The Gaming Community - Where it is now, and in the future

fiveub

fiveub

fiveub

OcUK Staff
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What is your thought on the gaming community? From the past, till now, and what to expect in the future?

Do you think it could be more exciting, do you think it could be improved? What do you think will happen in the future?

Forums have been going on for years and there are so many out there to bring gamers together.

So what is the future? More and bigger LAN events? More forums? Bigger forums? New style of forums?
 
1) More indie games and self developed commercial titles without publishers!

2) More diverse genre of titles, fps games taking more of a backseat

3) Forums are forums it's the community that will grow or kill a forum


4) We need an Indie Subforum :p :p
 
Neil79 said:
1) More indie games and self developed commercial titles without publishers!

2) More diverse genre of titles, fps games taking more of a backseat

3) Forums are forums it's the community that will grow or kill a forum


4) We need an Indie Subforum :p :p
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Don't really agree with 2, and not only because I only really play FPS. Are FPS dominant in the market? Of course the COD franchise is hugely popular, but it's not like no one buys other genres because of it.
That said, I would welcome quality over quantity when it comes to FPS games. In relation to the OP, my clan (formed during BC2's glory days) was decimated by the release of BF3, and I know of a few other guys who reported similar experiences. It does seem like more and more games are aimed at the casual market, which leaves the more hardcore gamers who really form the backbone of the community with less support.
 
I agree with R. P .L on this one the gaming market really does seem to be aimed at the casual market but then there's a very good reason for it being that casual gamers are the mass market and that's where the most money is.

I think in the future we will still see a majority of casual aimed games but more hardcore games will seep in because of that want from people it just takes time.
 
I can see more Indie games and free to play games coming out.

I would hate to see any more subscription titles released...

Also the release of CS:GO will be a shot in tne arm for e-sports.

More market injection for thin clients - this is inevitable.


I also would like to see an Indie subforum. A lot of threads go off the first page of the PC Games forum and unless you actually look to page 2 you can miss a lot off good things. This is a very busy forum ;)
 
For gaming communities I still see forums being a staple part of that as its the best way to share, rant and engage with randomers and friends all about the same subject. But the actually games themselves will have more of the social aspect and almost treat it like a meta-game, think of Battlelog + more. I'm guessing most future PC games will be aiming to use similar features that can be incorporated into a website, phone app, steam and the game itself.

As for games and how they will change to the community, well genres will grow and die so FPS may start taking a bit of a backseat in some cases with 3rd person shooters and more unique games coming to the forefront of gaming (think Minecraft/portal esqe games). With saying that though shooters have such a large amount of sub-genres I'm sure a little tweaking of gameplay and story telling can completely change how we see FPS's today, again think of the Half Life series vs more of the "core" Battlefield/COD markets, it also already sounds like Black Ops 2 is trying to do some things different but they will still be highly limited to the COD style of gameplay.

Free 2 play games will become far bigger and probably something Valve will push heavily with some of their future titles and IPs. I'm not sure if DOTA is going to be free to play but I would be surprised if they charged a high premium from it but with that, they can actually get away with charging £40 :p
 
Neil79 said:
1) More indie games and self developed commercial titles without publishers!

2) More diverse genre of titles, fps games taking more of a backseat

3) Forums are forums it's the community that will grow or kill a forum


4) We need an Indie Subforum :p :p
Click to expand...


would be superb to have more 'offbeat' stuff going on :cool:
 
R.P.L said:
In relation to the OP, my clan (formed during BC2's glory days) was decimated by the release of BF3, and I know of a few other guys who reported similar experiences. It does seem like more and more games are aimed at the casual market, which leaves the more hardcore gamers who really form the backbone of the community with less support.
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How is bc2 any better than bf3?
 
gigeorge said:
How is bc2 any better than bf3?
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bc its an actual team game perhaps?

To the OP: it wont be more exciting, games will still mostly consist of cack with slightly more pixels attached to it. Communities will just remain the same if not tail off. I predict a gaming decline again as more and more people get screwed over by publishers. (both in the industry and those who buy games)
 
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CSGO is all im really interested fps wise could actually be worth playing proper agin :D

the next gen consoles is basically what gaming is waiting for. the consoles dictate what goes on now.

if they have full mouse and keyboard support woooooops missus miggins :p
 
I think an Indie sub-forum would be a great addition along with all sub-forums being shown on the index page (which is easily doable in vBulletin). Gaming at the moment has become a little stale in that PC's are just not pushed to their limits unless you want to game a massive resolutions (with one or two exceptions), so I think that when the next generation of games consoles come out we might get a leap forward but only time will tell.

Stoner81.
 
Well if you look now to the amount of people playing games to say 10 years ago, the difference is massive.

There are forums for game genres and forums for the games themselves so we can excpect a hell of a lot more of them in future.
I can't prove it although there maybe some evidence out there, but I think the gaming community may be exponentially increasing.
There are even many many girls now becoming more interested in gaming so this will contribute to a serious increase (once they discover there are better games than those 2D Facebook ones like Farmville)...

