Last month, I argued in this column that we are currently experiencing a “golden age of gaming”. It's been brought upon us by the advent of platforms and technologies that enable casual, social and connected gaming experiences across different devices, attracting a much wider audience of casual gamers to our favorite pastime – in particular, non-gamers who might not be able to tell a Tauren from a Troll but quite enjoy swapping gems or flinging birds. This has in turn given developers a chance to encounter success without the budget (and accompanying restrictions) of an AAA title, and to experiment with gameplay, genres and business models. And we’re just getting started.
But what is fuelling this revolution? I would identify in particular four trends as having the potential to dramatically reshape the game industry: games are becoming mobile; games are becoming connected services; games are becoming social experiences; games are becoming cross-platform.
A major factor in making games accessible to everyone is the advent of smartphones as a viable gaming platform and, even more importantly, as the primary gaming platform for an increasingly large number of people. The importance of this can’t be overstated: in the short span of four years, mobile games have gone from being the poor relatives of the gaming industry, hobbled by underpowered devices and a broken ecosystem, to devices on which a large segment of the gaming population does most of its gaming. This, by itself, is a seismic shift, abetted by the combination of portability, always-on connectivity, easy discovery and the availability of a wide portfolio to fun and accessible games, and this phenomenon is destined to gain momentum as devices become more affordable and ecosystems mature.
The emergence of devices that are always connected opens up a world of possibilities for players and for game developers, and it’s changing the very way in which games are made. Designing and managing a game as a service has a profound impact on every aspect of the process, and it will lead over time to completely different organisational models in the industry. It could even potentially lead to more stable employment, as managing a service typically requires engaging a team before, during and after launch, rather than staffing up at the start of a project and downsizing once the development cycle is complete and the product is ready to ship. From a player’s perspective, connectivity brings the possibility to interact with a product that’s always in development, to benefit from new content and updates, and to have access to multiplayer and social features that enrich the experience in a way that before was available only to dedicated gamers with a certain degree of technical knowledge.
Games were meant to be social
The fact that games are becoming social is not news to anyone with a Facebook account. I, for one, would argue that what we have seen so far is just the start of a much larger phenomenon, as a game doesn’t necessarily have to be played on a specific platform or include certain game mechanics in order to be “social”. In fact, I’d even argue that this, rather than being a new phenomenon, is a return to the original meaning of games: for thousands of years, games were meant to be social, and the thought of playing by yourself, the odd round of solitaire notwithstanding, would have been considered fairly strange until the advent of the personal computer. A broader view of social gaming doesn’t stop at having to spam your friends to progress in the game, nor does it mean being nickel and dimed when playing: it extends to using games as a mean to communicate and interact with other players, and as a way to spend time (albeit virtually) with people you care about. It also means, from a developmental standpoint, exploring genres and game mechanics that are enriched or made possible by social interaction, and I reckon we’ll be seeing much innovation in that sense in the coming years.
Finally, games are becoming cross-platform, as developers realise that their products need to be enjoyable by customers wherever they happen to be, and that giving players the opportunity to connect via different devices can enhance the overall enjoyment of the experience. An example of this would be PopCap’s own Bejeweled Blitz, which launched as a Facebook product and, over time, gained an iPhone and a PC stand-alone version, all of which connect to the same infrastructure and allow users to post high scores and to interact regardless of the platform on which they were playing. While the launch of an iPhone version widened the market to users that don’t necessarily play on Facebook, the main impact was in allowing existing players to bring the game with them at all times, not tying their sessions to their physical presence in front of the PC, therefore increasing engagement and usage. It doesn’t hurt, naturally, that iPhone users have demonstrated a high propensity to pay for in-game content, making them an ideal addressable audience for freemium games, and games relying on in-game transactions in general.
Scratching the surface of cross-platform
That said, my belief is that we’ve just scratched the surface of cross-platform gaming, and that we’re in the early stage of the march towards original game experiences that will take full advantage of it. Imagine, for example, playing a game which presents different vertical slices of the same environment on different platforms, all interconnected into a wider gaming experience. For example, a casual simulation on Facebook could be connected to a puzzle game on iPhone, and the results of rounds played on mobile devices could influence the overall development of the game world, with plenty of occasions for inter-device communication. Or, thinking about an even deeper integration, a persistent gameworld or an MMOG could make available different areas or different gaming experiences on different devices, all of which would coalesce into a believable world where every action has a consequence, and every session is influenced by what other players are doing, wherever they happen to play.
Mobile, connected, social, cross-platform: those are, in my opinion, the four mega trends that are shaping gaming and are going to shape the game industry in the years to come. How they evolve, and how they play together, is going to be crucial to the future of entertainment, and in future installments of this column we’ll have the chance to delve deeper into each of them. What’s evident is that our choice of entertainment is destined to grow, and that we, and the game industry as a whole, are just getting started in exploring the potential of video games. Here’s to the next 100 years of gaming!
Giordano Bruno Contestabile is senior director of mobile product and business strategy at PopCap, having previously lead business development at PopCap’s Shanghai office. In a previous life, Giordano was a DJ, VJ and videogame journalist in his native Italy. Follow him on Twitter @giordanobc, and see and follow all his columns on his topic page.