What is the future of Video Games?

[Melooon]

I'd like to have a chat about Video Games, and the future of them! Partly because its something that's often on my mind, but also because I really think there is change afoot and its worth noting.

I was always someone who was quick to get setup with the newest things, if there was a console to buy I'd usually get it within the first year, and I tried to maintain a top-spec PC for games too. I had most Nintendo and PlayStation consoles, plus even a XBox 360 for a while.

That started to change in 2020, the PS5 was the first generation of PlayStation I did not buy and have no to plan to buy. The games had become heavy and same-y, and there were no longer cool exclusives like Little Big Planet that made it interesting. I did buy a newer gaming laptop in 2022 and a SteamDeck in 2023; however the last big modern game I tried to play was Indiana Jones (2024), and it ran for about 40 minutes on that gaming laptop before informing me I did not have enough video ram and it promptly crashed.

In a few months GTA6 will come out, and regardless of you enjoying GTA games or not; it will prob be the biggest game launch in history. It's been in development for over 10 years, and we all expect it to be the largest and most advanced game ever produced.. and, I know I won't be playing it. I am priced out of the market on games today, I cannot afford any games console or PC capable of playing GTA6, and even if I could, I don't think I'd deem it worth it. 

From where I'm sitting, it seems like the ballooning complexity, size and cost of games has become totally unsustainable, its at its logical end and something different has to come after.

I suppose there are a few paths that future could take;

• We could end up in a world of eternal emulation, playing the same retro games from now on (that was mostly what I got the SteamDeck for and what it's good at).
• Indie games are always an option, but frankly there is an overwhelming choice of indie games and its very hard to filter out ones that are very simple from ones that feel fresh and compelling.
• We could end up in a world where there are only 5 big games and all that happens is they get reskins every few years (the Fifa-death of the games industry)
• We could see what I would really hope for, a balanced and sustainable world of small studios producing semi-polished but smaller games more like those made in the 2000s; however time has already proven this is economically unlikely.

I personally have two objectives: I want to see a proper return to web games, online spaces, and a merger between the web and online worlds. I think every website can be a virtual world and I want to see indie games being less like standalone products mimicking the past of games, and more like flowing connected spaces that share information and assets the way the web does. Secondly I want better ways to filter and explore indie games, I'd like to see good games journalism and magazines focused on indie games, and I'd like to see games that are about exploring other games.

I'm curious to hear peoples own views; are you still on the new-game bandwagon? Is it still worth it for you? Do you think everything is actually ok and I'm just a grump? Where do you think things will end up in the new few years, and more importantly what can we (as individuals) do to make game games world what we want it to be? 

[fairyrune]

it's a complicated subject and i'm far from qualified to talk about it at length. but what i do want to consider is that... hardware keeps getting more and more expensive as it's eaten up for AI data centres at rapid pace, and that means triple A games are becoming less accessible. what does that mean for games companies? their audience becomes smaller. they lose their customers.

it's my hope that in that case, something comes to plug the gap. double A makes a serious comeback? we've already seen the success of titles like expedition 33. indie games, too, could fill the niche, although you make a good point about the good ones being difficult to discover on the internet today. it's going to be rough, though. developers also need that hardware to... well, develop.

i don't think you're being a grump at all - you're just recognising the way late stage capitalism is strangling the life out of the industry. i wish it weren't an "industry" at all, though. i wish that flash was still alive! web games were what i grew up on when our family had a PC that couldn't even run the most basic of 2d games. i thrived on sites like notdoppler and friv... these things made gaming accessible for so many people. all you needed was a computer that could access the internet and use a browser with flash.

as for myself... i never followed the latest game releases as i wasn't able to purchase them and frankly, so many of them didn't interest me and they don't interest me now. most of the games i play are indie games or, like, a 24 year old mmo that was built for the ps2, so...

what can we do about all this? there's actually a lot of things. but i would urge people to learn how to repair their own tech, and to fight for our right to repair what we own. no single thing will solve this issue, but our little actions will add up.

[Watanabe_1994]

I don't know genre or styles will come out of the future, but I know distribution wise that it will be both digital and licence based (As seen by the habits of company's like Sony, Nintendo and Ubisoft. Valve has been doing this since 2003 with steam.)

Also physical distribution of videogames will die out in the console market by the end of the decade (as seen with GTA6 and the Terraria 15th Anniversary).

