[versão em português abaixo]

I just came through the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) Essential Facts 2008 report for digital games. I believe it was released months ago; anyway, a couple of things caught my eyes:

• About 65% of American households play computer or video games.
• Differently from what it could be expected, the average game player is 35 years old, while players under 18 years old represent only 25% of the market.
• The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 40 years. This means that digital games is indeed a serious business, and its audience has indeed acquisitive power.
• The average number of years adult gamers have been playing computer or video games is 13 years. Expect some cool retros coming on!
• Halo 3 was the top selling videogame for 2007. But I still prefer Gears of War :)
• 80% of parents place time limits on video game playing, while those numbers are lower for Internet (72%), TV (71%) and movies (65%). What does that mean? It means that videogames are much more addictive than the other medias, therefore a great channel to reach the kids! What if such channel was more properly used, such as in education, as I envision (hope) for 2019?
• What genres are the most popular online? Simple ones, such as puzzle, board, trivia and cards! This means that we have plenty of room for Web 2.0 game initiatives, such as the XNA Creators Club and SharpLudus, which enable creating and publishing simple games with an order of magnitude less effort and faster.
• 41% of Americans have purchased or planned to purchase one or more games in 2008.

Meanwhile, the news tell that the game industry growth has reduced but not stopped, even with the current economical crisis.

BR,
-- AFurtado

The statements or testimonies I offer in this post represent my own personal views.
I am speaking for myself and not on behalf of my employer, Microsoft Corporation.

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[pt-BR]

Esbarrei com a edição de 2008 do relatório de fatos essenciais de jogos digitais da Entertainment Software Association (ESA). Acho que ele foi lançado há meses atrás; mesmo assim, algumas coisas me chamaram a atenção:

• Cerca de 65% de famílias americanas jogam jogos de computador ou video games.
• Diferentemente do que se poderia esperar, a média do jogador é de 35 anos, enquanto jogadores abaixo de 18 representam apenas 25% do mercado.
• A média de idade do comprador de jogos mais frequente é 40 anos. Isso mostra que o mercado de jogos digitais é um negócio sério, e que sua audiência tem de fato poder aquisitivo.
• A média de anos que um adulto tem jogado jogos de computador ou video games é de 13 anos. Espere o lançamento de vários retrôs por aí!
• Halo 3 foi o jogo mais vendido de 2007. Mas eu ainda prefiro o Gears of War :)
• 80% dos pais colocam limites de tempo para seus filhos jogarem video games, enquanto esses números são mais baixos para a Internet (72%), TV (71%) e filmes (65%). O que isso significa? Que video games são muito mais viciantes do que outras mídias, portanto um grande canal para atingir os jovens e crianças. Que tal se esse canal fosse mais bem utilizado, como na educação, como eu envisionei (e espero) para 2019?
• Que gêneros online são os mais populares? Gêneros simples, como puzzle, tabuleiro, trívia e cartas! Isso quer dizer que ha muito espaço para initiativas que trazem jogos à era da Web 2.0, como o XNA Creators Club e o SharpLudus, que permitem a criação e implantação de jogos com muito menos esforço e mais rápido.
• 41% dos americanos compraram ou planejaram comprar um jogo em 2008.

Enquanto isso, as notícias dizem que o crescimento da a indústria de jogos diminuiu mas não parou, mesmo com a crise econômica atual.

[]s
-- AFurtado

Os relatos e opiniões deste post apresentam pontos de vista pessoais,
não refletindo necessariamente a opinião da Microsoft Corporation.

[versão em português abaixo]

Speaking about gestures, something interesting was reported here. It’s suspected that Microsoft might acquire a technology to enable immersive 3D games, without the need of any device at all. It seems some envisioned scenarios for the future of game development are coming faster than expected…

PS: hope that becomes available to XNA game developers as well!

