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Ben Gonshaw: Digital Media Theorist & Game Design Consultant | |
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Mature Games Industry
Page 3 of 3
We can pine for mature games. We can lament today’s me-too clone ethos, but we cannot change it until the issue of ubiquitous platform penetration has been addressed. Unfortunately it does not look likely that the interdependent cycle of console buying and game content can be broken.
However, game enabled devices are sneaking through into people’s homes and pockets without them realizing, and this will prove to be the key to mass market mature games. For now the signs are encouraging, but the battle for consumer leisure time is just starting. Mobile phones now come packed with games, many having downloadable content. Cable, satellite and digital TV have on-demand games. Eventually games machines will be in people’s homes as a matter of course, rolled into home entertainment hubs that pump movies, TV shows, music and Internet into people’s living rooms. The idea that games are a ‘normal’ thing to do is already spreading and gaining acceptance. All the signs point to games becoming very big indeed. When the integrated Home Entertainment setup blurs the conceptual boundaries between the different media further, the number of gamers will explode, many of them unaware that they are gaming.
In seven years’ time the climate may be very different from how it is now, not simply because of converging platforms and middleware. PS4 may well rule the roost and be available in TV’s, DVD players, portable systems and food processors. At the earliest you won’t see truly mature content for twelve to fifteen years. It’s a long wait, but many of us have been playing and making for much longer than that already. If we can reign in the inner child and address the intellectual and moral shortcomings of our current genres, enough innovative products may fight their way onto the shelves. When the first truly mature game arrives we may all still be playing.
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