Indigo_Dingo:
It seems to me that much of gaming has achieved its peak. Graphics, controls, content, gameplay, have all seemed to reach a peak, which none of us can really perceive the next step. Would this mean that gaming ends up as the seventh generation being its last?

I'm just going to quote some famous figure whose name I forget. He was strolling on a beach with his friend, who was decrying the death of new fiction (or music, I forget that too). Nothing was new, everything good had been done before. He pointed out to the water and said "Look. The last wave has come in."

neems:
Will we start seeing computer games that are coded by other computers, with some guy at the top just feeding in his concept?

Or did I simply not get enough sleep last night?

I don't know about evolving code (as that would basically be) but procedural generation of content is coming - that is to say instead of an artist making the animations of the animals there are underlying rules that mean that any animal can automatically be animated. This is the whole point behind SPORE. Oblivion also had procedurally generated l;andscapes. Everything was automatically generated and then tweaked in important areas.

As staed by someone above the main thing is to drive dev costs down so bigger risks can be taken. Procedural content will play a part in this i am sure. Slowing down the hardware evolution would help too - though if it slows too mcuh development would cease entirely and that might not be a good thing...

flesh blood will enter the industry, so who knows.

Natural Hazard:
flesh blood will enter the industry, so who knows.

flesh blood? They going to start employing butchers to make games?

I can only hope he means fresh. :)

I don't think we have reached the peak of gaming but we may have reached the peak in terms of the development budgets for games (Halo 3 anyone?). Certainly we are reaching the limits of what can be achieved by a team of artists and designers and still have a sensible development time, but this is starting to be alleviated by things like procedurally generated content. As to the the future, who knows, I'm certainly hoping for some form of fully immersive VR experience to be available some time in my lifetime, and we seem to be getting close to it in some areas. I'm sure I read recently about technology that mimics a sense of motion by doing something to your inner ear, that would be pretty cool if it was integrated into, say a driving game.

Whether its through some form of direct brain interface (as in the matrix), goggles and suits, Otherland style hypnotic suggestion or some crazy way not even dreamed of yet there is still a huge amount to look forward to, it just may not happen as quickly as we want.

I'm seeing that the next big development stage for games will be about advertising becoming as blatant in games as it already prevails in movies/t.v. and the intraweb.

Then I hope that advertising as it stands now dies a horrible, painful death.

I hate ads, and that's what makes me download my T.V. shows as opposed to watching them on the tube. It's making me shy away from movie theatres (how long before a mid-movie intermission with a Zoom-Zoom commercial?). I would like games to move towards more of an "art" direction, but they are too "mainstream" right now for that to happen.

I would like independant games to become more prevailant, like movies. I would like people to be allowed to develop for systems without the exorbant royalty fees, even though it would allow insane crap onto systems, as it would also open the door for the truely unique games that would otherwise not be made.

I would like the almighty dollar to be less of an impact upon whether a game gets made or not, but that won't happen for a long time (if at all). Otherwise we will still be seeing NHL Hockey 2093, and it will still be what we're playing today, just a bit more flashy...

Lord_Jaroh:
I'm seeing that the next big development stage for games will be about advertising becoming as blatant in games as it already prevails in movies/t.v. and the intraweb.

Funny you should say that, actually. Trackmania Forever has just come out, and I've been playing it a bit (it's free, and it's awesome). I had been struggling to get the gold on a particular track, had played it a good few times, when I suddenly realised that there was a bloody great advert staring at me from over the finish line. I had been so focused that I completely missed it; I forget what it was for. I guess the in-game advertising model still needs some work.

Just had a check, and I can't see any now, so I guess they just slip them in occasionally or something.

Seems very unlikely this will be the top. There's still too much progress and work to be done within the environment provided some developers get off their behinds once in a blue moon. But there's still Darkfall and Duke Nuke 'em too look foward to

http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIH_enCA255CA256&q=darkfall

For anyone who's been under a rock these past 8 years

I think the biggest improvement that maybe the next generation of gaming can offer is REALISTIC CHARACTER MODELS. Aside from a few examples where it gets close (Crysis, Mass Effect), character models are still far too plastic and stiff. I want to see real free flowing hair, imperfections on facial skin, real-looking skin that doesn't shine. The CGI graphics in movies is alot more what it should be like in games, and I suspect once the horsepower matches, that's where we are headed. Nothing is more immersive than a good story, rapturous environment, and people that actually look like......people!

slyder35:
I think the biggest improvement that maybe the next generation of gaming can offer is REALISTIC CHARACTER MODELS. Aside from a few examples where it gets close (Crysis, Mass Effect), character models are still far too plastic and stiff. I want to see real free flowing hair, imperfections on facial skin, real-looking skin that doesn't shine. The CGI graphics in movies is alot more what it should be like in games, and I suspect once the horsepower matches, that's where we are headed. Nothing is more immersive than a good story, rapturous environment, and people that actually look like......people!

You'll be waiting a long time for that.

Virtual Reality Goggles and Ear Plugs...

We are hardly at the peak, it might be in view but its still a long way off.

When we are at the Peak I think Videogaming will evolve to be something else and then that will work towards its peak. This will continuie for a long time. After we are dead.

Graphics are definitely not at peak. There are so many more things you can do to make graphics look better. Characters will also have more animation clips, such as expressions, gestures and so forth. In the future games should be able to light their scenes using real life lighting techniques. Characters and events should also be visually marked by there actions, for example, if a character falls in the mud, he stays muddy and if I destroy part of a level, it will stay destroyed even after loading another level (Half-Life's bullet holes don't disappear as long as you're in the same level. I carved a smiley face with the crowbar.)

