The Future of Gaming

It seems gaming has got a lot of press in the last year hasn’t it?  It seems we’ve stretched the definition of gaming to include things big, small, and those must have features that make your content sticky.  Ontario has been making a huge contribution to the local digital media scene and it appears we’ve gone to war with the world to be at the top of the video game creators mountain!  Even here in Waterloo Region we are taking it to the next level by introducing the new Digital Media Hub, putting money towards an assortment of digital media companies, and hoping to transform the region and draw in new talent!

A lot of exciting stuff is happening around here in both Waterloo Region and Ontario, and I believe that now is the best time to start a video game company! Everything is coming together and the support is just building and building! That being said, talking about gaming can be hard because it’s such a huge topic, but I’m going to be focusing on what I believe to be the not-so-distant future of PC & browser based gaming, and that’s playing full-on AAA titles right in your browser.  Yes, you heard me right, playing the big games right in your browser, without having to go to Steam to download the digital content, without having to wait for 6 gigabytes to download, without even having to go through one big portal site.  I’m talking about a new technology being pioneered by Instant Action.  Oh and you can also play other games as well, the kind that Flash won’t do.

Instant Action is a new platform upon which game creators can embed their full titles into a YouTube like window in any web page, blog post, or Facebook app.  Imagine seeing a video window where within minutes you can start playing some new exciting high end game, where you can grab embed code and share it on your blog for others to see, where you can play for the first level and decide if you want to pay for the next one and rent to own the game?

You might be thinking, that’s not possible, or how could anything be instant for huge games?  Without getting too technical, Instant Action is using their proprietary technology to “chunk” the game code such that you can start playing the full game within a few minutes while it does a combination of streaming and downloading of the next few chunks onto your machine so that when you get to the edge of that first downloaded chunk, you can keep playing, it’s like streaming a movie and watching it with only a few minutes of lead time on the progress bar.  For most people this will look like magic, people will wonder how you can play such an amazing game simply in the browser, they might not realize they are downloading part of the game and just using their local machine to run it, but they will love it.  You can easily full screen the application and check out the controls as well.  The only drawbacks that might slow the adoption is the need to download a plugin for the platform to work, but for those serious about playing this may not prove to be as huge a hurdle as the company’s reputation is built up throughout the gaming community.

This new distribution model changes a lot of things for the game creators as it allows them to completely bypass the brick and mortar store front, and it chops off the used games market, which is one of the biggest killers to any game studio.  Another great feature of this platform is that it allows for new models of try before you buy.  Studios can opt to allow a certain amount of free play time, or the first x levels, and from there the user can buy the next hour, the next level, or something of that nature without having to commit to buying something they may decide they don’t like after a few hours of further play.  It’s great for those who want to get a taste of everything, for those who want to quickly and easily buy upgrades, power ups and expansions, and it will take the sour taste out of the gamer’s mouth who just purchased a game that felt like the same thing over and over.  I believe this will help and force studios to develop better game that aren’t super-repetitive or built around one mechanic that is initially cool, but gets boring after a few minutes.

The Instant Action platform will allow studios to push their games out online and it will let their own consumers market the snot out of the game for them with the easy embeddable YouTube like windows.  Buying a game allows user to play and download anywhere, from any machine, and the payments and transactions are all handled by the platform allowing studios to focus on making the best games they can while the platform handles the money and integration.

We’re going from a world where not long ago we had to drive to the store to buy our PC games to a world where you could buy your games from digital stores like Steam and Impulse to a world where soon you won’t have to download a client and browse a store, you’ll just stumble upon full games embedded in offical press releases and the posts from your favourite game bloggers.  Guaranteed as soon as a game hits you’ll see it everywhere and chances are you’ll be playing it before you even thought about if you ever would have tried it in the first place, let alone bought it.  Think about the new audience and class of rent-to-own gamers sinking money into games they might have never even looked twice at, and those who don’t even consider themselves gamers.  Not only will studios start reaching larger and larger audiences, they’re games are going to be fueled by a viral spread of hobby and professionally written reviews, each with it’s own embedded window to the game.

Making it as easy as possible for consumers to start experiencing the action will definitely be a boon to the video game industry.  The simpler and easier it gets for consumers to try and buy, the more sales there will be, the more impulse buyers it will hit, and the more new gamers it will make.  Not to mention that Instant Action came prepared for this new wave of frenzied consumption by allowing gamers to play free trials with rent-to-own options making it possible to now profit from those who would have never paid for the full game and for those who never had any alternatives.

So is this going to be the future of gaming on the PC?  I believe so.  Think about how FarmVille got so successful, think about how many people decided to try the game just because it was there, super easy to access and because all of their friends were already playing it?  Even those who would never consider themselves gamers give it a try.  Now imagine this scenario again but with actual games with real content and value.  I think you can do that math on your own.

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For more information on InstantAction, just Google them and also look up Louis Castle, the CEO (Co-founder of Westwood Studios), he has some great interviews.