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Where Do You See MMO Games In Ten Years?

Posted by simoniker on from the crystal-lag-ball dept.

An anonymous reader points out this Stratics Central story, which talks to gaming executives about where they see the massively multiplayer genre in ten years time. Respondents, including representatives from Codemasters' Dragon Empires and Majorem's Ballerium, talk about genre changes, different spectator experiences, and, well, virtual knights running around Santa Monica.

2 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Fewer McJob Games by frenchgates · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps in ten years they will have figured out how to make playing MMORPGs less like working at a really boring job interspersed with waiting in huge lines.

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    Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
  2. Swami sez... by Captain+Beefheart · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I suspect photo- and audiorealism will bring a level of immersion that will make for a very thin line between reality and gaming. Movies, television and the Internet will fall by the wayside in terms of entertainment appeal. Fiber optics will probably allow for almost instant transfer of relatively huge chunks of data. Compact discs will become as quaint as vinyl as everything gravitates towards solid state storage and 'Net based game streaming a la Valve's Steam project.

    I suspect gaming will also be eventually offloaded onto consoles, assuming the tech gap continues to close and prices remain rock-bottom cheap.

    Moving onto MMOGs proper, you will probably see the market dominated by three or four "games," akin to the dawn of television with NBC, ABC and CBS. Mergers galore, as only huge corporations would be able to deliver complex, stable and immersive games within remotely reasonable time frames. I suspect new terminology will arise to describe MMOGs, although I won't venture into any guesses that will likely look hokey even five years from now. Language and dialect move too rapidly for that anyway. "Neophyte" becomes "nub," "yay" becomes "w00t," etc.

    Monthly fees will become steep as MMOGs become a habit occupying hours every day as television and Web surfing do now. The breadth and depth of available game elements will be as complex and configurable as a cable channel lineup.

    All pure speculation, though.