More gamers also appear to be moving to PC from consoles, and since there is no reason for PC gamers to move to console, and there probably never will be I can imagine the PC gaming community is far from dying out as some people so often presume.
 
5UB said:
What is your thought on the gaming community? From the past, till now, and what to expect in the future?
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The gaming community has in some ways, for some people, become more important than the games themselves. I know nowadays it it is quite common for people to focus on playing games that their friends, or online associates (clanmates etc) are playing. So for example, rather than the old online model of:

1) Find game you like
2) Play game
3) Make friends in that game

It is more like:

a) See what games your friends are playing
b) Play game
c) Move on to other games that your friends are playing/talking about

To be fair this culture has been around a while when it comes to PC gaming, for example I know a lot of people/clans moved from e.g. QW or Q2 to play more modern games like Q3A and CS. But in terms of consoles there definitely seems to have been a growth during the current generation (PS3/XB360) in terms of the community aspect, VOIP etc.

Do you think it could be more exciting, do you think it could be improved?
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Almost everything can be made more exciting and improved.
One thing I'd like to see in the gaming community (but think is unlikely) would be more of a focus on older games, rather than the focus being so much on the latest and greatest. For example on the Music/films/books forum they have a "book of the week" or something, it might be nice to have "game of the week" or something whereby people agree to put a bit of time into an older game (preferably a good one!) and share their experiences. Actually in the long term, maybe that will be more possible, if gaming ever starts to plateau in terms of advancement, a bit like the movie industry whereby 20 year old films may be regarded as classics rather than a load of rubbish.

What do you think will happen in the future?
Forums have been going on for years and there are so many out there to bring gamers together.
So what is the future? More and bigger LAN events? More forums? Bigger forums? New style of forums?
Click to expand...

I think communication links and integration with society will continue to improve, gaming will become more mainstream and be discussed more outside of bespoke gaming forums.

I am also not sure what the long term future of forums is (note: I don't mean they are at risk of extinction!), whether they were merge or morph into something a bit different, probably more closely integrated with social media in general. So for example instead of visiting forum XYZ to talk about ABC, we'll be writing about it from Facebook (or whatever) and that will somehow be aggregated up to give a collection of people's views and responses about a given topic - effectively like happens on a forum but without such a rigid structure.

LAN events I don't see changing much, people will still want to hold them but improvements in communications infrascture will reduce the need, we'll be able to play with other people (holographically projected?) from within our own homes.
 
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OCUK could do with hosting events and prizes to encourage the forum gaming community we have to play with each other. Maybe some servers tho i think ocuk has some servers now but duno if its just for certain style of games i.e fps.

Prizes do not have to be lavish they could be ocuk mug, a usb key, a keyring etc. Some nice little thing to play for. Maybe for tournament victories they could be a bit better.

Lan events are kinda too much trouble as basically the net is much better than it was when lan gaming was needed for lagless play. Imo of course.
 
What I think will or needs to happen is for games to incorporate and encourage voice coms... so package headsets with games, yes for PC as well.

Also a step forward would be a game that integrated clan management, forums, voice IP, server rentals etc all within itself... so the game was the community and the community the game... not a drop into IE to check Battlelog... but for the game to have instant access to all the data and stats of every player, everything without having to leave the game, everything available at my finger tips.... i can click on a player in my server, see his full game history, clan history, replays of his saved games/kills

This could cover FPS or RTS games... even racing games... just the game is the hub of it all, 1 thing to load and thats it, once im in there the world is my oyster.
 
I think the issues with that are:

-Packing headsets with games would be cost prohibitive, especially given the shift towards digitial distribution
-While greater integration is certainly a trend we have seen and will see moving forward, one of the problems is that it increases the requirement on game developers to invest in 'non-core' development. In other words, they can't just churn out a top notch game, they need to spend time/effort on all the other bits and bobs. Which can arguably be done to a higher standard by a specialised dedicated team working on that technology, whether it be VOIP, video/replay hosting, stats website etc.

In other words you are angling towards a game-centric model, whereby everything hangs off of a set of individual games - many independent planets(games) with moons(features) hanging off them. I think we are heading more towards a interface-centric model, whereby there is a big interface that controls all the fancy extras, from which you launch games - a massive star(feature-rich interface) with the planets(games) revolving around it. Of course, the problem (or advantage depending on your view of competitive theory!) is that different organisations will come up with their own ideas of what that interface should be, whether it be Microsoft, Sony, Valve(Steam), even Facebook.... and thus you have planets being pulled around by conflicting forces from the many stars.

The second point might be possible perhaps if MS repositioned the GFWL platform... build a common set of tools and interfaces that would be easy for devs to tap into., and I still have this concept of global gameprofiles as well, whereby you could configure "actions" to buttons globally and then have games interpret those actions, so you wouldn't need to (many) reconfigure controls for all the games you play, you'd have all your movement, shooting, reloading, accelerate, brake, replay, etc etc buttons mapped in one place and then add the few extra controls unique to a game as required.
 
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