Is this the future of gaming?

Shaggy January 5, 2009 10

stinger11

(Click on the image for a full view – should be fixed now)

gaming_beyondAccording to the image on the right, which was put together by a “virtual think tank” of professors and game/movie industry people, this is what the future of gaming and film could be. If any of it holds true as a trend, arcades will certainly be affected although certain events on this futuristic timeline have already occured, with such ideas/technology already having been demonstrated in arcades at some point. Take the full body Wii, there have been games which offer body tracking, Virtuality’s SU1000 comes to mind although that may be a crude version of what they are suggesting. We have seen other developments in the arcade sector which promote such tracking, so that’s not far off. I just don’t understand why they consider specific items on the list bad and others good such as “Gaming the movie” or  “Gameplay gets Oscar for best film” being good things(perhaps by gameplay they mean cutscenes) or why it’s the best case for a virtual actor to get an Oscar but it’s not a good case if the highest earning celebrity is synthetic. They just seem to be at odds in some places.  On their worst case line several of those things have happened already I thought – an audience that is used to violence, certain forms of e-gaming being prohibited already, online addiction seen as a serious problem in wired countries, etc. Even though a few things may seem crazy, you never know what might happen. Either way, as Mr. Williams points out in the comments, a lot of these things are out-of-home entertainment – the very kind of industry we’re involved in.

When it comes to holographic entertainment, I think that when it becomes affordable to do so, you’ll see such things being offered in the out-of-home entertainment sector early on. Of course arcades have dabbled with holographic-like devices in the past, albeit “true” holograms were not used, but Sega’s Holosseum or even Williams’ Pinball 2000 are some examples of what we have tried. Lately we’ve been seeing an uptick in “Augmented Reality” development, some of which we have reported on the site and I think that it’s a good trend and the arcade/out-of-home entertainment industry is certainly paving the way for that now as we saw at IAAPA.

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10 Comments »

  1. Megalon January 5, 2009 at 6:00 pm - Reply

    No full image?

  2. Fredrick2003 January 7, 2009 at 2:50 am - Reply

    Yeah that image is pretty tiny… Source on it?

  3. Shaggy January 7, 2009 at 3:40 am - Reply

    Give it a shot now, sorry about that.

    Source if from the Stinger Report, there is some more info on who put it together in the full image.

  4. Shams.p January 7, 2009 at 12:20 pm - Reply

    Amazing Site I like it. It Was Quite Interesting NiceWork I appreciate the information you provided. Good day

  5. Editor January 7, 2009 at 1:49 pm - Reply

    This comes from our founder company KWP that specializes in consultation in the development of the public-space entertainment scene.

  6. Editor January 7, 2009 at 1:56 pm - Reply

    You will notice that the majority of the concepts discussed in this chart are public-space (out-of-home) interactive entertainment – a major factor why KWP / TSR feels that this market has more dimension towards future business than home gaming. For retail the idea of incorporating interactive entertainment elements (RetailTainment) is a real factor – though sadly missed by many of the media.

  7. Paul January 7, 2009 at 6:38 pm - Reply

    “Audience gets used to violence.”
    It’s called Big Buck Hunter.

    “Conservative ad-industry blocks investments in In-Gaming Advertising”
    I wish! Why was this under “Worst Case”? I can think of few things better than getting rid of in-game ads. But it will be the fed-up hacker generation who fights this, not the conservatives. Ads are in sports and racing titles, not action ones.

    I was hoping the “Best Case” would include a Tomb Raider nude code.

    • Shaggy January 8, 2009 at 5:49 pm - Reply

      Just curious Paul, do you think that shooting virtual deer is more desensitizing that shooting virtual people? There are far more violent games out there than BBH.

      I don’t care much for in-game ads either but it depends on how they are presented. If it’s a billboard in a racing game then a real ad could make sense and it doesn’t bug me anymore than a fake ad does. I didn’t know that there was a conservative or liberal ad industry people this though and I don’t know what conservatism has to do with it anyways unless I’m missing the point.

  8. Paul January 8, 2009 at 7:57 pm - Reply

    There’s a big difference in de-sensitizing people to violence in animal-killing games vs. virtual people. Target Terror and GTA are pure fantasy. You can kill virtual people all day and it’s not going to make you think that killing people in the real world is okay, because murder is condemned by all of society.

    Hunting games are different, however. Because there are people who think hunting is fine (!!!) and people who think it’s bad, games may de-sensitize people to the sport and lead them to join that values camp that considers it acceptable.

    It’s sad to think of all the little kids growing up in a house or culture that leads them to believe that killing animals is fun and good. Because of it they may go hunting later in life.

  9. Shaggy January 8, 2009 at 8:16 pm - Reply

    I wholeheartedly disagree. I have played both kinds of games and there is no difference – saying that BBH and games like it will increase the numbers of hunters is like saying that violent games as a whole will increase the number of murders – which has been dis-proven in study after study. BBH isn’t even close to what real hunting is like, it’s a complete fantasy and anyone who actually plays the game understands that, which is why the game has even made fans out of people who detest hunting. They understand that it is a game and that holding a real gun in your hands with a real life on the other side of barrel is a completely different feeling and experience than a light-gun arcade machine where all of your targets run into view. I’ve played a bit of Big Buck Safari and I don’t have any overwhelming or subconscious desire to go out hunting because of it.

    Humans and animals themselves have participated in hunting for millenia without the help of video games to forward anything. The same goes people killing people – we’ve been doing it long before games ever happened to exist. People may do a lot of things because of the environment they grow up in but it’s highly unlikely that BBH will create a huge generation of actual hunters who wouldn’t have been hunters otherwise.

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