The Guardian was largely spot-on with its predictions for 2007's entertainment tech scene, and this year Aleks Krotoski takes another go at the crystal ball with plenty of picks for the gaming industry, and a few relative to the online worlds corner of things.
Among her predictions: "Games Go Social," as Krotoski explains:
"There have already been steps in this direction: the Xbox 360's December update included a Facebook-style feature for gamers ISO battle friends or foes, and Media Molecule's Little Big Planet intends to be the MySpace for gaming on the PlayStation 3 later this eyar. Social networking features are integral in several virtual worlds currently in beta, like Raph Koster's Areae, and ActiveWorlds, a pre-Second Life social virtual world, has already been integrated into Facebook.By 2009, a game will use social networking features of an existing social network site as a series of secondary goals which will have an impact on how players succeed in the primary game.
She also believes that the future holds one component for which gamers and online world residents alike have been clamoring noisily -- a portable virtual identity:
"2008 will also witness the realisation of cross-game identities. At least one company will release a proto-product that will allow players to take experience and assets into different applications. This meta-identity will be spearheaded by social virtual worlds, but at least one game-focussed space will attempt single IDs.
The latter one is an interesting dilemma -- very desirable, and yet more technologically complex than it might appear at first blush. After all, wouldn't it require some level of collaboration among competitors? Dare we say, "open standard"? If cross-game identities became possible, commonplace and as enthusiastically received as we currently anticipate they'd be, it could revolutionize more than the way we personalize and play -- it could change the entire face of the gaming market and the online worlds space as we know them.
