It’s clear to everyone by now that the rise of connected platforms such as Facebook, iOS and Android is profoundly changing gaming, with the arrival of hundreds of millions of new players opening up countless business and creative opportunities. Equally important, though, is the fact that most people now play games on more than one platform, having the opportunity to engage in gaming anywhere, at any time.
Most 'old-school' gamers grew up playing on a single platform at a time: for me it was the Commodore 16, followed by the Commodore 64 and Amiga, before I finally jumped over to PC, dabbling in console gaming on the side. Importantly, most of this happened at home; portable consoles provided a gaming fix on the go, but didn't connect in any way to other platforms or players. This has changed dramatically and, while hardcore gamers still flock to consoles and client-based PC games, they are also pretty much guaranteed to have access to a web browser and a smartphone. And for the vast majority of casual players, web and mobile are the gaming platforms of choice.
A clear consequence of this is that it’s very rare for us to be more than a few centimeters from a device on which games can be played: web browsers when in the office, consoles and PCs at home, and smartphones and tablets when on the go (but really everywhere, as most of us seem to be surgically attached to our mobile devices).This is a boon for developers, as it gives them the chance to let users interact with their game and play wherever they are. The natural question, then, is: play what?
The emergence of always-on, connected platforms is one of the most interesting opportunities in gaming, as it holds the promise to deliver the most appropriate game experience to players wherever they are and to create persistent, evolving and multi-faceted universes., But so far cross-platform gaming has meant either launching the same game across multiple platforms and connecting them with a social layer, or launching a main game and providing 'companion apps' that enable interaction with particular features on other platforms.
One of the best-known examples of the former is our game Bejeweled Blitz, which has been fully integrated between Facebook and iOS since 2010, and where the game played on one platform is essentially the same played on the other, while Facebook Connect is used to share scores, friends lists and achievements. And with respect to companion apps, we have seen examples ranging from World Of Warcraft’s Mobile Armory app, which allows players to keep track of the activities of their guild and to access the auction house. There's Mass Effect 3’s Datapad and Infiltrator apps, both of which contain gameplay elements that can contribute to the player’s 'galactic readiness' factor in the main game.
So far, then, we have mostly seen games that propose the same experience across different platforms, or games that focus on a core product and use other platforms to provide complementary gameplay or ancillary activites to keep users engaged with the core game. My opinion is that the next step, a really interesting opportunity from a creative and business point of view, will be cross-platform gaming where a game is deployed on different platforms and the experience is completely different depending on the platform’s characteristics and usage, while being connected on the back end to a shared universe.
On top of that, certain games could be made even more interesting by adding a persistent game world, which could lead to the creation of a system where the experience on each platform is significantly different, but players’ actions shape the overall universe. A pioneer in that sense is CCP, the game developer that has achieved success with Eve Online, which has probably the most advanced economy of any online game. It's now hard at work on Dust 514, a multiplayer console FPS which will interact with the original game - allowing, for example, players of the one to provide players of the other with mercenary assistance during planet battles.
At the more casual end of the spectrum, a team-based resource management game on Facebook could be connected with a puzzle game on iOS, and the overall activities of iOS players could influence the success of factions in the Facebook game. Or - and this is a particularly appealing scenario to me - a strategy game could simulate an entire game world by allowing players to manage resources and build structures on one game or platform, fight on another, conduct diplomacy in a third, and explore in a fourth - potentially even leading to a simulation of every important aspect of human civilisation. Players could specialise in whichever game they enjoy most, or even dabble in many of them, and the overall status and economy of the game would be influenced by their actions. It would be a massive undertaking, but I think games of this kind could evolve over time, starting from a single platform while setting up the appropriate infrastructure and systems for expansion, and growing from there by adding new platforms and mechanics over time.
While such an ambitious and all-encompassing approach would clearly not work for every game (or budget), I think most major franchises will go in the direction of offering persistent cross-platform gaming, as allowing players to play anywhere and at any time, and to enjoy the best possible experience on a given platform, is the key to keeping them engaged, and as there are clear business advantages in doing so. Furthermore, as we explore this new frontier of gaming, some developers will do interesting and daring things that will move gaming forward in unexpected directions, and more will build on that to create further innovation. With this in mind, it’s easy to envision a perfect storm enabled by developments in platforms, technology and game design, and predict that cross-platform, service-based gaming will be one of the defining trends of the next few years.