Review 10: Expanded Game

What do you think the future of expanded game forms is?

As games expand into more and more vast quantities of genres, our very name of the media might change. Some games are designed to make you feel powerful, others to make you feel helpless and scared. Others are designed to make you think, and others are designed to relax and calm you. These games provide many varieties of experiences that often don't really mix together. And yet, they are all considered to be games.

The term 'experience' might be a better fit for what we are going to see in the future. As these experiences become more and more immersive, real emotional connections and experiences will be able to be created even more easily than before. Some will be more interactive, others will be more for observation. Once the virtual space is open for business we'll see all sorts of creations that won't really fit the definition of what we now call a game. They'll each be focused on providing a specific emotion or experience to the players.

I think the future of games is a huge branch of new genres and experiences that can have little to no connection with each other. They won't be restricted to being 'fun', or 'interactive', and can include all or any of the elements of all other media, such as film or music. This is a coagulation of all media condensed into a single format, which really makes me wonder if 'games' is the right word.