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Falando sobre gestures, algo interessante foi reportado aqui. Suspeita-se que a Microsoft está para adquirir uma tecnologia que permite uma imersão 3D em jogos, sem a necessidade de qualquer dispositivo. Parece que alguns cenários vislumbrados para o futuro do desenvolvimento de jogos estão chegando mais rápido do que o esperado…

PS: espero que esteja disponível também para desenvolvedores XNA!

BR,
-- AFurtado
The statements or testimonies I offer in this post represent my own personal views.
I am speaking for myself and not on behalf of my employer, Microsoft Corporation.

(versão em Português abaixo)

Since Minority Report, the concept of “gestures” has taken UIs to the next level. While gestures are already enabled today in software by frameworks such as WPF, the presentation below shows we’re not too far away from turning such a thing into more integrated day-by-day experiences, such as taking a picture.

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Desde o Minitory Report, o conceito de “gestures” tem levado interfaces para o próximo nível. Se por um lado frameworks como o WPF já nos permitem aplicar gestures em software, a apresentação acima indica que não estamos tão longe de transformar isso em experiências mais integradas do nosso dia-a-dia, como tirar uma foto, por exemplo.

BR,
-- AFurtado

The video below, from Office Labs, has been published all around the blogosphere. It shows Office Labs vision for 2019.

I identified lots of my own needs there, such as receiving the best route to go through in a supermarket, according to the shopping list for that week, or having a consolidated result of your sports activities. And the most evident thing in the video is the digital convergence: the “anytime, anywhere” vision is realized by integrated, connected but independent set of devices, probably syncing everything from the cloud.

However, an interesting point hit me: where are digital games there? What will be the future of digital games, 10 years from now? If the video does not provide any clue, here you have my feelings about that:

1. Game-empowered education. the fact is: today’s academic content delivery, either in schools or universities, is nothing else than boring. Extra-boring. The model we use today to transfer knowledge to students are not even close to exciting. On the very other end, nothing else made me love History more than one single game: Civilization! Since Civ I, I used to read History books as if our history were only one instance of a Civilization match, and used to know about cities, facts, technologies, leaders and lots of things in advance before ever touching a book. Thanks, Civilopedia!

And it doesn’t stop here. From Spelling Blizzard to Ninja Gaiden old-fashioned dialogs, games are the best reinforcement classes someone can have when learning English as a second language. I remember a specific English class where the sports vocabulary was being taught. Piece of cake!

And I have no doubt that games teach you to be a better person. More than quick reactions, they elaborate your judgment skills, make you to learn from your fears, to get confidence, to learn lessons when defeated. And finally, they can drive your professional goals. I myself decided to do Computer Science because of them.

Some years ago, I was thinking about what a wasted amount of time I had in my life playing too much videogames.  But today, hold on a second: I actually benefited a lot from that. Ok, I could have played a little bit less, but the general balance is still extremely positive.

So it’s unbelievable how people can’t see the great potential games have in education. If I run a school, my first idea would be to implement a game-empowered curriculum for all disciplines. Lots of thoughts is currently being put on the subject, but there’s still a huge room to explore. How much of geography can someone learn playing War? How much of Biology can one learn playing an adventure game inside the human body? How much of Physics can someone learn playing TIM (The Incredible Machine)? And I’m just giving examples of games whose primary goal is not even education! So for 2019 I truly expect games to be much more connected to education, our eyes should definitively open to that.

Will this work for every person in the world? Of course not! But will help lots of people, and I’m pretty sure those who do not like videogames will still prefer to learn from them rather than a text book.

2. Player interaction onto the next level: Wii innovated with a new controller. Live Vision (for Xbox 360) innovated with cool new ways to insert the player into the game (picture below).

Space War Mission Commando (video below) innovated by bringing voice commands to the XNA world:

So what’s next? Brain waves! Some studies have already started, and players can move their entities around the game world using only the power of their brains. Can you imagine how this will include mobility impaired people into the game development world?

And that’s not only about input. Output may get much richer as well. Imagine every house having an “entertainment room”, where holograms and other kind of stuff is created dynamically to empower your game playing experience.

