Develop 2010: Louis Castle laid out his intelligent vision for the future landscape of the games business and David Helgason explains why games are everywhere at Evolve.
Having observed the music industry’s failure to react quickly enough to the effects of the internet, the games industry has be courting alternative business models to save themselves before the bubble bursts.
In his keynote speech at this year’s Develop Conference, held in Brighton from July 13-15, CEO of InstantAction, Louis Castle explained that the internet, and its potential avenues for content distribution, should be taken more seriously by the games business.
“All gaming, casual to premium, has been or will be disrupted by internet technology,” he said.
The convergence of games and social networks was a major focus in his talk. Where and how games are found is changing, and in his words, the future of gaming is “discoverable, sharable and free.” This view was underlined by his new venture: InstantAction, a browser-based gaming service that allows users to try before they buy and embed games in blogs and social networks.
“People want their entertainment free. That doesn’t mean they won’t pay for it, they don’t want to have to pay to try it,” said the co-founder of Westwood Studios and former VP of creative development at EA.
“Games don’t have to be free in their entirety, but they have to be free to be discovered.”
He suggested this as part of how we use entertainment media today, such as social networks. RSS feeds, embedded video clips and recommendations are all instances of content coming to the user through editorial systems and user sharing.
“I’m not saying I have the solution, I’m saying I’ve indentified the problem,” he said, using Facebook and Zynga as examples of better user experiences and the type of “ubiquitous content sharing” that he hopes to see with InstantAction.
Castle said “the death of consoles isn’t going to happen,” arguing that there will always be people looking for premium experiences like Halo and Call of Duty. He advised publishers to offer more incentives to consumers to buy games new. Recent trends to include a one-time use DLC code for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Mass Effect 2’s Cerberus Network are one way of combating the used game market in the short term he said.
Freeing games from the diminishing returns of brick-and-mortar is something Castle is a strong advocate of. While game streaming services, like Gaikai and Onlive, are on the horizon, Castle believes more can be done to expand the user experience. “We must use the internet to disrupt our business.”
Games are everywhere
Louis Castle’s keynote set the tone for the opening Evolve conference that focused on online, mobile and social gaming platforms. During the day there were a number of talks by developers, tools and services providers examining what the future might hold for interactive entertainment.
‘Gamification’ was a term on more than one speaker’s lips as a way of explaining our growing fascination with turning everyday tasks into games. The concept has existed for some time and refers to the adaption of technology and game design methods beyond the games industry. For example, Foursquare the location-based social app rewards users every time they ‘check-in’ at venues.
Gabe Zichermann, author of Game-Based Marketing, had some distinctions to make about gamification during his session. He argued that games and services like Foursquare are part of a behavioural change turning people into ‘game thinkers’. Game thinkers understand that rewards don’t always have to be financial and keeping score is socially acceptable. He did stress however that gamification isn’t necessary about games for good, serious games or ‘games’ as we know them today.
In the day’s final keynote address, CEO of Unity, David Helgason also explained how gamification holds benefits for technology and, ultimately, the economy.
He reaffirmed how gamification applies to the use of game design in non-games, like Foursquare and Mint, and went on to say that gamification of technology can be seen in military training, medical simulators and social spaces. The iPhone App Store and Facebook games, like Zynga’s Farmville, are the third gamification trend he indentified. This has prompted other services like Hi5 and MySpace to evolve into game platform themselves. In essence, games will soon be everywhere.
Helgason described this change as a perfect storm that will “enable more people to create new experiences.” The increased number of people studying game development courses was evidence to how this change might continue. As a result of these trends, Helgason said gamification is the process where games are a primary economic driver for new platforms and ecosystems.
The consensus from many at the conference was that this year’s watchwords of discoverability and gamification clearly showed how the web and mobile technology are changing entertainment.
Aaron Lee
Photo: Bastion
Tags: develop, gamification, instantaction, louis castle, online, unity
