The Gaming Outpost

The 21st century is nearly upon us and I, for one, am disappointed. When I was younger, I was sure we would have flying cars by now. Flying cars, vacations to the Moon, orbital hotels, and the end of the world with the Four Horsemen riding all over everything. And, what have we actually got? This Y2K thing and an upcoming election staring Al Gore and a Bush-man. So, I need to turn my sights elsewhere for a true sense of “the future.” But where? Games. (Did you really expect me to say something like advances in medicine or the invention of an ecologically safe herbicide?)

Anyway, games are one area that I can get excited about. As much as people are predicting bad things for the future of gaming, I think we still have a lot of room to grow. How can someone say the industry is hurting when we have companies like Atlas Games and Pinnacle Entertainment Group cranking out amazing products at a regular rate? The industry has been around for over twenty years; it’s not going away.

But where is it actually going? For an industry as old as ours, gaming has changed relatively little. With the exception of the advent of collectable card games, there have been no revolutionary steps, only evolutionary ones. That only begs the question, “Where does gaming evolve to in the next twenty years?” My answer: Online. The Internet is the future of gaming. Gaming is a social activity and, whether we like it or not, the Internet will be the social medium of the next decade. It’s “cool,” it’s “hip,” and it’s getting faster. It allows people to communicate across long distances for a tiny fraction of what they would pay if talking on the phone. Six months or a year ago, this wouldn’t have been practical. The average net connection was slow enough that any attempt to have real-time communications was met with pops and crackles and lag. Now, however, the faster connections are being made more widely available. DSL – the technology being employed by yours truly – is ten times faster than a modem and doesn’t cost all that much. Add to this the low cost of digital cameras and it becomes more than possible to have true conference calls with your friends complete with full motion video.

Still, there are problems with the above scenario. After all, what fun is it to game when you can’t actually throw dice at problem players? Not being in the same room as the rest of the group does severely cut down on the social aspect. Yet, there’s no reason you can’t continue to game this way for years to come. The Internet only serves as another option. One of the biggest problems with gaming is the number of players and amount of time involved. I know from personal experience – as I’m sure do all of you – that organizing a gaming session around everyone’s schedules can be a nightmare. Not to mention, it’s often difficult to even find players in the first place. That’s the beauty of the Internet. A perfect analogy is the success of online multiplayer deathmatch. Not everyone has a LAN to play their friends on. And, not everyone wants to play Quake 2 at a time when their friends do. Now, however, all they have to do is load up GameSpy, click on a server, and they’re ready to frag to their heart’s content.

The Critical Hit forum has been having a discussion about the future of gaming and how to make RPGs available to a wider market. Hal Mangold’s Listen Up is probably the answer. Not only does the Internet – and, more specifically, PDF technology – allow for wider distribution, but it also allows for people without the financial resources to start their own company to get their games out there for the public to see.

These are exciting times for gaming. Our little hobby is all lined up to get a lot bigger.