In 5 Years, Games Experience Will Move From Discrete To Indiscrete, Says EA CEO (theverge.com) 182
The Verge has an insightful interview of Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts. In the wide-ranging interview, Wilson has talked about how the landscape of video games have changed over the years, and where it will be in the next few years. One remarkable comment he has made is about how video games will move from discrete experience that we have today to indiscrete experience in the next coming years. From the article (condensed): The biggest shift I think we'll see is games moving from being a discrete experience to an indiscrete experience. When I was 15 years old, if I wanted to listen to music, I had a couple of choices. I could sit up all night and hope they'd play what I liked on the radio, or I could go down to the record store. [...] Today, by virtue of the fact that almost every device I own plays me music, and services like Spotify curate and cultivate and personalize that music for me, music permeates almost every aspect of my life. It's moved from being something I have to make a conscious decision to engage with, to something that really surrounds every aspect of my life from the minute I get up in the morning to the minute I go to bed at night. When we think about games today -- already we've got more people playing more games on more platforms in more geographies around the world than ever before. It's not just a console business, or a PC business, or even a mobile business. We've now got virtual reality and augmented reality and streaming, too. Now fast-forward that to the future, and you think about what the world looks like with a 5G network streaming latency-free gaming to every device you own. It's really easy to imagine that games would permeate our lives much the way digital music does today. From the minute I get up in the morning, everything I do has an impact on my gaming life, both discrete and indiscrete. The amount of eggs I have in my internet-enabled fridge might mean my Sims are better off in my game. That length of distance I drive in my Tesla on the way to work might mean that I get more juice in Need for Speed. If I go to soccer practice in the afternoon, by virtue of internet-enabled soccer boots, that might give me juice or new cards in my FIFA product. This world where games and life start to blend I think really comes into play in the not-too-distant future, and almost certainly by 2021.
Interesting use of the word "indiscreet" (Score:4, Insightful)
Does he own a dictionary?
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hurt my eyes to see discrete and discreet mixed up so freely
When I still read netnews, I would periodically process the alt.personals groups to see what the homonym quotient was for that word, to see how many people were looking for a "discrete" partner. It was depressing to see how bad it was.
Re:Interesting use of the word "indiscreet" (Score:5, Insightful)
Does he own a dictionary?
If so, he should look up 'latency' - because unless he's got a solution to the speed of light in his back pocket, we're not going to have 'latency free' anything in 5 years.
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Nothing is latency free. Even the original NES through a CRT TV has 2 frames (33 ms) of latency: average 0.5 frames to read your button press, 1 to process game logic and send the results as a display list to OAM, and average 0.5 to display a particular sprite depending on how far it is from the top of the screen. I think the intended claim is that the LTE Advanced air interface combined with PlayStation Now-style servers in data centers will reduce input-to-video latency for subscribers in major cities to
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While being completely devoid of latency is physically impossible, I'd allow the flexibility of declaring anything with imperceptible latency "latency free."
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Quantum entanglement does not allow FTL communication.
There's a nice classical analogue. You have two envelopes, A and B. Flip a coin. Note the face and put it in A. Put the opposite in B. Now snail mail the envelopes to two distant locations.
If someone opens envelope A, they instantly know what the contents of envelope B is, and vice versa, without the speed of light delay required to transmit the information.
But you can't use it for communication because the outcome is always random.
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You skipped the part where you have to transmit the results of A to location B (or C). The knowledge is local to where it is discovered.
Also, how do you propose that the envelops are delivered faster than light? (not that it would constitute communication if this was possible)
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Actually 40ms is terrible for fast-paced games (Mortal Kombat, racing games, FPS).
I chose my monitor for sub-frame input latency, compared to my TV with ~40ms latency, I can feel the difference (in that I can't get the car near the limit on the TV or I spin constantly). Latencies measured with Leo Bodnar input lag tester (yes, I got so obsessed that I bought it).