I highly Doubt that independent developers will have the time and money like in the past to press there own disks and mass burn them, even on the PC market since the average gun/ball gamer on there has a prebuilt that doesn't even have a disk drive. Vary grim times indeed. 

[Hutch3G]

I think that, with the death of physical media from Sony and Xbox, and the absurd console prices above 600 dollars at worst, they will lose the majority of customers, they will slowly have zero shelf space in stores, which also equals less sales, and if they do release a new gen console, which honestly feels too soon, they're just throwing everything away, as I think the current gen consoles have been heavily underexplored and underwhelming, especially after the 8th generation of consoles is still somehow supported to this day, noone will want to move to a new platform (which will likely cost thousands anyway). I also think we reached a peak in graphical capabilities, I'm not sure what they can do more, technology has stabilized to common standards and there's not much else needed to improve on.

The moment they will not have any more physical games in store, it'll be pretty funny that nintendo will have a "monopoly" over the physical market. I did not like their greedy choices for switch 2, but somehow the competitors shooting themselves in the foot make them the least bad of them.
And let's not talk about steam machine or steam deck, which go for ludicrous prices and really noone can afford. Gaming has become a hobby for the elite class and rich reviewers, and if that's gonna be their only audience, their loss. The numbers will speak for themselves.

It's unfortunate kids will just keep on gaming on mobile phones with free mobile games like they have the past decade, but at the end its up to us to keep the good games around. There are thousands of old games waiting to be explored, to be played, many we don't know about. I don't want to buy any more console, my old systems have so much to offer that I feel satisfied already. Plus it feels like a whim to to just keep releasing new consoles in such a short timespan.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I mostly dropped out of the commercial gaming many years ago. I felt that the need to cash in the cost of the more and more gigantic productions suffocated the creativity of the medium (imho, Hollywood movies had a similar development, but the medium is older and there are more alternatives).

Yet I don't expect that the medium will disappear. I suppose that it will develop more into the direction of streaming, although that sector had some punch backs in the past; but video games are too big of a market to drop. I also expect that the market of casual phone games will continue to grow, and we can expect to see the development of more elaborate games for phones, as phones have replaced the PC for a big amount of users already.

The indie and the retro sector are niches, and they will continue to exist - but they are mainly frequented by a handful of idealists and enthusiasts - in the 21th century, both the reach and attraction of a medium are heavily dependent of marketing campaigns. Really small productions are basically invisible - most of the popular "indie games" are rather big, commercially productions for quite some time now. We can't hope for a mass appeal, but I hope that some people who have some enthusiasm for small video game productions might form communities in the long run - the retro gaming sector managed to do so after all.

[candycanearter07]

I admittedly also fell out of interest with "modern" gaming out of necessity (i use Linux, and also dont have any modern game consoles besides a nintendo switch 1). Indie games I think has way more interesting ideas, and I just have more fun with it in general.

[Bone-A Lisa]

I think the future of Video Games lies in the hand of indie studios. With triple A games becoming less innovative, more expensive, and more demanding to run, I think indie titles are what are going to be the guiding light of the industry. Indie games from the last 5 to 10 years have become I think some of the most well-made, and some of my personal favorite games of all time. There is popular stuff like Outer Wilds, Hollow Knight / Silk Song, Slay the Spire, etc. But even some of the super indie titles I've played have left massive impacts on me as absolute masterpieces of the industry (Case of the Golden Idol for an example).

Triple A games on the other hand have more and more become massive hype-trains that ultimately, to some extent, crash and burn on release. Either due to poor performance, predatory micro-transactions, uninspired gameplay / story, or all 3. I feel like there are very few big studios making games as "art" nowadays, and are completely and solely profit driven. I think for the majority casual audience, they really don't care about this that much and for that reason big Triple A slop games will continue to be pumped out, but I think for people who truly love video-games as an art medium, indie titles is where they will find fulfillment.

The thing I fear the most is retro-gaming for the more modern era of consoles. So many games are going to be lost as online only games that dont function without a working connection to some central servers, or games that never even have the chance to be preserved because they were digital only games and no one was able to preserve them. I fear that we are in a spot in gaming (and online media in general tbh) where preserving games to be able to go back and play them in 20 years is going to be next to impossible.

[sweetwana]

Hi friends!

