Creative Business-Computer Games

CREATIVE BUSINESS - COMPUTER GAMES:The only limit is imagination Advancing technology now allows computer gamers to move beyond linear storytelling to multi-player virtual reality games, increasingly played online says Robert Kotick, Activision CEO By ROBERT KOTICK

Remember the 1981 breakthrough game Pitfall, with its primitive graphics? The first games were embedded into hardware, with the rules, actions and images laid out as circuits. The visual effects were crude to say the least.

The visual quality of games improved only gradually despite pure hardware applications giving way to software applications on a console. Each era of game evolution was defined by the number- crunching capacity of the processor: the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985, the 16-bit NEC TurboGraphix-16 and Sega Genesis in 1989, and the 32-bit Sega Saturn in 1994. But game icons were limited to stylized caricatures in an XY-axis world. Nintendo's Mario yanked two-dimensional coins out of the air, and Donkey Kong ate flat bananas.

This all changed in 1995, when the Sony PlayStation launched games with first-person perspective and motion in three-dimensional space. For the first time, the appearance of games hinted at the look of reality. Storage changed too. The cartridge was replaced with a 600Mb compact disc with the ability to deliver CD-quality audio and television-quality video. The next machines - Sony PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube - set off competition among game developers to reach for realism. Sports characters gained muscles, facial expressions, even perspiration. Our own Tony Hawk games and other sports simulations are at times indistinguishable from a television programme.

To date, the limits of technology have defined the limits of our games. But as we gain the ability to mimic real life in look, sound and interaction, game designers and players will be able to create anything the imagination could conjure up. Coming generations of video games will provide unprecedented simulation of reality in virtual worlds, incorporating multiple players and real-time interaction. Game play will grow less like "watching and controlling" and more like "being there" in space, in the Old West, in a nest of spies, on a football field or a hockey rink, and inside the worlds of movies such as Spider-Man 2 or Shrek 2.

In the past, we theorised about virtual reality with enormous networks of gamers playing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, around the globe against real opponents, and I see three factors as key to our nearing that vision over the next decade - online interaction, broadband penetration and increased production values.

Interaction will create more personal interest and engagement. Today, 70 per cent of game-playing takes place alone. Playing with others over the internet is relatively new, but it is a big part of the future.

Nearly all research shows that players prefer multiplayer gaming to playing alone, and interaction will grow even more popular as web cams and head phones let players see, hear and speak with those they are playing against. Playing will become a social rather than a largely solitary activity, becoming more inviting to girls and a broader base of consumers.

And as gaming becomes more social, it will also become more widely competitive. We anticipate the rise of specialised competitions, tournaments, leagues and ladders organised by location, age, ability or other measures. Already in Korea, the cutting edge of multiplayer-enabling broadband, we have seen nationwide contests and the emergence of professional players with large followings of fans.

The maturity of broadband will make this interaction possible, and will open new platforms and through those platforms new gaming experiences. The next generation of video games - coming in 2005 and 2006 - will be the first in which internet-related functions will be seamlessly incorporated into hardware, software, and game play itself. Need a partner for a game? Want to join a virtual community of other players? Internet-enabled games mean players from around the world are always "on" and in most games language will not be a barrier.

I believe the tipping point for industry-changing player interaction will occur when broadband reaches 50 to 60 percent of households. Penetration today is about 43 per cent, so we are getting close. And as the presence of broadband increases, especially wireless, we will deliver games to more platforms and more devices including cell phones, tablet computers and PDAs.

The production values, the way games look and sound, will even more closely resemble movies and television. In 1981, ER and Jurassic Park creator Michael Crichton made a movie called Looker, about a scheme to replace actors with computer-generated images indistinguishable from real people. It seemed fantasy then, but today's computer-made imagery does look real enough to fool the casual observer.

The technology that makes possible these advances also allows us to move beyond linear storytelling to player-controlled development of characters and plots. Players will transcend, say, the standard video game quest experience to affect the plot of the story, character behaviour, settings and background, and even the nature and degree of interaction itself. I think of it as a shift from recreating a part in an action movie, to actually taking on the role in a virtual arena, defining and experiencing it through your own choices.

The video game industry has arrived as a mainstream medium. As accessible multi-player experiences, with production values rivaling feature films and television are introduced, broader audiences, far bigger than ever before, will turn to video gaming, and its derivative experiences, as a primary form of entertainment and leisure.

With new revenue forms including in-game advertising and sponsorship, subscriptions, even micro transactions - like the downloading of new characters, vehicles or venues - the game industry is poised to continue its rapid growth much as feature film and television did in the 20th century. And as it grows, it will continue to redefine how we are entertained, informed, even educated throughout the 21st century.