40ms is accepted because there are barely any TVs that go into 20-30ms range. But I discovered this problem comparing a 2008 Dell monitor with a 20
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Actually 40ms is terrible for fast-paced games (Mortal Kombat, racing games, FPS)...
You missed the context and examples in the summary/article. What the article is describing is more like "the internet of things" gaming potential particularly for the casual gamer market, for which 40ms latency is plenty fast to integrate game mechanics into people's daily lives.
FWIW, I am a gamer and agree that for PC/console gaming 40ms is slow, but that's a very different type of gaming than what the article is talking about. I doubt we'll be playing a life-integrated Mortal Kombat game where we walk dow
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I feel this way about the now-accepted use of the word "insecure". I just assume all my systems need frequent reassurances from me.
Re:Interesting use of the word "indiscreet" (Score:5, Informative)
Possibly: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki... [wiktionary.org]
"Discrete" means something like "in separate parts", so "indiscrete" means "not in separate parts". I can only remember coming across the word in mathematics a long time ago.
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Doesn't sound like it.
But he does sound like he is really into juice.
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Interesting use of the word "indiscreet"
He used "indiscrete", not "indiscreet". That's what it says in the summary anyway, but having read through that round of buzzword bingo I don't think I'll waste my time checking TFA to see what he used there.
As to the idea of silly game elements bleeding into my everyday life... No thanks. You can keep it. They've been trying this on and off for years and it's still a nuisance at best.
I have to download your app on my phone and check it every day to fully enjoy your game? I'm looking at you, Rockstar, and y
Re:Interesting use of the word "indiscreet" (Score:4, Insightful)
Examples used were how many eggs are in your fridge and how far you drive affect your game play. That means these things are being reported to the game company to be tracked. So I think both indiscrete and indiscreet are correct.
Re:Interesting use of the word "indiscreet" (Score:4, Informative)
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It's The Verge, what do you expect? It's aimed at people who find Wired too taxing.
Ironic gamification is still gamification (Score:4, Insightful)
The obvious pushback: why should videogames influence and be informed by everything I do in my life? They're fantasies and by definition not related to real life at all.
Re: Ironic gamification is still gamification (Score:1)
Yeah really, that's what I was thinking too when I read this: what a slave-
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You're trying to understand it from the wrong point of view. Think of it from a marketing executive's POV...
Gamers push back against obvious ads in games, so we've come up with a more subtle and effective method of advertising by allowing gamers to connect the game to the smart devices in their homes.
Let's say we want to make a deal with PepsiCo to push the Game Fuel flavor of Mountain Dew. If a gamer has connected to a smart fridge, the game can detect how many bottles of Game Fuel are in the fridge. Ba
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You're trying to understand it from the wrong point of view. Think of it from a marketing executive's POV...
Oh oh, I got this one! Marketing perspective: I have a product that I really couldn't care less about and you really have no need for but I'm going to convince you that you need it so that I can sell it to you and make commissions at your expense, suckers!
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why should videogames influence and be informed by everything I do in my life?
Because the system needs to give you a reward for endless 24/7 telemetry. When EA knows how many eggs are in your refrigerator they can know when to market more eggs to you. When law enforcement knows how long it took you to travel to work, they can know if you sped getting there. And those are just little tidbits of information. When the total picture is being recorded for everyone, trending analysis can be used to insure 's
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No thanks (Score:4, Funny)
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What he's doing is linear thinking -- belief that what exists today will exist tomorrow, only stronger. It's surprising how few of those CEOs are visionaries.
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It's surprising how few of those CEOs are visionaries.
Is it, though? They're just people. If we could train and select for Vision, we would.
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Good point. What I should have said is it's surprising how many of those CEOs we expect to be visionaries.
And of course if we expect them to be visionaries they'll play along because they'd look stupid if they don't.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
What I think he's really talking about, when you read between the lines, is cross-marketing. "Hey, let's run a cross promotion where if you buy product X, you get some benefit in the game (and we get kickbacks)." We've seen it before in certain limited areas (like buy Mt. Dew, get double xp in CoD or whatever), but games where it becomes all but necessary to play? No thanks.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
100% spot-on.
