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Koko Ricky

Gaming in 2035

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So let's project 20 years into the future. In the past, I've made speculations about future tech and what typically happens is that a handful of folks are completely unable to differentiate between curious speculation and absolutist assertions, so instead I'm going to approach this thought experiment a different way. I've come up with a few basic directions gaming might go in and wonder which of them will be most likely based on the opinions of this forum. So, what will gaming be like in two decades?

A) Essentially identical to today's industry, only the hardware will be more powerful and the inputs will be more responsive.

B) Consoles exist alongside (or are replaced by) powerful, small, lightweight VR devices that can respond to a number of inputs including thought and gesture based actions.

C) TVs essentially become high-end PCs that sit in your living room, eliminating the need to have external consoles. All of the hardware needed for modern gaming is contained in the TV. Mobile devices are equally as powerful and are directly compatible with the TVs.

D) Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo continue to produce software, but exit the console business. They begin to, like other major electronics corporations, focus on flexible "all in one" devices (exploiting powerful materials like diamond nanothreads and graphene) which can change form and function depending on the user's needs.

E) "All in one devices" come 10 years early; by the time 20 years have passed, we have moved on to microscopic wetware, which could be achieved through a non-invasive injection of nano machines into the bloodstream that would bypass the blood/brain barrier and allow you to run software as part of a hallucination your brain generates. You upgrade by receiving new injections and the nano machines are charged by wireless wifi connections which will be found in most places.

So obviously, A) is the most unsurprising, but also the most unlikely. Things are changing too fast for it to be almost exactly like it is today. E) is the most outlandish, but internal wetware has been talked about for decades, so it's likely to happen at some point, even if it's many decades down the road. I'm perhaps a bit overly confident that we'll be seeing the first prototypes of that kind of tech by 2035 or earlier. I like option D) because people like having fewer devices, not more. I also feel that all of these scenarios will probably include surfaces (everything from walls to tabletops) which have strong computing ability; these surfaces will be located everywhere and some could be used for gaming.

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I believe there will still be a dedicated scene for old games, that is Doom will still be around and people will still be releasing NES games. Hopefully by then our currently DRMed and locked consoles end up having laughable standards by 2035 and said protection systems have completely been reversed by then.

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A mixture of the first 3.

A because that leads into B and things tend to stay the same if there's nothing acting against it. People still watch movies in generally the same way even after one hundred years,

B Because VR is neat as fuck and has a ton of potential application in education. Horror games too, obviously. Though gesture-based input like the Kinect is likely to never catch on outside of VR, though it may return occasionally as per 3D. Because something like that is pricey and adds little at all to most games, and consumers generally dislike it.

C Somewhat, because as great and fancy as an all-in-one device is it loses a lot of the ease of maintenance and upgrading like a modular setup does, compare a laptop to a desktop. There's also the matter of price on both ends of manufacturing decent displays to go along with decent hardware and buying the thing, it'd also make the TV itself larger, heavier, and harder to cool.

D I could imagine Nintendo being more likely to aim for multimedia in such a case, somewhat like a video-game centric Disney. Sony seems the most likely to do what you say, as they manufacture all sorts of other general hardware. Microsoft would probably be the most likely to leave outright.

E is the most unlikely because nanomachines are a potentially very dangerous technology, and would probably be used almost exclusively in medical applications, regulated and available with prescription, or in manufacturing. Something that can be programmed to alter your mind is a fucking mess in and of itself, in a situation like that you'd have to inject and update nanomachines just to keep out the malicious ones, effectively creating a secondary immune system. Might even become a part of natural biology on earth if it infects other species as well.

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I suspect there will be a niche community of people who love old hard/software. Even 20 years from now, there will be no shortage of equipment and downloads. Probably we will just print out old CRT sets and SNESs and carts and shit. Don't know what the copyright issue with this would be.

