Taking a look at what do others have to say.
The video game industry is starting to be considered the unstoppable giant in today’s media, with revenue from the industry almost outselling the music industry. With many innovations in the video gaming industry happening over the past decade, just how will the video game industry innovate to continue to reel its customers and consumers in?
John Carmack, creators of influential and sometimes controversial video games “Doom” and “Quake”, who is now the CTO, or chief technical operator, of a company known as Oculus, claims the future of video games lie in virtual reality, specifically with a device he is helping lead known as the Oculus Rift will be viable peripherals in the near future. He also says high tech interactivity such as brainwave controllers will be something that will be viable in the distant future. In his annual keynote at QuakeCon, he talks about the future of PC gaming and console gaming alike, and notes the key to success in both of these markets is steady innovation and new ways to experience the games we have come to know and love. With new ways to experience the medium being constantly being developed, he is saying the medium will potentially never go dry.
Nick Wingfield of the New York Times seems to get behind this idea in his article, “A Matter of Perception”. He notes past attempts to commercialize virtual reality have been “Bombed by the public” due to various reasons such as high prices, awful graphics, and bad design(Wingfield, 3). The difference between the Oculus and these other failures, however, is instead of trying to make a completely new technology, the oculus is a new idea powered by existing technology. A lot of components inside the machine itself are ones that are commonly found in smartphones, which will result in the device not costing more than $300. Wingfield goes on to explain how the buzz around the Oculus is starting to catch on, being featured at every major gaming expo for the past year. However, Wingfield goes on to list a few of the criticisms on the device itself. He quoted game industry analyst Michael Pachter who said “There’s no real appetite to wear a peripheral”.Saying it is not something that is completely desired by gamers, and thus may not be the commercial success they are hoping it to be.
The skeptical nature of some analysts is understandable, as virtual truly has failed in the past when it came out. Steven Boyer goes over this in his academic article relating to Nintendo’s failed virtual reality console that is not very well known today, the Virtual Boy. In November of 1994, Nintendo announced the next big thing in gaming, and the successor to their high selling and very high popularity Game Boy. With that, the virtual boy was revealed. With a very promising advertising campaign and an impressive amount of R&D put into the machine, Nintendo was sure this was going to be a commercial success. The Virtual Boy was unveiled to make up for some lost ground against Sega, and was thought, by them, to seal the deal and pull them ahead. However, their sales said otherwise. Some speculators say virtual reality is something that will never happen in video games, as if one of the industry’s biggest giants and leaders in innovation could not do it with very high R&D budget, a massive ad campaign, and a then almost flawless track record, how could anyone else? The article goes on to explain it was just trying to accomplish things that just could not be done yet. Virtual Reality was something that was not as well to the masses as the technology was just not up to par of what they were trying to do. They advertised the Virtual Boy for its immersion unmatched by anything in games prior to it, and yet every single game is in disgusting vector-drawn red and black. Innovation in games had to come a long way before the technology was right to even attempt virtual reality again.
To take a look at the future of innovation in video games, however, we need to take a look at not just the main developers of the products, but also the community of “modders”, which are those who use game development as a hobby and not just as a main source of income. Hector Postigo takes a look at the past innovations in video games and how their innovations are taken in by not just the mainstream gaming developers, but by all. How the industry turned into just an idea of a toy of sorts just for kids, and was quickly transformed into a valid form of work and a viable medium not only for those looking for a steady career in the field, but those who use game development as a hobby with the concept of “Modding”, or “User generated content”. in terms of innovation, not only the developers and your average consumer like to have more options, as the modders that create content for already existing engines and games enjoy the extra tools to make more immersive experiences for other consumers. He explains in this outlook the idea of modding can be very influential and even very innovative in a lot of cases, with a lot of mods getting noticed by big name developers and even getting signed on, such as Valve picking up the Counter Strike franchise.
One of the main purposes of this, and innovation of games in general, is to blur the lines between games to a close by reducing the differentiation between channels. The author of the article “The Ways We Play: Part 2” seems to suggest the future of video games and its innovation lies in reducing the differences between already existing channels for video games, The article uses a few examples about how different mediums and channels are starting to emulate each other. For instance, many smartphone games have adapted what is known as the “Virtual Joystick” configuration, where there will be two circles on the screen that will emulate joysticks on a controller when touched. The author uses a semi-successful example of the Wii U console, in which the controller has an entire tablet controller built into it. There are some criticisms of this view, however. The main one being if everything is too similar to each other then the problem that is haunting mass media will spread to video games, which that problem is there is too much similar media across too many similar channels. This results in audience fragmentation, which results in flat-lining revenue across all levels.
One other interesting viewpoint on the future of video games comes from industry veteran and renowned developer of the popular “Unreal Engine” Tim Sweeny’s viewpoint differs from a lot of the other ones explained above. Most of the other viewpoints explained mostly have to do with making new things out of what we already have, such as the Oculus rift being made out of smartphone components and the different mediums just adapting to one another, but Sweeny goes on to explain we just need to keep advancing and pushing the limits of technology, and keep making technology more powerful than it ever has been before. One of the main points he makes in this keynote is the idea of “Augmented Reality”, and how he would like that to be in the mainstream of gaming. What Augmented Reality, or AR for short, means is video games engineered to seem to be placed in reality as we can see it, sort of as an illusion. An example of this would be looking through a special camera and seeing the world as you normally see it, but with added computer generated components. He argues this is the next big breakthrough video games need, and will be achieved by combining existing technology, such as the Microsoft Kinect, and further refining it to make what seems like science fiction a reality. Some argue this would be a very good way for the video game industry to go. Others, however, argue the “Mainstream” or “Hardcore” audience would not care about this kind of thing and would not care.