It's all about marketing more crap to consumers, dependent entirely upon the ubiquity of IoT devices. I absolutely do not want my grocer or it's suppliers to know what's in my fridge. I don't want a digital profile built about how often I participate in a sport so an insurance company can buy that list and find ways to charge me more, or for a black-hat to crack that list and find out when I'm not home.
There's going to be a tremendous push for this type of thing in the coming years because traditional advertising models are not generating the numbers they once were. Magazine and newspaper subscriptions are universally down. Terrestrial radio consumption is down. People are cutting the cable tv cord more and more. Ad blockers are thwarting efforts in web advertising. It's not just tomorrow's consumers that advertisers are scrambling to find ways to reach; they want something now.
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"Magazine and newspaper subscriptions are universally down."
Why? Combination of speed of the internet and the incessant pages of ad after ad after ad....
"Terrestrial radio consumption is down."
Why. Same music on every station, boring "safe" radio "personalities" and ads ads ads....
"People are cutting the cable tv cord more and more"
Anyone remember when cable advertised itself as uncensored and "no commercials"? That sure didn't last. Not to mention the channel bundling. "Here's 200 channels no one w
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We've seen it before in certain limited areas (like buy Mt. Dew, get double xp in CoD or whatever), but games where it becomes all but necessary to play? No thanks.
While I agree with you, it's an interesting idea that people without time to play the game could get some kind of advantage from buying cross-marketed items. It would be a damned dirty shame if people who did that came out ahead of people who actually spent time playing, and let's face it we're talking about EA here, but it's still an intriguing idea.
On the other hand, I don't need anything new to distract me from driving.
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I think cross-platform games already happened, perhaps EA is behind other indie games.
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What I think he's really talking about, when you read between the lines, is cross-marketing.
What he's talking about, when you read between the lines, is a dystopian surveillance state.
Even if it's all opt-in, the mere infrastructure to so intimately intertwine the online with the offline is inherently dangerous.
Not just because there is a risk of official abuse, but also because it'd be a big shiny target for hackers.
Even the companies who should be taking the most precautions still end up making thoughtless choices like tying in-air entertainment networks into avionics systems or in-car entertain
Re:Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
I see a societal split coming. Folks a bit younger than me seem to embrace the benefits that they reap from handing over their privacy and letting everything connect with everything. Targeted ads are welcomed (then ignored) rather than causing paranoia and revulsion.
I find myself as a cranky old 39 year old tending the other way. Facebook was shutoff over a year ago, Google+ only logged into about twice, and I have ad-blockers shielding whatever I can. It costs me an extra $4 a month to get rid of Hulu ads, which I find to be well worth it. I am becoming more and more technophobic as time passes. I thoroughly do not understand the need to have a "smart" version of everything, and I am starting to really tire of the need to charge everything or replace the batteries. A mechanical kitchen scale went on my Xmas list instead of one that links with my smart phone.
It is less clear to me as to whether this is a generational difference, or if the younger set will also tire of all the inconsistent, buggy, and unsupported crap that mostly is broken quickly. Will they grow out of it as their lives get busier and they become wiser with their time and money?
Oh yeah, stay off my lawn!
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I doubt it's really an age-based thing. My assumption is some people object to trading privacy, and some do not. It doesn't seem to correlate to age (my father freely tells Google everything he does.)
I will say, that individuals are going to evaluate the tradeoff of Pay Money vs. Pay Privacy differently as they earn more money, as they grow into their careers.
Although, frankly, there are only a few times whe
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was a season 1 or season 2; episode where people are only pawns for game shows, they must use points to pay for opting out of total network intrusion into their lives. But without the points, there is no escape from a pawn existence.
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I'm not too worried about this yet. We still have to hit the intermediate step where in the next Battlefield 1 update the Turkish army is sponsored by Doritos, the blimps are now Metlife and Goodyear, medics inject you with Mountain Dew and the tanks
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First line is spot on. If my day was crappy, does that mean my gaming experience that evening must be crappy as well?