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This past BLack Friday the Sega Genesis and an Atari console were just sent back onto the market. ALthough they were both preloaded with games, they also contained (supposedly uopgraded) cartridge slots so you could use old cartridges still. PLus the NES and SNES gets re-released every once in a while, and seeing that they commonly become harder to find (Harder to find than the original console in some cases), I think 2035 will still see a number of dedicated Retro Gamers playing their old consoles. Hell, maybe even CRT TVs may have a niche comeback for some audiences, and maybe even some kind of limited edition set just for it.

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Like I said, I think 3D printing will play a major role. It'll be a novelty, but one that a huge chunk of certain demographics in the future will want. They'll be like vinyl records are now. I actually feel very confident that retro gamers will have a way to play their old games--authentically, too--even 20 years from now. May actually be more prominent than now because of the printing.

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Gaming will consist of playing with sticks and poorly crafted clay balls. The Earth is fucked and nukes will ensure you won't be gaming on any electronic device by then. Only a select few deemed wealthy will have such technology. Okay, maybe not by 2035, but I'd be willing to bet on 2055. I'll be long gone by then. Yayyyyy!!!!!

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You know, I'm actually going to bookmark and save the link to this thread. One day in 2035 I'm going to come back to this. Dead serious. I think these are interesting ideas and I honestly can't even begin to imagine gaming twenty years from now at the current rate technology is progressing. I remember first playing Doom 3 and thinking nothing could possibly look better than that. I thought gaming had reached the pinnacle. Yet now Doom 3 is completely dated. I know Carmack claims we've hit "perfection" when it comes to photo realistic texturing but there's always room for improving frame rate. One day we could experience 60 fps photorealistic graphics on an oculus rift. That would be pretty crazy. You know, it would be funny to bump this thread 20 years later but who knows if Doomworld will still be around. Who knows if I will still be around. Who knows if I'd get banned for bumping a thread that old. Who knows! But it's cool to think about. One day...

And now to actually reply. I think B and D are the most likely scenarios. I could see Microsoft releasing a sort of "Super Xbox" that can do basically everything all in one. Hell, the Xbox One basically does that already. But like you said smaller size and increased flexibility would be the next step up.

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RUSH said:

I remember first playing Doom 3 and thinking nothing could possibly look better than that. I thought gaming had reached the pinnacle. Yet now Doom 3 is completely dated. I know Carmack claims we've hit "perfection" when it comes to photo realistic texturing but there's always room for improving frame rate. One day we could experience 60 fps photorealistic graphics on an oculus rift.

What exactly are the near-future solutions for realistic heat dissipation for these amazing machines that are ever on the horizon? This seems to me to be the most poignant problem with hardware that I don't think I've seen a real remedy for aside from literally using the oceans as a giant heat sink.

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Wow, that was something you don't see every day.

Anyways, I'm not quite sure what they'd do to deal with the heat issue, now that you mention it.

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Quast said:

What exactly are the near-future solutions for realistic heat dissipation for these amazing machines that are ever on the horizon? This seems to me to be the most poignant problem with hardware that I don't think I've seen a real remedy for aside from literally using the oceans as a giant heat sink.


This is a really good question. I haven't looked into it yet, so my speculation on that is ignorant at best. I suspect that we'll find ways to manipulate matter so as to steadily decrease heat usage. Probably we'll have to make extremely efficient hardware that generates very little heat. Distributed computing has been a thing for decades...perhaps in the future, computers will draw processing power from other computers, and the cloud, and the resulting heat ends up being distributed rather than concentrated.

As for graphics...I figure in 20 years, we'll be 99.99% there as for as photorealism goes. Movement, especially of humans, will be a bit closer to the real thing than the best Hollywood movies are now. I think we'll see an essential absence of digital artifacts like chunky textures, clipping, missing shadows, etc. There will also be games that are highly stylized and they'll essentially look like dreams or cartoons.

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Predict anything that seems feasible and you just might be right with interesting surprises along the way. But when you do, always bare in mind that gamers will always enjoy space, comfort, privacy and good audio for hours at a time. So any prediction behind the PC or console vanishing is very unlikely. Change significantly perhaps, but not going anywhere. Controllers, mice and keyboards are far too useful and convenient to phase out regardless if VR or general controls becomes capable of being used without physical movement. Not in 10 to 20 years anyway.

