At the D.I.C.E. Summit, which closed yesterday, Jesse Schell held an interesting talk on the future of gaming. Schell is CEO of Schell Games and tutor at the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He also used to work for Disney and still acts as a consultant for them.
His presentation entitled ´Design Outside The Box´ examines recent phenomena in gaming and their impact, as well as the future, where mundane tasks may come in the form of videogames.
I would like to introduce his presentation as follows. Consider a single game that is currently played by more than 70 million active users. Sounds impossible? No, there really is a game like that. But they must have collected this user base over many, many years, right? No, they only started out in June, so that is barely more than half a year.
That game in question, arguably the most successful game in the world at this point, is FarmVille on Facebook. Developer Zynga Game Network has attracted some big talent from traditional game companies. Its Vice President of Game Development should sound familiar: Mike Verdu recently left Electronic Arts, where he was General Manager at EALA and responsible for the ´Command & Conquer´ series.
What's more, Richard Garriott, better known as Lord British (´Ultima´, ´Tabula Rasa´), has just announced he is moving into social gaming and will be using Facebook as a platform with his new company Portalarium.
I myself have argued many times on this blog that the epicentre of gaming has already shifted with Wii. A core player is no longer one fond of gory horror and action shooters, but of ´Wii Fit´ and ´Brain Training´. Those games now constitute the core of gaming - which is a simple question of numbers. And now, Facebook is fast becoming the core of gaming. How will that change gaming? Where will gaming head in the future? Let Jesse Schell tell you.
Source: G4TV
Thanks to: Bitmob