That EA fool is just talking crazy, talking to be heard, making nose. ("Any publicity is good publicity!")
Ignore the idiot.
Music can be ignored (Score:2)
music permeates almost every aspect of my life
Sure, but you can tune it out to get on with life. Games generally require all of your attention.
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I.E. almost completely not at all. (I did put a couple of tunes on the juke box in the pub about 3 weeks ago).
Not in any game experience that I'm going to buy. Oh, just a second - when did I last buy a game? I think I brought a Tomb Raider compilation (first 3 or 4 games) for a tenner about a
Indiscreet Gaming (Score:5, Funny)
In five years, my Fitbit will gauge the strength, frequency, and stamina of my masturbation to boost my character strength in World of Warcraft?!? Nerds everywhere celebrate!
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In related news, imagine Ventrilo / Teamspeak chat...
"Alright guys, I need everyone to hold off wanking it this week so that you can rub out a good five nuts on Friday to boost stats for the Friday night raid. If anyone needs recommendations, I suggest watching "Cock Hero" on Pornhub so that you can get maximum strokes per hour and exercise to cap your stat bonuses. See you guys Friday night - also drink those monster energys - make sure they're the ones linked to the in-game potions.
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My Fitbit died. Where do I rez?
I replaced it with a Pebble, actually.
How does that impact my Rep with Exodar?
Oh, great (Score:2)
only if revote trump in 4 as the other choice may (Score:2)
only if revote trump in 4 as the other choice may end the 2th rights.
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Yeah, about that... the same people that want to strip you of #2 also want to strip you of #1. Both parties are equally eager to strip all your other rights.
A candidate that wants to revoke the Patriot act and dissolve the TSA. That would be a real change.
That's spooky..... (Score:1)
And if you die in Battlefield your internet-enabled pacemaker will kill you in the couch....
As if EAs current policies and behaviour weren't troubling enough, this dystopian future they have in mind scares the bejesus out of me....
No, thanks!!
I don't get it, or it's about miserable games (Score:3, Insightful)
He lost me at the eggs changing his Sims (and similar things). It got weirder with the "One of the core reasons why we engage with games is for social interaction" comment.
I think this guy, while maybe he's good at something, either doesn't know anything about games, or he's warning everyone that if you want to do something fun, don't bother looking at the EA titles, since they'll all be networked-RL-grind-jobs. "Hey, team, I ate 3 eggs today. Anyone got a spare egg credit to trade for my mileage credit?"
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It's about an executive who has lots of preconceived notions about how "the future of gaming" will exist, and how his company will monetize that future... and too focused on his own experience to consider anything else.
This is dangerous, from a business perspective; a smaller business would probably simply struggle to survive or go under, but unfortunately for us, a company the size of EA will drive the market. Sure, a lot of his ideas are impractical and even impossible, but he'll push enough of this sort
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Good thing I don't play Sims or Battlefield or CoD or similar games. I don't first day buy games either. YouTube and Twitch play sessions are a great way to see a game and judge if it's going to be worth the price....
EA Knows Nothing About Games (Score:3)
He was constantly fighting with them to not scrap products that were sure successes.
Thus it doesn't surprise me that the board has put in a CEO that is as clueless as them.
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Years ago I worked at a company that had execs like them. We called them "the department of suck", because they somehow managed to suck the fun and creativity out of every project we worked on, often meddling with the design process in inexplicable and infuriating ways. I felt kinda bad for the designers that had to interact with them on a monthly basis.
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I was talking to Don Mattrick one day and he was saying how the EA board doesn't understand gaming. They just want to make a game exactly like the last successful game on the market. He was constantly fighting with them to not scrap products that were sure successes. Thus it doesn't surprise me that the board has put in a CEO that is as clueless as them.