I could foresee Mobiles becoming so powerful that both Consoles and PCs alike will support the platform even further. I'm predicting many AAA titles and Indies alike will be downloadable and run on a Mobile but can near instantly displayed on any television, console and/or PC screen with the appropriate connectivity support.

I also think MMOs will become something entirely new and ambitious, bringing a whole new generation of digital addiction, ethical debates and amazing games.

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Gaming in 2035 would be the act of fighting global warming. :)

Science is getting realy scary with its numbers and years... so i think Gaming should seriously decline and the more important things should come first by the time we reach 2035.

But... graphics * 20 * energy consumption * 4 * price * 2. lol.

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GoatLord said:

I don't think I've ever been so confused on this forum.


Maybe you're confused because you keep hitting that blunt?

Anyways, gaming in 2035 will consist of super advanced virtual reality where the line between reality and the virtual world become blurred. The world of course will be very different by that point, we will have flying cars and jetpacks, and the world we be ruled by a race of vicious Otters.

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Piper Maru said:

Maybe you're confused because you keep hitting that blunt?

Anyways, gaming in 2035 will consist of super advanced virtual reality where the line between reality and the virtual world become blurred.


Even as a troll and joke on the topic it remains kind of lame. We are already in 2015, and Almost in 2016. Rougly 20 years.

I sense another stalemate coming up like with the old Pentium 4. No true progress for many years next to some visual upgrades and a VR helmet for that fake VR ordeal where you have a screen in front of your eyes. The cost of processors will rise as the resources to produce them are dwindling, the planet its temperature will rise a lot... thus creating other priorities than gaming, and the eventual repeat of the ever returning economical crash throwing some sticks into its wheels. On top of that one cant keep adding "cores" to a single chip. Most prgrammers are already known to be struggling a lot with core based threaded programming. Eventually the planet might also run out of people whom have the financial ability or mindset to be able to pay 100$ per month on damn streamers playing a damn game, so that market will slow down too. (its a lot, i know.)

give or take. But the future might not be more than bleak for the newborn future gamers from the now.

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GoatLord said:

As for graphics...I figure in 20 years, we'll be 99.99% there as for as photorealism goes. Movement, especially of humans, will be a bit closer to the real thing than the best Hollywood movies are now. I think we'll see an essential absence of digital artifacts like chunky textures, clipping, missing shadows, etc.


Sometimes I wonder... companies today want to make the most realistic graphics as possible (you know, the big ones). And It's not simply about hardware parameters, it's about a artistic ideal. One day, they will achieve it with perfection. And then what?

I think then they will start to explore other types of languages. I know it's a strange parallel, but if you take art history as an example you will see that realism (in visual art) developed itself to a point were they achieved everything they wanted. So they began to explore other ideas too and they expanded their work beyond the boundaries.

I'm not saying that things will happen the same way, since we always had indie developers (and big titles too) working with different ideas. But one day the realistic goal will be achieved anyway, and then something new will happen.

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All games in 2035 will be photo realistic one-button-to-win games. There will be no game play, no fail states, no score. All games will either be 9/10 or 10/10 (bad or good). There will be no story, because story leads to othering particular individuals. PC gaming will be extinct and all games will be on smart phones. All games will be owned by EA. Indie game production will be illegal. Micro-transactions.

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Mechazawa said:

All games in 2035 will be photo realistic one-button-to-win games. There will be no game play, no fail states, no score. All games will either be 9/10 or 10/10 (bad or good). There will be no story, because story leads to othering particular individuals. PC gaming will be extinct and all games will be on smart phones. All games will be owned by EA. Indie game production will be illegal. Micro-transactions.


Are you being sarcastic? Because I think that things can get better after a while, not the opposite.

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Piper Maru said:

Maybe you're confused because you keep hitting that blunt?

Anyways, gaming in 2035 will consist of super advanced virtual reality where the line between reality and the virtual world become blurred. The world of course will be very different by that point, we will have flying cars and jetpacks, and the world we be ruled by a race of vicious Otters.