With all these different viewpoints, it is apparent there needs to be a happy medium in innovation that can and must appeal to all different crowds in gaming. There are many different stances taken on the topic, with some making more logical and financial sense than others.
John Carmack, creators of influential and sometimes controversial video games “Doom” and “Quake”, who is now the CTO, or chief technical operator, of a company known as Oculus, claims the future of video games lie in virtual reality, specifically with a device he is helping lead known as the Oculus Rift will be viable peripherals in the near future. He also says high tech interactivity such as brainwave controllers will be something that will be viable in the distant future. In his annual keynote at QuakeCon, he talks about the future of PC gaming and console gaming alike, and notes the key to success in both of these markets is steady innovation and new ways to experience the games we have come to know and love. With new ways to experience the medium being constantly being developed, he is saying the medium will potentially never go dry.
Nick Wingfield of the New York Times seems to get behind this idea in his article, “A Matter of Perception”. He notes past attempts to commercialize virtual reality have been “Bombed by the public” due to various reasons such as high prices, awful graphics, and bad design(Wingfield, 3). The difference between the Oculus and these other failures, however, is instead of trying to make a completely new technology, the oculus is a new idea powered by existing technology. A lot of components inside the machine itself are ones that are commonly found in smartphones, which will result in the device not costing more than $300. Wingfield goes on to explain how the buzz around the Oculus is starting to catch on, being featured at every major gaming expo for the past year. However, Wingfield goes on to list a few of the criticisms on the device itself. He quoted game industry analyst Michael Pachter who said “There’s no real appetite to wear a peripheral”.Saying it is not something that is completely desired by gamers, and thus may not be the commercial success they are hoping it to be.
The skeptical nature of some analysts is understandable, as virtual truly has failed in the past when it came out. Steven Boyer goes over this in his academic article relating to Nintendo’s failed virtual reality console that is not very well known today, the Virtual Boy. In November of 1994, Nintendo announced the next big thing in gaming, and the successor to their high selling and very high popularity Game Boy. With that, the virtual boy was revealed. With a very promising advertising campaign and an impressive amount of R&D put into the machine, Nintendo was sure this was going to be a commercial success. The Virtual Boy was unveiled to make up for some lost ground against Sega, and was thought, by them, to seal the deal and pull them ahead. However, their sales said otherwise. Some speculators say virtual reality is something that will never happen in video games, as if one of the industry’s biggest giants and leaders in innovation could not do it with very high R&D budget, a massive ad campaign, and a then almost flawless track record, how could anyone else? The article goes on to explain it was just trying to accomplish things that just could not be done yet. Virtual Reality was something that was not as well to the masses as the technology was just not up to par of what they were trying to do. They advertised the Virtual Boy for its immersion unmatched by anything in games prior to it, and yet every single game is in disgusting vector-drawn red and black. Innovation in games had to come a long way before the technology was right to even attempt virtual reality again.
To take a look at the future of innovation in video games, however, we need to take a look at not just the main developers of the products, but also the community of “modders”, which are those who use game development as a hobby and not just as a main source of income. Hector Postigo takes a look at the past innovations in video games and how their innovations are taken in by not just the mainstream gaming developers, but by all. How the industry turned into just an idea of a toy of sorts just for kids, and was quickly transformed into a valid form of work and a viable medium not only for those looking for a steady career in the field, but those who use game development as a hobby with the concept of “Modding”, or “User generated content”. in terms of innovation, not only the developers and your average consumer like to have more options, as the modders that create content for already existing engines and games enjoy the extra tools to make more immersive experiences for other consumers. He explains in this outlook the idea of modding can be very influential and even very innovative in a lot of cases, with a lot of mods getting noticed by big name developers and even getting signed on, such as Valve picking up the Counter Strike franchise.
One of the main purposes of this, and innovation of games in general, is to blur the lines between games to a close by reducing the differentiation between channels. The author of the article “The Ways We Play: Part 2” seems to suggest the future of video games and its innovation lies in reducing the differences between already existing channels for video games, The article uses a few examples about how different mediums and channels are starting to emulate each other. For instance, many smartphone games have adapted what is known as the “Virtual Joystick” configuration, where there will be two circles on the screen that will emulate joysticks on a controller when touched. The author uses a semi-successful example of the Wii U console, in which the controller has an entire tablet controller built into it. There are some criticisms of this view, however. The main one being if everything is too similar to each other then the problem that is haunting mass media will spread to video games, which that problem is there is too much similar media across too many similar channels. This results in audience fragmentation, which results in flat-lining revenue across all levels.
One other interesting viewpoint on the future of video games comes from industry veteran and renowned developer of the popular “Unreal Engine” Tim Sweeny’s viewpoint differs from a lot of the other ones explained above. Most of the other viewpoints explained mostly have to do with making new things out of what we already have, such as the Oculus rift being made out of smartphone components and the different mediums just adapting to one another, but Sweeny goes on to explain we just need to keep advancing and pushing the limits of technology, and keep making technology more powerful than it ever has been before. One of the main points he makes in this keynote is the idea of “Augmented Reality”, and how he would like that to be in the mainstream of gaming. What Augmented Reality, or AR for short, means is video games engineered to seem to be placed in reality as we can see it, sort of as an illusion. An example of this would be looking through a special camera and seeing the world as you normally see it, but with added computer generated components. He argues this is the next big breakthrough video games need, and will be achieved by combining existing technology, such as the Microsoft Kinect, and further refining it to make what seems like science fiction a reality. Some argue this would be a very good way for the video game industry to go. Others, however, argue the “Mainstream” or “Hardcore” audience would not care about this kind of thing and would not care.
With all these different viewpoints, it is apparent there needs to be a happy medium in innovation that can and must appeal to all different crowds in gaming. There are many different stances taken on the topic, with some making more logical and financial sense than others.