Not to mention EA knows nothing about making games work. They release some of the buggiest shit on the market today and then instead of fixing it they release an addon or DLC, then bring out 2.0 of their game. So we'll have a buggy real time interactive game that after 2 years disappears because they end of life it. Suddenly you're torn out of your virtual reality and back into reality.
No no no (Score:5, Insightful)
"The amount of eggs I have in my internet-enabled fridge might mean my Sims are better off in my game."
I do not want my life merged with some bullshit gaming "experience", which will sell the details to marketers who will then exhort me to "Buy more eggs!"
This is not about a richer or more immersive gaming experience, this is about finding newer, more invasive ways to market stuff to you.
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This is not about a richer or more immersive gaming experience, this is about finding newer, more invasive ways to market stuff to you.
It's a mix. Partly it's about that, and partly it's about sheer, abject stupidity. Sometimes (often?) these people blurt out whatever random shit comes into their head.
And weirdly it's often kitchen related.
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It's basically the ultimate in pay-to-win. "Oh, you're poor and can only buy really cheap and crappy products? Let's reflect that in your escape from reality!"
Yes, EA, please do this (Score:1)
If EA does this they will be out of business in 5 years.
Let's all cheer on EA! Great idea EA! Go for it like gangbusters!
Black Mirror episode (Score:2)
That's what this guy's vision sounds like.
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Either genius, or stupid (Score:3)
This sounds like a guy who just learned about VR and augmented reality games, and thinks that it trumps all other genres. And he is taking lots of disconnected unrelated things and using them as justification for his tunnel vision. I suspect this is either genius, or really stupid because I just can't make out what the heck he is saying.
He seems to be arguing that, eventually, all video games will be casual augmented reality games. First: No, and second: even if that happens, the line of reasoning presented makes no sense.
When he starts out talking about eggs in your fridge, he is talking about targeted advertising. But the statement "This world where games and life start to blend I think really comes into play..." doesn't follow from there. Advertisers knowing your buying habits doesn't mean that those things will be gamified. Jeez, I sure hope not.
He is right about games being social, but that is only 50% of gaming. He seems to have forgotten the other half, which is that games are an escape. I like games with stories, and fantasy, and space ships, and abstract shapes. That doesn't fit with AR. I don't want to be me, I want to be someone or something totally different.
The music analogy also doesn't work. Music can be a background thing, while video games cannot. When someone listens to Pandora instead of picking a specific song, it is because they are casually listening to music and not really paying that much attention to it. That is just one small part of music. Has he forgotten that there are musical instruments? And musicians? And people who listen to a particular song over and over because it occupies their entire consciousness? It is like this is a guy who only listens to elevator music in the background and thinks that is the future of music. Video games are even less of a background thing than music. Music is cheap and lasts a few minutes while video games last for hundreds of hours. Starting a video game is an investment in time, a big choice. You get emotionally involved with characters and strategies. His proposal might work for casual players of The Sims, but that's about it.
And I sure as heck don't want people playing Need for Speed in their cars!
The latency argument doesn't make sense either since there is no known technology which will remove latency. Speed yes, latency no.
It's just self-promotion (Score:1)
Okay, now that we've gotten past the discreet vs. discrete misunderstanding, this is just "Game Executive Says Games Will Be Everywhere In Future."
Just self-promotion, nothing more.
and hit your data cap in 1 day! (Score:2)
and hit your data cap in 1 day!
Social Gaming (Score:2)
I play games to challenge myself on a personal level, not to interact with people. Social interaction happens in meatspace, everything else is abstract. If someone's idea of social interaction truly is playing an online video game, I recommend they turn it off and leave the house for at least a month. Online socializing is social masturbation.
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Why can't people play games for both reasons? I play some games for the challenge: Forza lap times. Some I played for the social elements: MMOs, FPS. Some are a mix: RTS.
Socializing online is not terrible as long as it is not the only socializing you do.
Online socializing is nice because if you have a moderate size group of friends, you are almost guaranteed to be able to instantly begin and end socializing without the painful process of organizing, and funding, a meatspace get together.
