GH: Going on from that, do you have any thoughts on the new generation of consoles in general or the different approaches between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo?
Wright: Gameplay is one thing, but a lot of these people are also competing to become your media hub. That’s the battle they’re starting to fight. Gameplay is interesting because it’s becoming more ubiquitous. It’s starting to infuse our culture everywhere with this gamification movement. People are seeing gameplay send tendrils out into other forms of media. The way I browse the web, the way I think about music or movies, the social networks I use. Games could potentially become the connective tissue between these things.
If you look at this next generation of consoles, they’re seeing that. You buy this as a game machine, but really it’s going to become your media hub. From a consumer’s point of view, there’s not a huge distinction between gaming and watching YouTube and listening to music. They’re all different forms of entertainment that I’m enjoying digitally. That’s probably the biggest role for these new consoles going forward.
With these other platforms, whether they’re social platforms or mobile platforms, I think we’re going to see those as maybe the larger frontier as far as new, innovative game development and reaching a broader audience. Mainstream America had been in this cycle of buying a console every five years, upgrading the Xbox or whatever. Nowadays people are spending more time on their iPads or tablets and things like that.
GH: There are lots of novel interface mechanisms being delivered these days – Kinect, Google Glass, Oculus Rift, and so on. Do you think the multitouch touchscreen is going to wipe them all out, or do you see those innovations flowering alongside each other?
Wright: There are so many different input devices appearing right now. It’s kind of nice because for the longest time we had all this growth in the output from your computer – higher resolution, better sound – and the input was pretty much still the same little straw. You had a mouse, a keyboard, and maybe a joypad. Seeing things like multitouch and 3D Z-buffer Kinect types of things, they’re opening up interesting new areas in game development.
I think one of the more interesting ones is going to be on the eyewear side of things, wherever that goes — Google Glass and so forth. That’s going to be something that feels fundamentally different, that’s going to be a whole new thing to explore. It’s going to have a lot of social stigma attached to it, which will be interesting and fun to explore.
Again, even with the input we have, whether it’s multitouch or gesture or just mouse and keyboard, the hard part is still getting into the psychology of the player. I don’t see that the interfaces are that big of a bottleneck in that direction. I can imagine designing an interesting effect in a game around almost any interface. Each one has its strengths. It’s hard to do a dance game with a keyboard and mouse whereas a dance game with Kinect works pretty well. Certain interfaces will become the home of certain genres. I don’t see any one-size-fits-all solution. I see a sea of diversification.
GH: The Oculus Rift in particular has drawn a lot of interest. Virtual reality was a big thing in the ’90s, but it never quite worked out, but now it’s come back again. Do you see new genres being created specifically for this much more integral control method?
Wright: The augmented-reality thing has a lot of potential going forward. There’s still the pragmatic aspect of “how long can I wear this on my head without getting motion sick?” There are some very practical concerns. But the idea of blending gaming with reality is very intriguing to me. It’s more intriguing than the idea of pure virtual reality, where I put on the headset and the whole world disappears. It’s probably more pragmatic as well, to still have some awareness of what’s around you. If I had to pick one technology that I think is going to be a leap forward for gaming, it probably would be down the augmented-reality path.
GH: As a lot of games and genres migrate from a premium business model to free-to-play or free-to-try, do you see that reflected in the role of the designer and the way that you design a game using those models?
Wright: In some sense, it puts the psychology of the designer back where we were in the old arcade days. How do you get somebody, in the first couple of minutes, to enjoy the activity enough that they can’t stop? We’re giving them a bag of potato chips, so to speak. It’s a very Pavlovian thing. You have to unveil the value of a game progressively and get the player emotionally hooked. Once you get them emotionally hooked, it’s a lot easier to get them to pull a dollar out of their pocket. It’s more than just the promise of “this is going to be really cool if you open the red door.”
In some ways, it frontloads a lot of the designer’s task. Right off the bat, if I can’t get the player past a certain point with this game, any other effort I put into the game is wasted. I’m going to spend a lot more time thinking about the initial user experience. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Then, once you’ve pulled somebody into the experience, it’s a question of how you keep them there. What’s the stickiness?
One of the most effective ways that we’ve found over the years revolves around community and social interaction. As soon as I’m interacting with other people — I have some reputation, I have a role, I see this as part of my identity — that’s as sticky as anything. It’s going to bring games into a somewhat more social space because social is one of those thumbnail methods for making the experience sticky.
On the business side, you’re going to see a lot of people trying things, to some degree, where you’re putting something out with a certain amount of development and waiting to see if people get pulled into it before you invest too much on the back side of the experience. We’re not necessarily going to see games revealed episodically all the time, but I can definitely see games growing while they’re on the market. I come out with a first version, and when people get into it, I add more layers to it. It’s staged development, where you reinvest based on success. We’re seeing a lot of that happen.