The Future According to Game Designers

One of the occupational hazards of being a professional futurist is that you spend most of your time talking about the future with senior executives that see the future in somewhat abstract terms. For most of them, the question is how can they best avoid or adapt to the next disruption. As a result, many of your discussions focus on what can go wrong in the future. For an optimistic futurist, these conversations can be exhausting. So, I’m always excited when I get the chance to meet with a group of disruptors who imagine their future as being filled with opportunities. That’s one of the reasons I gladly accept invitations to talk with students about the future.
My most recent engagement with a group of students was at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy. FIEA is a graduate video game design school at the University of Central Florida. It was established in 2005, and its graduates go on to work at the most successful video game companies in the world.
I knew going in that I was going to get a unique look at the future from their point of view. The topic of our discussion was, naturally, the future of game design. But what I learned from the 90 minutes we spent together went far beyond just verifying the latest assumptions about the future of digital entertainment. Of the many great insights they shared, three struck me as being really important for all of us who think about the future.
1. Video games are about community building. To anyone with any experience in the field, this seems obvious. But for too many people in leadership positions, video games remain at best a distraction from serious work. Even younger business executives have a hard time shaking the preconceived notion that gamers are isolated, anti-social creatures. But for this cohort, the gaming experience is about learning to collaborate and co-create. I believe those skills are critical for the future we are creating, so it is reassuring to hear that they are being learned, even if they aren’t part of the formal education system.
2. Technology advances are not always the biggest game changers. Not surprising, we spent a lot of our time talking about the latest shiny technologies; AR and VR. They saw the potential in both, but they were sanguine about their future impact. Their predictions were that they would certainly influence game design but that their larger presence would be outside the gaming universe. As one student observed; “not every experience need be about you.” They agreed that, just as books, movies, and theater, offer a certain kind of story experience that remains popular, traditional video games have created their own story niche. VR and AR may expand that niche but not replace it.
3. Game design is an essential future skill. Toward the end of our conversation, I brought up the possibility of technology disrupting the video game business just as it has disrupted publishing, music, and most other media. Rather than be afraid of that possibility the group responded with a much broader vision of their future. They pointed out that as life becomes even more digital, the skills they are learning as game designers will be even more valuable. Skills like coding, collaboration, world building, and working with artificial intelligence, will become an everyday part of education, business, and entertainment.
If they are right, and I suspect they are, then these game designers will be well positioned to create the positive, collaborative futures they are already imagining. I certainly am looking forward to playing in those tomorrows.
Thanks to Ron Weaver and his class at FIEA for sharing their time and insights.