You can hop on, pla
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Online socializing is social masturbation.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
If that's the future of Video Games... (Score:2)
If the garbage in his message is the furte of video games, I'm done with video games....
Didn't we already try some of this with Wii Fit? (Score:2)
And it was exciting and fun... for about a week? Then everyone got bored of tying physical achievement to in-game tracking?
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Indiscretion as Advertised (Score:2)
So "gamification" plus access everywhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's a mistake to equate a passive activity like listening to music in the background with an activity requiring your full attention and active participation like gaming.
Just because you can do something doesn't make it a good idea, and IMO, this is one of those situations. People really don't NEED to have access to video games from the time they wake up until they go to bed, from every single device they happen to get in front of.
We've already got problems with video game addiction as it is!
I think gaming is just fine, but it's best done in one environment where you've configured an optimal experience for it. And the rest of the "hype" promised in the original article is just talking about "gamification" -- something that marketing and advertising people have been focused on for the last few years or so. "How do we take a game and tie it into real-world activities?" I think results are mixed with such things, but it's generally going to be a tool to subconsciously motivate you to do more of something in order to earn the in-game reward. If they're rewarding you for exercising, for example -- maybe that's a net positive and a valid selling point for the game. If it's rewarding you for driving your car around more, it's probably not doing anyone any real good.
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Well written thoughts. My simplified take on the idea, OH HELL NO!
Music analogy doesn't work (Score:2)
The closest you could come to his prediction is something like Pokemon Go, except you don't have to have the game running as you're walking around. It automatically buzzes your phone if there happens to be a Pokemon nearby that you haven't yet captured, giving you the option to play
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Streaming Games (Score:2)
Games Integration (Score:2)
Music seems like a bad analogy, as the requirements to play are minimal. My coffee pot probably has enough computational power to play an MP3.
Music can also be a passive experience. I can just put the headphones on and zone out. Games are, well, games. They require input.
So, no... vidya gaems will not reach the ubiquity of music.
One aspect he is somewhat correct on: games will become more integrated: console, PC, mobile, etc. will all have games that interact, if not directly. You'll have a mobile
On my Tesla (Score:2)
foreground vs background vs crap (Score:2)
Music as the background to your life is already bad enough -- poor quality sound, poor quality experience, unpaired environment, not relaxing at all, and completely unshared -- but it's the background to other things. Putting recreational gaming as the background to life is just even more stupid. 24 hours of candy crush, wonderful.
Somewhere along the way, I think this guy has forgotten the reason we play games -- not his fault, since he's obviously forgotten the reason people used to spent tens of thousan
'Music' is not just recordings. (Score:1)
I just can't get away from the fact that in the whole article/summary it seems like 'music' is seen as a consumable. Not something that we can and should all act to create.
Listening to recordings of other people making music is a passive undertaking. In fact, oftentimes playing back recordings of music into an environment is a manipulative act to calm or alter the mood of those in that environment.
I view the 'classic rock' that drones on and on in many workplace environments as 'slave songs.' The same ro
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I just can't get away from the fact that in the whole article/summary it seems like 'music' is seen as a consumable. Not something that we can and should all act to create.
Listening to recordings of other people making music is a passive undertaking. In fact, oftentimes playing back recordings of music into an environment is a manipulative act to calm or alter the mood of those in that environment.
I view the 'classic rock' that drones on and on in many workplace environments as 'slave songs.' The same rotation of songs that I heard on the radio back in the kitchen when I was a dishwasher in an Italian restaurant in 1979 is played today. It's the tunes that keep the slaves calm, singing in the cotton field. Except we don't even sing them ourselves.
The fact that somebody is allowed (part of the time) to 'choose' which recordings of music (out of a catalog of the recordings that are made available) isn't that freeing. Only if we make music ourselves do we really participate in the act.
And if the world is wall-to-wall carpeted with music already, there's no room for us to participate, and certainly little possibility of us singing 'off the track.'
