Epic Games Store
Absolutely not the future, Epic will run out of money chasing Steam and will eventually end up having in the leagues of Origin and uPlay.
They already started in a bad foot and I see them doing phases that last weeks.
Phase 1: They announced 88/12 split to Developers/Publishers and called out on Valve on the practice… Which Google, Apple, Sony and Microsoft also do, it’s an industry standard. Cue backslash from just a few users.
Phase 2: Announce exclusivity deals, taking games off Steam. Cue backslash from a lot of users
Phase 3: Epic’s CEO said on Twitter “if Valve reduce their split to 88/12 [to match EGS], we will put Fortnite on Steam”, which would kill EGS by removing the one thing (other than money) that EGS claims to have over Steam.
Phase 4: Outright buying Developers, like Psyonix, the guys behind Rocket League.
If Valve needed the competition to keep improving their services, EGS isn’t simply doing it right now. If they want all Steam’s success and glory, they should use that money to invest on their own launcher and make it better. But hey, what do I know about these things, right?
Conclusion
Predicting the future is always a hassle, so I say this: Don’t try to predict it, instead try to live the present and lay out plans for the future. It’s not running away anytime soon, so don’t rush it.