3. Gaming everywhere. You’re in the cinema. Some trailers are played in the screen. But then, wait: an interactive trailer! Grab your joystick from your seat, then play a casual mini-MMORPG against your cinema counterparts. The trailer associated to the winning team gets played.

Or imagine you are in the break of a soccer game. Grab your phone, log in, then play a virtual match against people supporting the other team, joining rooms of 10 people at most. The final game scores will count to the virtual soccer championship.

Finally, you probably know of some toilets for men that display an insect, such as a fly, painted or carved in there for you to not miss your target. Forget about that. Future “pee games” will be much more interactive. Much more interesting challenges and quick puzzles will be there for you to solve. Your score and name will be properly registered and you will be able to compete online against people in other booths. That’s a pity women will have hard times competing against man here, though :)

4. Altered Reality Games (ARG) reloaded. Man, how I loved the movie “The Game”, with Michael Douglas… his life was boring, then he hired a company to make it more interesting. Then [warning, movie spoiler to follow!] a game was implanted in his life to shake it a little bit, and he was not even aware about that!

I believe that such experiences will be much more common in the future: want to get a discount in a restaurant? Play and win their ARG game of the month. Is something weird happening around? That might be an advertisement disguised as a game. And, linked to discussion #2, digital games will really go beyond your monitor or TV. We can already see today some location-based games: you’re walking in the street, an enemy is in the next corner. The cell phones of both of you ring, then you start to fight against it other. If you are running out of hit points, just run away to get out of his range and save some points for your guild!

5. Digital gaming convergence. Probably not applicable to every type of game here, but this will allow you to pause your game in the train (played in a portable device), then resume it from your couch (in your Xbox 720).

6. The “Extended Pandora” gaming experience. This will probably be achieved in much less than 10 years. You will be offered games and demos based not only on your personal preferences and gaming history, but the suggestion algorithm will take lots of your social network into account.

7. Innovative Game Design. Cursor*10 and Braid presented some awesome new gameplay experience, in which time is just another element there to be played with. And those are simple 2D games. It’s good to know that game design is well and live, with more possibilities to come.

Alright, those thoughts were my initial contribution to the topic. How do you think games will change 10 years from now?

BR,
-- AFurtado

The statements or testimonies I offer in this post represent my own personal views.
I am speaking for myself and not on behalf of my employer, Microsoft Corporation.

[versão em português abaixo]

Today I’m officially announcing the release of a SharpLudus version that enables an end-to-end development experience, supported by visual modeling, to the creation of XNA games.

SharpLudus v0.2 presents the Game Definition DSL (domain-specific language), in which you can model your game screens along with other game properties in Visual Studio, and then generate XNA code integrated with the FlatRedBall game engine. Check this video here to get a feeling on the game developer/designer experience:

Relevant links:
[ video-demo | download | documentation | project website ]

Happy gaming!
-- AFurtado

The statements or testimonies I offer in this post represent my own personal views.
I am speaking for myself and not on behalf of my employer, Microsoft Corporation.

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SharpLudus v0.2 lançado: o XNA aperta as mãos do model-driven development

Hoje estou anunciando oficialmente o lançamento de uma versão do SharpLudus que permite uma experiência de desenvolvimento de ponta a ponta, apoiada por modelagem visual, para a criação de jogos XNA.

O SharpLudus v0.2 apresenta a Game Definition DSL (linguagem de domínio específico), na qual você pode modelar no Visual Studio as telas do jogos e outras propriedades. Em seguida, você pode gerar código XNA integrado com o motor de jogos FlatRedBall. Confira este vídeo aqui para entender a experiência do desenvolvedor/designer de jogos utilizando o SharpLudus:

Links relevantes:
[ video-demo | download | documentação | website do projeto ]

Jogar bem!
-- AFurtado

Os relatos e opiniões deste post apresentam pontos de vista pessoais,
não refletindo necessariamente a opinião da Microsoft Corporation.