Or you know, people growing up in 1979 still like those songs and, since most of them are still alive and are a significant part of the population, those song keep getting played. If you don't like it just change the station (of course most pop these days is far worse).
Although, I guess logical thought would have taken away from your quasi-political ramblings, even though your point is incredibly vague to begin with(everyone can and should make music? No, they can't/or We're all slaves? Not really, go qu
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The fact that somebody is allowed (part of the time) to 'choose' which recordings of music (out of a catalog of the recordings that are made available) isn't that freeing.
Compared to having to listen to what the DJ is paid to pay?
Compared to the limited selection of what I can afford to buy?
Sure it is.
Maybe you need to upgrade from the "free" tier of you music service.
Something missing? (Score:2)
"The amount of eggs in my fridge might mean my Sims are better off... the distance I drive to work might mean I get more juice in Need for Speed... "
Umm... mister Wilson? Neither of those ideas sounds like fun.
Gamify your life! (Score:2)
> That length of distance I drive in my Tesla on the way to work might mean that I get more juice in Need for Speed.
Seriously? Can I unsubscribe from this future?
I don't care what future you talk about... (Score:3)
...but they'll never integrate the ecosystems because kb+mouse will still forever pwn consoles.
To play the devil's advocate (Score:2)
I agree with many of the above posts: We play video games for recreation as a form of escapism and mental exercise. If we could do the things in video games - live another life, have super powers, fight terrorists with the backing of a shadow government, and so on - we would. Potentially. Unless we're having a lazy day. So the idea of my life activities being gamified and affecting my recreational play is actually a violation of my game space. It's a way to penalize me for not changing my life to suit
And to upgrade my Doom weapons ... (Score:2)
... I'll just go on a little shooting rampage.
No? Well, you lost me then.
Someone just Discovered Black Mirror (Score:3)
So he predicts a future that was pretty much portrayed in Black Mirror S01E02.... 5 years ago.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20... [imdb.com]
Passive works, active doesn't (Score:2)
It's really easy to imagine that games would permeate our lives much the way digital music does today.
There is no action (air guitar notwithstanding) needed to have music playing. Although when I visited a Disney Store once I was confronted with "music" playing the entire time. That (the wrong type of music) is a living hell.
But back to games. While we can live with music, we cannot passively play a game. A game needs input and the "twichy" ones need fast reactions which implies paying attention all the time. This is clearly impractical.
I would suggest that either this guy has a radically different view
He doesn't believe any of it (Score:2)
He's just setting up a story so he has supposed business justification for ubiquitous DRM and surveillance components in software that's supposedly for fun. In reality, he knows this Christmas season's biggest moneymaker is going to be Nintendo's Classic NES for HDMI, for exactly the opposite reasons of what he pretends to believe here. But he has to pretend to believe it, because his supercustomer masters require him to keep providing excuses for surveillance. I'm so happy I am not this man.
Monstrous (Score:1)
Stop the future, I want to get off.
Just look at the past, the answer is no (Score:2)
The so called "indiscrete" gaming is pervasive gaming. We have the tech to do it now, we had it for years in fact and it only produced one-shot gimmicks.
Let's start with the PocketStation and the Dreamcast VMU. A memory card that acts like a tiny portable console that you could use to play minigames that affects the main game. Maybe it had some success in Japan but no one I know really used it.
The DS has wireless features that allows limited interaction with the real world, and the 3DS improved on this and
Discrete activities are *good* (Score:2)
At least in my view.
What he's talking about seems to be what's already happening with TV, where the marketing people are all about the "second screen" effect, getting people to do social media things and otherwise interact with other aspects of the programme at the same time as watching the programme. This annoys the living shit out of me. I hate background TV, I hate channel-surfing in the hope that something's on, I hate doing something else or being interrupted while I'm watching TV - if I've chosen to
Do. Not. Want. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well clearly it's not going to be eggs. Because eggs don't have a brand and can't easily be pushed over another brand for the video game manufacturer's profit.