With the shadows of the PS4 and Xbox 720 video game consoles looming large over the industry, it's fair to wonder exactly how the two new systems will affect the next few years of video game development.
Increased competition from mobile devices and the rising popularity of indie games means that big traditional game publishers need to really offer some compelling content if they want people to continue dedicating time to their titles. The PS4 and Xbox 720 are going to offer better graphics and more power, to be sure, but serving up the same kinds of games with prettier textures isn't going to cut it.
Back in February, respected game designer Warren Spector said video games needed to move past spraying blood and address other issues.
Speaking to GamesIndustry International, Sim City creator Will Wright agreed.
"I think we have an extremely powerful medium here at our disposal, and I think we've only realized a small fraction of its potential," he said. "It wouldn't take too many things to really impact a lot of people. Relative to what we have as a medium, with what we could be doing with it, we're falling way short."
That said, Wright wasn't down on the gaming industry's prospects going forward. The PS4 and Xbox 720 might be gathering all the hype, but he's more delighted by the fact that small developers around the world have earned the freedom to do what they like, the way they want to.
"The fact that it's now ten thousand Darwinian developers out there with no restrictions on what they do, coming up with all sorts of crazy ideas...it's much, much more healthy than it was ten years ago, when it was a few large publishers controlling ten million dollar purse-strings," Wright said.
Going forward, Wright even said that the mobile scene will be more interesting to him than the traditional gaming experience the PS4, Xbox 720 and even Wii U represent.
"There will be some innovation there, but the mobile/tablet market feels like a wider frontier to me," he said. "I think it's because you're not necessarily stuck in the living room; you're untethered. The world can become your playfield."
Still, at least some are expecting the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft to change the landscape a little, and much of it comes down to the fact that gamers themselves are becoming more discerning in their game readings.
"Things are aligning in a way that, by the end of this generation, people started asking, 'Hey you know what, why is Nathan Drake a mass murderer?' " he said. "And they didn't ask that with the first Uncharted. They didn't ask that previously," said game developer Adrian Chmielarz in April.
"Something happened and it was probably indie games and the fight of indie developers to show a different side of gaming. Some people tasted a little bit of that indie gaming, started thinking about games and then they go back to the old ways and go, 'OK there's something wrong here.' "
If that's the case, then it could give developers the green light to experiment with different types of gameplay and storytelling forms that the business had no room for before. Either way, as Wright says, the mobile gaming industry is booming right now. It'll be interesting to see how the traditional, living room gaming experience adapts to push the medium forward and stay relevant.