As someone who likes to buy physical games, I worried what the recent Playstation announcement meant for the industry at large. However, there are aspects that have me feeling more hopeful. With Sony and Xbox consoles becoming more and more expensive, combined with stuff like this, I’m curious whether more affordable machines could ever take the spotlight again.

The Switch 2 is the current likely candidate. I can see Nintendo’s console really taking off, being more affordable for consumers and (I assume) more affordable to develop for, with the games being less HUGE in graphical scope.

My dream scenario, though, is that we somehow manage to step back a generation or two. This may just be nostalgia speaking, but I would love to know what today’s game designers would do with something like the PS2. I would love if the focus could return to games themselves, rather than the graphical arms race. As Sony and Xbox seem to be evolving themselves out of the market, I’m hopeful that others will rise to meet more affordable and creative demands!

(Alas, I’m ignoring mobile gaming and its hold on players seeking cheap/free experiences. But I can dream!)

My favourite consoles are the Nintendo DS, PS1 and PS2. Even after years I am still discovering new (old), amazing games on these systems. There is so much creativity found within the limitations of older tech!

Mass appeal of a new, intentionally older generation style console is probably limited… but imagine if Nintendo revived the actual fully handheld console scene, with an entirely new classic-style Pokemon game? Something of that scale would kickstart an entire new area of the industry!

[eezstreet]

It’s hard to give a solid answer to this question until we see how the larger AI bubble plays out. Right now the big limiting factor in hardware price and availability is the expensive price of RAM and the dwindling supply of affordable graphics chips.

If this price surge continues for the foreseeable future, I suspect the AAA industry is well and truly dead and the end of the 2020s will be another big crash that makes 1983 look like a blip in comparison. The chips are ready to fall on this one as far as I’m concerned - Microsoft is spiraling, Sony is recording huge losses, Ubisoft will likely go bankrupt in 5-10 years, Embracer appears to be collapsing, Epic is laying off employees, and EA was largely sold off to a Saudi investment firm after failing to deliver Star Wars games for Disney. I think T2/2K, SEGA and Nintendo may be unscathed here, simply due to the fact that they’re keeping their IPs flowing.

In this scenario, I think most likely we’ll see stuff like Steam Deck and Switch dominate the landscape as the vast majority of the market will be somewhat casual gamers that want to play while they’re waiting for the bus, etc. Possibly a lower-cost alternative will emerge that’s lower-power but still capable - similar to a Game Boy. That’s just a matter of where the broader socioeconomic climate is headed in my opinion. There may still be consoles and/or gaming PCs in use, but this will become a shrinking market with higher-priced games.

If this doesnt’t happen, and we continue to see a reasonable market for enthusiasts, I think the games themselves will become more approachable and we may see some new genres come out. One of the interesting trending genres that I am seeing is the idea of a “dad-MMO” where the world is populated by fake AI players who act like real players (using LLMs) but rubber-band to your level, so the world economy doesn’t feel like you will fall behind too much. As much as “friend-slop” games are derided, there is great creativity coming out of that, too.

[Version]

In terms of indie games, personally I think that the problem of finding "fresh and compelling" games is just as capable of affecting the AAA industry. There are a lot more tired sequels, remakes, and uninspired games in that category. I think separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to indie games to me is only really uniquely difficult when it comes to the really small games. Like the ones that aren't even made by indie studios per se, but instead by two or three people, which are usually published alongside a deluge of low effort or low quality content on platforms like itch.
Though that isn't to say that AAA gaming has no place in gaming, or is completely dead. For example, I just got done playing Alan Wake 2(2023), and not only does that game do some really original and compelling things with the medium, honestly it could only have done it with it's massive budget.
Also, I think this conversation varies a lot on your idea of what is indie (which is really hard to define!) but also what is gaming in general. Some people in the thread mentioned mobile games and flash games, and while those are games, personally the type of thing that comes to mind when I think of "gaming" is the kind of media that gets published on steam, GOG, or itch.io, you know?

In terms of consoles, well, a lot can be said about the insane death spiral that xbox and sony are going through, but it's obvious that their business model is unsustainable. Besides the massive layoffs and game cancellations, I don't really think there is really any reason to buy one of their consoles. Why should you buy a machine that can only play specific games, instead of a computer which can play pretty much any recent game, crucially including indie games and emulated retro games, will last much longer (and can be modularly upgraded when it doesn't) and only costs one or two hundred dollars more (for 1080p gaming)? Surely that's not too much extra money for people that hope to buy $60 or $70 games on the regular. _{Not to mention that, you know, you can pirate games for free on PC and only have to pay that one time entry price for the medium, something you can't do on console.}
There is honestly space for Nintendo consoles, which are more affordable, have exclusive games, and have special features such as portability though. But obviously I wish those games could be available on PC too.

