Charlie Stross on gaming in 2030
For reasons that should become evident, I was unable to attend LOGIN this year. This meant that I missed my chance to be on a panel with Charlie Stross, one of my favorite science fiction writers, and someone I corresopnd with but have never met.
Fortunately, Charlie posted up the text of his LOGIN 2009 keynote, which is, well, no, not as good as being there. Oh well. it’s still fascinating, though perhaps not as outre to regular readers of this blog as it might have been to many in the audience.
So, let’s look ahead to 2030.
We can confidently predict that by then, computer games will have been around for nearly sixty years; anyone under eighty will have grown up with them. The median age of players may well be the same as the median age of the general population. And this will bring its own challenges to game designers. Sixty year olds have different needs and interests from twitchy-fingered adolescents. For one thing, their eyesight and hand-eye coordination isn’t what it used to be. For another, their socialization is better, and they’re a lot more experienced.
Oh, and they have lots more money.
If I was speccing out a business plan for a new MMO in 2025, I’d want to make it appeal to these folks — call them codgergamers.
Would have posted this earlier, but my last post was BoingBoinged and made the site inaccessible to me, despite a slightly-out-of-date version of WP-SuperCache. It is now upgraded, but who knows whether that will help. 🙂
Hell, Bucky, the median age of the population now has plenty of experience in games. You all already missed the boat.
I was thinking more along the lines of 2050 when I wrote this, but the “twitchy-fingered” part of your quote caught my attention: http://futurismic.com/2009/05/13/i-think-therefore-i-game
As to significantly different interests, I’m not so sure that will prove accurate. My previously unconnected classmates are coming online as they become empty-nester’s. What’s surprising to me is how little so many of them seem to have changed since adolescence.
Yeah, as a 34 year old, I already feel like I qualify as a codger-gamer. Isn’t the average gamer age hanging around close to that? I look through the current slate of upcoming MMO games, and I see a lot of twitchy, PvP-oriented FPS/MMO games that look amazing, but gameplay wise don’t appeal to me at all.
I’d agree with Mr. Stross, but I wouldnt wait until 2025. 🙂
I feel like a codger gamer at 23.
Chalk me up as one of those codgers, though I’m only 28. There are a scant few games that really appeal to me these days because all development seems to be geared toward younger markets. I play a few current games because they’re well done and they have style and character, not because their mechanics are anything earth-shattering. I’d like to be playing games that are unique for their gameplay aspects or because they’re re-establishing genres that have seen little to no development (base-builders like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius being one example).
Not just MMOs, but all game development needs to start creating games for more mature generations now, not twenty years from now.