Speculation on Gaming’s Future

Three popular gamers got together with Redherring to talk about the chemistry of gaming so to speak: why it’s so popular, what the future holds, what the ultimate game would have, and more. It’s definitely a good read with the kind of speculation that’s insightful and interesting. Here’s a whiff:

RH: Well the question is if the technology that is delivering all these great graphics, will that by itself draw more people into gaming
Bruce Shelley: When I worked with [veteran game designer] Sid Meyer [now at Firaxis Games], we generally put graphics way down the list. It was like the game had to be fun. Graphics, we won’t worry about that. If it’s fun, people play. Almost like Dennis was saying. They’re just interested in the speed and the competition. But our company has put a heavy emphasis on graphics, to get everyone’s attention. Nobody knew our company, no one knew our game, we wanted to sell a publisher, we wanted to sell the game to the press, and we wanted to sell the public. People that have a great-looking game were the way to go. And I think that was a smart decision, and I think we’re always going to try to make our games stunningly attractive. But, stunningly attractive only gets people so interested. If the game is not absorbing, intellectually absorbing, the you lose them. Game design, in a sense, hasn’t changed for thousands of years. You’ve got to provide the player with interesting things to do.

On a tangent:
I was going to say something here, but I’m now taking that a step further in writing an article, that I hope one of the dev. sites will take a look at. =) I’ll be sure and post a link to the article on game design here at some point if it makes it. In essence, this guy is right. The graphics are important, though they can’t survive alone.