For the longest time I had a potato laptop as my only PC, and although that affected the quantity of video games I could play, I don't think it affected the quality. It's the reason why I ended up getting into visual novels and narrative games, a preference that remains with me to this day. Although it always disappointed me when I could not run a game that looked really interesting, I think that you will always be able to find high quality stuff on the medium you can play and enjoy, especially today! On that note, if you want to discover cool indie games, I really recommend the steam interactive recommender. It really hits the sweet spot in finding stuff that is generally unknown, but has more that 100 reviews or so.

Oh, and while there are reasons to believe the technical requirements for games will keep increasing, such as the impact of AI, there is also the question of graphics potentially hitting a plateau soon, if they have not already.

[Kule1Toxic]

A lot of the times buying new games isn't worth it for me anymore, especially how power hungry they are, and I don't have a computer good enough for that and definitely not a console that I can play new games on. I mostly just stick to more indie or very old games, since they're usually what I can afford, lack of discs would also fuck up a lot of things up (culturally and industry wise) and make it more annoying to try to play games, but a lot of people have said the same and will say it better than I can on that subject.

I have no proof of this, but I do think that there will be another video game crash at some point with few companies surviving it, but I definitely still see a future where indie devs still thriving given the circumstances.

[shaggy]

The Switch 2 is the current likely candidate. I can see Nintendo’s console really taking off, being more affordable for consumers and (I assume) more affordable to develop for, with the games being less HUGE in graphical scope.

Nintendo might be doing fine games, but it's nintendo. I'm not getting anything from them anymore. I mean, in one of their games I can't even mute the music! Or change it's volume. It's there, pissing me off for no good reason as it's not even good. Nintendo sue its own fanbase and trying to kill user made emulations.

My dream scenario, though, is that we somehow manage to step back a generation or two. This may just be nostalgia speaking, but I would love to know what today’s game designers would do with something like the PS2. I would love if the focus could return to games themselves, rather than the graphical arms race.

I don't think that's only nostalgia. Mechanically speaking games peaked in 2002-2005. Diablo 2 is absolutely awesome mechanically. It just needed nice d2r graphic treatment and game is still one of the best ARPG made. StarCraft 1 had it's issues, especially with pathfinding, but other than that, balance and mechanic were rock solid after patches. Half Life 1 and Quake were a joy to control.

It's mostly graphical and UX improvement these days. Sure, we still get 10/10 games like Witcher 3, but W3 was revolution in terms of story and side quests, and graphics, mechanically that game was OK at best.

Today most good games are Indies games I'd say. Hades, Factorio, Ori and blind forest, Zachtronic puzzles. All those games have simple graphics (except Ori, they killed it there with hand drawn graphics). But mechanically are so much better than any AAA games. And they cost fraction of AAA titles.

IMO, AAA industry will have a big crash. They pour so much money in them, and yet those games are mediocre at best. There is nothing new in them. Corporations play it absolutely safe. And if I buy AAA game it's after 3-5 years, when all patches and content is released, and price drops to 75% ;) It's not like they have anything innovative there so I can't wait.

Future is in Indie devs. They're the creative ones.

[b-lly]

I too think AAA games will have a hard time now that everything is so expensive

I think mobile gamining could grow because of this, smartphones are basically small portable consoles. I also think web games should turn to mobile to become big again, whether we like it or not. a lot of browser games players were kids, and most of them barely know how to turn on a pc these days, if they have one, but they all have and use a smartphone or tablet (I'm pretty sure most roblox users play from mobile). web-app games could become a thing, especially now that google will put more restrictions on apks. (<- this is me wishing mobile gaming didn't suck. I think it has an unexplored potential)

another problem I have is that the industry doesn't look good for the game-makers themselves (at least at the AAA level?). crunching, lack of unions/union busting, sexism, what from the outside looks like a fear of investing is new experimental stuff... maybe something will change

as for what we can do, I think we can just show people the smaller games we like (unless you, reader, have the skills and resources to make games or a magazine!)