So, as mentioned previously, I’m currently in Boston – or rather the lovely Cambridge, MA, to be more precise; one of my favouritest places in the world. I’m being graciously hosted by one of my best buds Eitan Glinert, who, after graduating from MIT last year with his thesis on accessibility in videogames, founded new games startup, Fire Hose Games, whose mission is to create fun video games that have a positive social impact. He was even mentioned in the NYT very recently [There's lots of plugging for you, hopefully enough to earn my keep for the next week ;)]
So, on arriving into Boston, bleary eyed and stumbling off the Bolt Bus, I was immediately whisked away to a talk by Chris Swain, co-founder of the EA Game Innovation Lab at USC. Although the subject of the talk was the ever-ambitious “Future of Games“, Chris successfully guided us through a myriad of topics, ranging from defining the possibility space of games, to his own titles he’s worked on (such as the ReDistricting Game).
He then defined the ‘path to the future of games’, discussing how the cultural relevance of games is increasing (mentioning the recent Pew Report on Teens, Video Games, and Civics, which noted that 97% of 12-17 year olds in the US play video games, as just one example of startling, but not surprising, statistics). He also mentioned how game development is now in the ‘Hollywood Trap’ – with increasing pressure to innovate, but developers finding it difficult to do be innovative in such an environment where publishers are only willing to churn out the same games again and again. He discussed the following potential solutions: 1. WWWWD? (What would Will Wright do?) – answer: procedural content, although Spore proves that at least currently, this remains a very difficult and costly design challenge. Secondly, he mentioned user-generated games as another potential solution, what with iPhone Apps, Kongregate, XBox Community Games and the like – however, one problem he noted with sites like Kongregate certainly, was that there is not much innovation going on. Digital distribution was another solution he touched on in his exploration of the future of gaming.
Overall, Chris’ message was one of massive potential; he extolled games as ‘the literature of the 21st century’, drawing comparisons to the primitive roots of film and the subsequent success of that medium. However, he very rightly stated that games are just not articulate enough yet, they are generally unable to explore and discuss the human condition the same way literature does. It will, then, take some very difficult design challenges to be overcome before we see this happen. Arguably, of course, there are plenty of nascent examples of games which begin to touch on this particular aspect of the possibility space. (1, 2, 3, 4 to name a few in no particular order…)
[Interestingly, Chris' own definition of the biggest stumbling block for this was the lack of being able to communicate with game characters; he sees advances in conversation engines as a major feature in moving the medium forward. I'm not sure I agree with this entirely, although it's certainly one part of the challenge.]
