Topic: How Will Games Change During The Next Ten Years?

So I sat down and thought about how games will look like in ten years. I asked myself then a simple question: "Are games today the best that they can possibly be?". And to that, I'd say no.

Looking at open world games as our first example, we have all kinds of titles in the genre such as GTA and Yakuza. While GTA focuses more on the size of the world, Yakuza instead has a smaller but more detailed open world with more things to do. I think in ten years we will see GTA sized maps with Yakuza level of details and content. Because companies strive for realism and the most idealistic open world game would have to have a huge map with buildings you can go inside, offer you the option to interact with anyone you come across and let you do pretty much anything that you'd do in real life. We might not reach that level of immersion in ten years but we will most likely be much closer to it than we are today.

My second example is story-telling games that have choices that influence the narrative (such as Telltale games). I think in ten years this kind of games will actually offer different branching narratives instead of an overarching one with small differences and a unique ending. Games like these are nowhere close to reaching their full potential. Nowadays they basically give us the illusion of choices since it's still one and the same story. I would like to see playthoughs that are completely different, almost like everyone played a different game because of the choices that you make. For example, one scenario could be that you can choose between taking a train to a city, or walking to a nearby village and having completely different experiences. The story then continues to split up into different paths and it never leads to the same outcome as a previous choice.

My final example is horror games. If we're being honest for a moment, the horror genre still feels like it's in its infancy stage. Sure we have had games where you go to spooky mansions or explore abandoned spaceships. But we still haven't reached a point where horror titles can actually mess with your mind severely. Sort of like delving into madness, like the game is trying to evoke strong responses in your mind that makes you go crazy. I think it's here where we will reach unethical levels in gaming and it will be interesting to see how companies will go about this. I do think though that the horror genre will see the most noticeable jump in advancement out of all the genres today.

In any case, I think it's definitely hard to imagine something that doesn't exist yet. But I most certainly don't think that video games have reached their peak in terms of ambition.

So I have made a couple of questions that you can think about for this topic:

1) How do you think games will change throughout the coming ten years?
2) Will certain genres, like FPS, die out?
3) Will new genres be born (like Soulsborne), and if so what do you think the next one will be?
4) And finally, will games change for better or worse?