Nah, I was confused because initially, this thread was immediately helled, despite no one saying anything weird, and then after I complained about it, it was immediately resurrected. I just didn't expect anyone to actually be on my side.

FireFish said:

Even as a troll and joke on the topic it remains kind of lame. We are already in 2015, and Almost in 2016. Rougly 20 years.

I sense another stalemate coming up like with the old Pentium 4. No true progress for many years ... On top of that one cant keep adding "cores" to a single chip. Most prgrammers are already known to be struggling a lot with core based threaded programming.


We're probably going to see another paradigm. Vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors and likely something will supersede transistors. Right now we're aimed at stacking one nanometer thick chips on top of each other, which will be okay for awhile. But what we really need is something faster that generates less heat. Quantum computers, which are getting cheaper and more stable each year, might be a possible candidate. I think right now things seem like a technological stalemate, but that's because all of this crazy shit is in development right now, and it'll take years to see the payoff.

I think maybe we'll also see more computing being sent to the cloud. There is software that is taking advantage of this, allowing for far more processing than the hardware running it could ever achieve. Also, remember the thread I made about cybernetic roses? If we actually end up turning organisms like plants and trees into computing devices, they could serve as additional wireless servers/connections for computing power.

Noiser said:

Sometimes I wonder... companies today want to make the most realistic graphics as possible (you know, the big ones) ... One day, they will achieve it with perfection. And then what? ... I think then they will start to explore other types of languages and aesthetics ... if you take art history as an example you will see that realism (in visual art) developed itself to a point were they achieved everything they wanted. So they began to explore other ideas too and they expanded their work beyond the boundaries.


Video games started out, visually, as completely abstract, and for the last 40 years we've seen a steady rise in detail and realism. We're now seeing more and more indie games (and occasionally AAA titles) that are trying out different aesthetics and this trend will continue. Once we have the power to create exactly what we want, combined with extremely complex physics simulations, we'll start to see entirely new art forms materialize out of the gaming industry.

Total photorealism is useful first sports games, FPSs, simulators, etc. But I can picture RPGs, MMOs, retro games, SHMUPs, RTSs and platformers taking on a number of different art styles influenced by art history and animation.

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Hopefully they will get rid of the awful PS layout by that time, I never liked how both sticks are together on the bottom.

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The playstation 2 dual shock controller will always remain the best design i have ever played with in terms of controllers. The simple thumb and finger firendly layout, the "fits " well in most people their hands, and so on. It took a crap upon the giant "killing tool" they called an xbox controller.

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FireFish said:

It took a crap upon the giant "killing tool" they called an xbox controller.

Any controller will take a crap on the XBOX 1 controller, the 360 controller was an improvement over it.

I found the Gamecube controller layout more acceptable than PS2's controller layout.

Having both sticks on the bottom can be very uncomfortable, and the D-Pad is hardly ever used so one of the sticks should've been there instead. You need to have symmetry between one stick for movement and buttons for actions for more accessibility.

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Do not lie for yourself, for in the Spider Future of the Spider year 20spider35 in the Spider Marine Base of the UASpider, you too will have Spider arms.

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I can't see control pads like the ones we have today being anything other than novel within 20 years. Right now, pads and mice and keyboards give us the best overall control, but that's because motion sensitive inputs, as well as experimental thought-based inputs, are in their infancy. They're kind of where control pads were about half a century ago. Hell, they're less stable than that. They're the novelty at the moment. I think that two decades of research will yield the first wave of unconventional inputs that actually rival what works best now. Future games will be complex in very subtle ways that won't work well with buttons and thumbsticks, so they'll need to be played through inputs that can track our pupils, read our thought commands, respond to gesturing and speech, etc.

FireFish said:

The playstation 2 dual shock controller will always remain the best design i have ever played with in terms of controllers. The simple thumb and finger firendly layout, the "fits " well in most people their hands, and so on. It took a crap upon the giant "killing tool" they called an xbox controller.


I'm not a fanboy for any particular company's hardware, but I have to say that I have not had a more satisfying experience than with that controller.

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