Real world lighting will be implemented and look incredibly realistic. From reflection, caustics, or being absorbed altogether, all these will be mathematically accurate. I believe that sub-surface scattering will be taken advantage of more often (both in textures and sub-models), that way everything doesn't look entirely like plastic.

I think models with higher polycount will look a lot better. Bumpmaps today(to me) look really rigid and I'd like to see a day where artist won't have to texture bake the crap out of their original high-res model. The magic of computer hardware should allow new modeling techniques, for example, long hair looks ridiculously fake. There are ways to solve this but it simply can't be rendered in real time yet. If people don't believe video games are an art form, make them believe.

People often ask that the peak is reached when the graphics look as real as life itself but I believe artist will take it further by being surreal and using snazzy special effects. I would also like to see the capabilities of using different styles of graphics (Wind-Waker, Mario Galaxy, Okami examples) or different "art styles."

Load times will always be there, as games get more complex, load times get longer, and we always make this sacrifice.

AI can be improved. I like the idea of having an AI figure out your attack pattern, then adjust it's difficulty to your skill level, It won't sell since people always play on the hardest difficulty available. I for one predict that they will react depending on how they are acted upon. For example, if you shoot an enemies leg, they may figure out how to limp and crawl, while blowing off someone's arm makes them resort to using pistols only while their arm drags realistically depending on where you hit them.

on-line interaction will be improved, here are some predictions. Today we have patches, tomorrow we should be able to download new features and other stuff over the internet more often. For example, in a racing game, developers would make new levels, missions, vehicular accessories and games like smash bros would allow you to download new characters, levels and so on (referring to Brawl Royal post). Voice recognition software could also pick up the amount of bad language per time (f*ck,S*it,n00b,cheap,hack) and boot them off once the limit is exceeded.

Controls then. Nintendo made a brilliant move by innovating the controls (Nintendo haters, at least admit it's a good idea in theory). It would be a lot more fun to swack, tilt, or roll the controller rather than just pressing buttons. People could definitely make more games that call for this kind of stuff. There are all sorts of intuitive control combinations, you just have to use your imagination.

In terms of actual game design, we have other threads for that so I'll end my post here.

Indigo_Dingo:
It seems to me that much of gaming has achieved its peak. Graphics, controls, content, gameplay, have all seemed to reach a peak, which none of us can really perceive the next step. Would this mean that gaming ends up as the seventh generation being its last?

Woah, what?

Graphics, sure, why not (although everyone says that at the release of every next-gen console)... but control, content, and gameplay?

We've taken dozens of steps back in terms of control, content, and gameplay. Very few games over the last few gens have ever controlled better than what we saw on the Genesis and SNES. The introduction of dozens of extra buttons that aren't needed, analog sticks that control terribly, etc.

You'll note that the majority of controllers mimic the SNES controller to this day, minus the Wiimote. And, even then, the Wiimote does an excellent job at mimicking an advanced NES controller.

Content? No, not even close. Again, we've gone a step in the wrong direction. Take a look at the Tom Clancy series. The original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon had more features than all of the others. Most games are beatable in a sitting or two with replay value consisting of "FIND ALL OF THE HIDDEN ITEMS" or "TRY IT AGAIN ON EXTREME!" That's not content, that's fake replay value.

Gameplay? No way. We haven't seen any advances in gameplay since the first set of 3D consoles. The Wii has done a decent job at spicing things up, but it still feels gimmicky.

Gameplay lies in the control and graphics. Once we hit 3D there wasn't really much else that could be done. Yay, we can race in 3D now. Yay, platformers in 3D. Yay, RTS in 3D. Yay, RPG in 3D. Etc. Since we've been using the same controllers over the past 13 some years there's not much else we can do.

We've been in an extreme innovation rut over the last dozen or so years. Instead of getting excited over Mario 64, we're getting excited over Halo 3, Smash Bros Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, GTA4, CoD 4, etc... all of these games we've played before. We, very rarely, get excited for anything new or original.

Look at how Okami did in sales.

this is why bioshock was such an influencial game, it created a deep and compelling world. it made videogames into much more of a medium for ideas. i want to see video games give good stories now that we have all the technical stuff down.

Everyone knows the world ends in 2012 anyway, so we better hurry up and hit our peak. It's not a peak without a decline on the other side.

Actually, this is just my way of saying "peak" is not really a reasonable word to use in this discussion. Of course games haven't hit their "peak". Just like movies haven't, books haven't, photography hasn't, art hasn't. Because there's nothing to "peak", it just changes overtime to something else. Organically.

Credge:
Gameplay lies in the control and graphics. Once we hit 3D there wasn't really much else that could be done. Yay, we can race in 3D now. Yay, platformers in 3D. Yay, RTS in 3D. Yay, RPG in 3D. Etc. Since we've been using the same controllers over the past 13 some years there's not much else we can do.

So there's not much else you can do in 2D either? If somone comes up with a good idea that no one thought of back in the day, I'm sure most people would prefer it 3D. Imagine if Bioshock or Portal was like Wolfinstine or Doom.

We can also go backwards, as a way of going forwards.

yeah, it's really presumptuous to say that games can go no further, or even to assume that now is the best time gaming has ever had. If you look back 10-15 years, we see a much greater breadth of new ideas being explored compared to today. Not to sound all doom and gloom, there will certainly be gems among the chaff, but I can't help but think that the the atmosphere in the gaming world today is not as fertile as it was in the nineties, when it was feasible for companies to take risks with new and clever things.

Well i dont think gamings at a peek the average game is only 10-15 howers long that could be sorted out. you could have some v.r or even just less buggy games some sort of way to detect cheating and glitching but well this probobly isnt as simple as it seems.
Unless you have hundercover gamers, if you cheat, glitch and they catch you then you got some explaining to do.

Mr.Expendable:
Virtual Reality Goggles and Ear Plugs...

big circular tv and earphones?