My first article for this blog was about making sound important. In it, I discussed several
ways to integrate sound into gameplay so it wasn't just there for ambience and
immersion that could be muted, but made necessary to complete the game.
Now I would like to take a step back and think about the
likelihood of sound ever becoming that important.
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| I swear I'll get to the future of games eventually. Get some popcorn. |
When I think of watching a movie, there are a few types of
movie-watching experiences. One is when
I take the movie seriously, pay close attention, turn off the lights, sit in
the glory of surround sound, and forget about the rest of the world. Another way to watch a movie is to riff on it
as you watch it, and this is usually reserved for bad movies or B-movies. The lights don't need to be off, and for all
it matters, the sound could be mono. Of
course, sound is still necessary, but it takes a back seat to the voices of the
viewers who want to joke about it.
These two movie-watching experiences have analogs in
games. Getting soaked into the world and
eliminating distractions is often the case for hardcore gamers. The sound is up so you can catch every piece
of dialogue, so you can hear your enemies sneaking up on you, so you can hear
to your teammates talk to you. When you
are interrupted by the rest of life butting in, you get frustrated.
Sound doesn't matter so much--or at all--in casual and
mobile games. You might be listening to
your own music, or you might be multitasking, and sound becomes a distraction. You might need to pay attention to the person
in the room with you, or maybe you're listening to the news on TV. An interruption from something else doesn't
matter, because you aren't 100% focused on the game anyway.
In these instances, sound becomes detached from the game
completely. Even when I play hardcore
games, like MMOs, I will often have the sound muted, and I will be playing in a
window that only takes up half the screen, so I can watch YouTube videos at the
same time.
We live in a world of multitasking, and it's difficult to
push everything else away to do one thing, like watch a movie or play a game
with undivided attention. We still can
do that, but with the increase in mobile game platforms slowly becoming the
norm (and will soon take over hardcore gaming in revenue), dedicated playtime
will be tougher to manage. If you want
to experience games in the serious, undivided way, you may have to have a room
dedicated to games, or perhaps one that doubles as a home theater for movies.
In order for sound to matter in games in the way I suggested
in my first article, this kind of dedication is important. And if consoles continue to have as big a
presence as they do today, that will probably happen.
But the slow uprising in mobile and casual means that more
game developers will dip their toes in those markets--even developers who
traditionally make hardcore games. If
they find there is truly more money to be made in casual, they will swing that
way, and leave hardcore gamers in the dust.
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| Meet your new avian overlords. |
On the other hand, indie gaming is becoming bigger and
bigger. Now, currently indie studios
make the low-tech games, because they are low-cost as well. Indie is big on 2D, old-style platformers,
for instance, which bring back the nostalgia of older gaming eras, and remind
us that just because the industry has moved on, that doesn't mean there isn't
any innovation to be found in older game genres.
But with the lowering cost of technology and game
development software, indie companies will soon (5 years to put a random number
on it) be able to make games of today's industry standards of quality with
fewer people, more cheaply. There may
then be a shift of hardcore gamers from playing big studio releases to playing
games by indie studios, while the giants of game development shift focus to the
wider swath of casual and mobile gamers.
As usual, companies follow the money, indies do what they love.
But if the big companies shift from hardcore to casual, that
includes the hardware manufacturers.
Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo may stop making consoles--or, at least,
they will stop marketing them that way.
An Xbox 360 currently does roughly ten bajillion more things than just
play games. The next Xbox (or Durango , as it is
codenamed) will do more, and probably won't even be marketed as a gaming device
so it can get wider appeal. While it
will play games, that will be a side-feature to how it interacts with your TV,
smartphone, PC, and other devices in your home.
It will probably still offer a XBLA-style service for indies to show off
their stuff, and major game developers will continue to make hardcore games for
it (though probably downloadable and discless), but the generation of consoles
after that?
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| Something like that. |
Consoles like the Ouya will pick up the slack. Now we're seeing the rise of the indie
console, and the next generation indie console after the Ouya will probably
have top-shelf capabilities, and it will be the place where indie companies can
make hardcore games, to make up for the loss of Big Developer's switch to
casual and mobile.
It'll make an interesting sea-change, but I think indies
will rise in prominence and the age of big developers will wind down.
Well, at least until we get holodecks, I'm sure. Then sound will probably be important again.
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