First-Person Shooters
As envisioned by Halo 3 Design Lead Jaime Griesemer
"At some point in the next 20 years, people are going to get tired of fighting aliens, Nazis, zombies, and terrorists. It's a problem that is going to be difficult to solve not because game developers lack imagination or publishers are unwilling to take risks, but because there just aren't that many other settings you can use for a traditional [first-person shooter (FPS)]. You need guns...and lots of enemies to kill. So you can't do a good FPS about the mafia or a realistic crime thriller where each death is important and meaningful.... [This means] your options are limited to a couple historic wars, a present-day setting, and sci-fi.
"As a result, I think you are going to see a lot of FPS games drop the "S" and start making action games from the first-person perspective that don't have guns in them. Call them FPX games. If you get rid of the reliance on guns, you are free to explore a lot more settings and gameplay variety. At some point, somebody is going to do a really successful first-person climbing game or something and the genre is going to blow up."
Role-Playing Games
As envisioned by Fable 2 Designer Peter Molyneux
"Role-playing games have almost always exclusively focused on the role-playing template that was defined around 25 years ago! And that has really been based on the characters' fighting ability. What I find interesting is the term 'role playing'—if that is accurate you should be role playing a character, not role playing a weapon. This means that we need to think more about the character's structure, [whether players want to] play the role of a hero or the role of a villain or even the role of James Bond. As movies show us, there is far more to even a well-defined character like James Bond than pulling the trigger on a gun. So for me the evolution of RPGs is to give people the full range of what it is to be [whatever they want to be]."
Racing Games
As envisioned by Hanno Lemke, general manager of EA Black Box (Need for Speed franchise)
"I'm most excited about...how we can marry the gaming and car communities through our games. Imagine an online racing hub where you can blog about the latest car news, download the newest prototype from the Tokyo Car Show into your Need for Speed Autosculpt editor, fabricate your own aerokit, share it with your buddy who is a hardcore performance tuner and your other buddy who creates a killer graphics package for it. Enter it into a car show and get rated by the community, or put down the fastest grip or drift times on Laguna Seca. Get a text message on your cell if someone knocks off your time or wants to bid on your car. An 'always connected' car experience, with broader access points into the car culture for players than just twitch-based racing skills, will drive the racing-game experience to a whole new level."
Puzzle Games
As envisioned by Lumines creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi
"The essential changes will happen very slowly over time. However, the logic of what makes a puzzle game or genre interesting and entertaining will probably change according to the changes we'll see to the human brain and how it processes certain things such as multitasking. Of course, we will probably see more puzzle games with better audio and visual/graphics presentation rather than those that look dull or are obviously not putting enough effort into those areas."
Platform Games
As envisioned by Insomniac (Resistance: Fall of Man) President
Ted Price
"Platformers are one of the most enduring genres around, existing ever since the Atari 2600 days. And, of course, over the years platformers have evolved significantly. And if you agree with my definition of a platformer—action/adventure game with nonrealistic characters and backgrounds—then you may agree that predicting where they're going is the same as predicting where games in general are going....
"Gameplaywise, I think most genres are going to be transformed by online connectivity. Certainly in 20 years we should expect 90 percent of gamers to be online. And with such a huge online audience I think we'll see designers doing some very clever things in games, especially in those that were traditionally single-player fare—like platformers. And I'm not talking about online deathmatch; I'm talking about games that support heavy online customization, user-generated content, and a seamless merger between single-player and multiplayer gameplay.
"Speaking of user-generated content, for example, what if you could choose to replace all of the background objects in your single-player story with art that someone else—or even you yourself—had created? What if you could collaborate with other online players to rerecord all of the dialogue in the single-player game? The possibilities here seem pretty limitless."
Sports Games
As envisioned by Steven Chiang, studio general manager of EA Tiburon (Madden series)
"One of the big things will be the display. 3D displays are coming. Whether it's projected 3D or the 3D where you can move side to side and actually feel like there's volume...I'd lean more toward the latter. Also, the line between what's on TV and what's in sports and what's in the videogame world will all be blurred. Say you're watching a game on TV and you see this amazing catch or play, so you'd fire up your game console and the play would be there and you could play that scenario. For online, not only will every position on your team be filled with a real player, you're going to have teams of people who actually practice in the game to get good, so everyone knows his or her assignments. That'll probably be the hardest of the hardcore, like the guys who train together in first-person shooters now."
Fighting Games
As envisioned by Virtua Fighter series Producer Hiroshi Kataoka
"The basic concept of play in the fighting genre has not changed drastically in the last 10 years. Therefore, I assume the gameplay won't change much in the future. In terms of graphics, as we evolve and adopt new technology, I'm sure the genre will evolve with it. However, I can't predict what that will [entail]. Some people believe that there will be new input devices that will allow for 3D television and motion controls, but I believe this is a gimmick that some players will find attractive [rather] than have a major impact on the games. I also believe there is a large possibility that fighting games will have the player fight [and] train A.I. characters. However, I'm not sure if this type of game could still be considered a fighting game."
Sunday 24th June-2007
by EGM staff
1up.com |
