After watching the ad for "we dare", an adult-themed party game coming out in europe soon for the wii, I was thinking there may be an entire genre of kinect or wii enabled games where the gamer does a non-typical-controller activity in front of the TV, not necessarily with a dirty adult theme. One example could be a kinect game that works with a pottery wheel (ok a messy example, but try and get the _idea_ and mod it. ), so the player unlike guitar hero or rock band with a fake plastic pottery wheel/jar controller, (which would be one option, and might be popular for some items, including dangerous things like blowtorches and whatnot), the player would have an actual pottery wheel and some clay, and kinect would watch them sculpt, and offer challenges, quests, progression, lessions, evaluations, sharing, and maybe even auctioning. This could be something like an electronics kit game, where the game might come with a breadboard and a bunch of parts and a connector to the pc or bluetooth or whatever, and the player via playing the game would also be literally wiring up some electronics, whereas version 2 requires a soldering iron and the gold edition comes with a nice branded one. Throw in other gaming staples as well, and maybe also target other non-computer non-console activities, one example is TV, perhaps the kinect or internetworked console or pc could observe what the human is watching on tv and make comments, suggest alternatives, offer free tv-show related flash or downloadable games, or other forms of the console/pc being awake when the user is doing something else. One other option might be cooking, although you might either need a long cord for the kinect, or even seperate sets or specific purpose cooking consoles (like kindle), that could potentially video your cooking to help, or just offer game-y lessons on purchasing and preparing food, then increase the difficulty and do other interactive gamey things with regards to something that isn't complex button pressing, but instead corresponds to something real. This is also a time to mention alternative controllers, like the popular guitar & drums that were actually simple controllers, and it might make sense to either make more different shapes of controllers, for popular activities, with varying levels of functionality and complexity, then relate the gameplay to a simplified and educational form of a real task (what else do people do?I suppose a handwriting game could video your writing and suggest, maybe juggling where you learn to juggle in front of kinect? Other suggestoins for real activities with plastic or actual controls welcome, maybe a blacksmithing game where you get a soft plastic hammer, a soft plastic anvil, a squishy clay-like item that can easily be shaped with the hammer, and some buttons to work the game forge controls, then the user watches their item on the screen while hammering the actual hammer into the squishy stuff to shape the game item that is required, along with scores and maybe some other integration, lessions, etc....might be a neat thing to tack onto world of warcraft....or a different similar game.

I think it might also be neat to see more ultragames....I think world of warcraft is so big and tested that it's refinement is getting more impressive than any other game....and yet it feels like it'sso specific, that so many random mutations could be tried but are not.....second life was also neat, in that users could and did create everything, however the blatent commercialization (and unpredicatble pricing) was a turn off, as was a big thing for me was the quality of content. One option might be allowing players in an owned game like wow to be mini-gms, and players could run events with a budget based on GM level, along with the ability to hugely change the game within their event and nowhere else, including with both simple and powerful tools, along with also an integrated huge market and already existing quality complex gaming system...

That might be a good idea too, is to emphasize a mid-range developer/game maker role, somewhere between player and professional game maker. In little big planet 2 and other games players were happy to contribute resources, however most players cannot make resources as good as a pro developer. Also instead of treating one as a player and one as an unpaid programmer, how about integrating the building of the game into the game itself as a game option? For example, a new player to wow could log in as a level 1 "PGM" class, a special class that unlocks at a high level maybe with gold or doing something neat. This would allow the player to make an event, and some random players would get grouped and invited, after which they could review the event, and it might track other things like how long they played and whatnot, to determine the PGMs xp gain/score increase,which unlocks more programming/game making tools for the player to use, and makes it possible to run larger events (maybe more than one person) as long as that player keeps getting good feedbacks/scores and maybe gives out good xp/loot, with the low levels being very limited in what the pgm can do, and higher levels being more open, with the quests and midrangebeing both educational, and rewarding in terms of new items that help PGMs level up and gold and common items, to mix the two, that could maybe be transferred to a regular character or used for PGM activities. PGMs with very good scores would create places with either powerful tools, or even modeled tools, in which case a player might get to level 85 with lots of gold,buy up an 'instance property', and populate it with monsters, traps, etc, all of which have a game cost. Then based on his levels or cost or whatnot, players could pay x gold to try and win y gold at the end as a party or solo, along with feedback options and auto-code balancing to ensure good danger and risk vs. reward. This may also apply to other games, and it might be neat to see games that blur the lines between game and reality, for example PGM items that are literal code snippets that run script code that work with the engine, and could possibly be sold for gold, cloned, given away, along with maybe a library option and more trade civil options between players.

Edit: Also as one last note, it might be worth it to try and make 'one standard game', which would kind of be like making each part of every game totally modular and standardized. Games could be divided into their pieces, both in terms of the code, and all of its modules and sections, and also the resources. One option might be a large internet server that is open, where anyone can upload models, videos, 2d art, code snippets, or large code blocks. Whoever writes them would be tracked as the owner, and people could download, modify, and upload, however their version would then list 2 owners, like open source, with some tracking of who did what. Once the database is populated, possibly with contests or recycled content or whatever, including game-like contest or cash contest to contribute popular resources to seed the DB.

With the game engine being modular, each piece of code could then be labeled, tracked, and swapped in and out. For example, in the 'drawing 3d models' part of the code, there might be quake open source modules attributed to ID, blizzards wow graphics module attributed to them, and 457 other drawing engines contributed by users. Other modules would exist in the same way, and players could then assemble games from pieces into complete games, then sell or give them away. The service would have an app store to help with that, and might also feature the options found in games like eve online for contracts and asking people permission to use and view their stuff, which may or may not be free and/or public. Thus, a user could select only free items to build a game from and contact nobody and keep all profits or give away for free, however if someone built with blizzards code (or even to view it), they would need to be flagged by them with some kind of contract permission to use view the code, which may require additional permission prior to giving away, selling, distributing, or otherwise affecting the code. This would also be very competitive, and much scoring could be done, and also popular games could be cloned in a variety of ways, ensuring familiarty, along with some kind of linking and finding, and maybe making it as user friendly, fast, and dynamic as possible for the players to skim through a variety of similar (or diverse) content from high-rated or novice authors, from free, to free demo, to paid software.....all made from pieces that all fit together generically to avoid repetition and maximize market products.