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The Megatrends of Gaming
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Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Pascal Luban, veteran designer of games such as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has released a new article (one that will be part of a series) on the "megatrends of gaming.
He begins the series by focusing on three of these Megatrends, what he calls "increasing the commercial life span of games", "the emergence of fast gaming, and games relying on micropayments" and "increasingly believable universes".
The first megatrend is a response to the increasing development cost (particularly of what are characterized as "AAA titles" by the gaming industry and press) of games. Some of the solutions are fairly straightforward, such as promoting multiplayer play modes as well as more novel solutions, such as promoting the story universe the game lies in with merchandising and DLC.
The second trend he refrs to is that of "fast gaming" which, thankfully, he doesn't disparage and goes on to describes an alternative model to the rising cost of development, which we have seen in the rise of episodic and so-called "casual" games. Releasing shorter games for less money more often. A similar trend he describes is that of micropayments, such as can be seen in games like Maple Story which can enrich the user's experience as well as bring in added revenue at relatively low production cost.
The third trend he develops is that of "increasingly believable universes". As Luban notes, this is of no real surprise to anyone who games regularly. As the technology to render images increases in resolution and believability, it has become a trend to design more believeable environments as well. He mentions obvious candidates such as Farcry and Assassin's Creed as attempts as creating this believable world.
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