So I've been going through a particular youtube channel about games (nearly a thousand videos is hard to get through) and as the videos he shows off quite a bit of technology. That combined with an idea I had a while ago it struck me, you know the future of games, thus game design, is the mobile market.

The mobile market means that you always have your game on you and it's almost always connected to the internet in some way, not always fast internet, but it's there, and not to mention the small screen isn't always the best to play certain games on. With that and the fact we like getting integrating things into other things it seems that the future trends will lead towards things like "second screen" and multiple paths of delivering extra content.

So... why not games where you can hook up to your tv, have a console gaming experience, for example playing something like a FPS, and then when you're done you can detach, go running or go to work or something and that same game becomes a step counter or a "social media" game so that the player is always in the world at some level interacting with it?

Certainly there has to be a way to disconnect or shut it down, but I think that if you were to design it right you wouldn't even have to worry about that.

I think this is a powerful concept just for gaming, but I can see that you could also integrate it into education as well where you can have homework and such sent through and monitored and physical fitness could be helped by turning things like running into an actual game where speed of acceleration, distance traveled, time spent running, fastest mile, etc could all be turned into a game because you can make it competitive and more easily tracked by people.

What do you guys think of the concept of a "Continuous Play Experience"?

...could all be turned into a game because you can make it competitive and more easily tracked by people.

Wasn't that a ST:TNG episode? Use a personal-electronics video game as a vector?

I can imagine the big brother NSA-style implications.

That combined with an idea I had a while ago it struck me, you know the future of games, thus game design, is the mobile market.

This makes me feel uncomfortable.

By starting your question with such a dogmatic statement you'll only get serious responses from people who accept it. Or a denial, like this. I do recognize the mobile market has many followers as well as a future, but I don't recognize its as a leading authority in the realm of gaming technology. Followed by an answer.

You definitely recognized some valid ideas, but they're already in play. Bigger companies have been gradually integrating mobile experiences in their consoles for a while. Only well known example is Nintendo of Japan would frequently make connectors for the gameboy#name# so it had some influence on their current generation console. (and later when it gets ported to USA the feature doesn't make the cut)

Of course when I read this I thought you meant phones would become as versatile as a PC, eh... not in my world. When the new phone is as powerful as today's PC there will be a better PC or laptop, and the trend never stops unless the current input devices become antiquated.

What do you guys think of the concept of a "Continuous Play Experience"?

In some ways, it's already here. And the first game I know of that used something along these lines was Activision's "Spycraft" in the mid-nineties When you first log into Spycraft, you give it your mobile number, your fax number, all your various ways of being contacted. The game would then "push" gameplay to you at times when you weren't actively playing, giving you new bits and pieces of the game's story and new developments.

Of course when I read this I thought you meant phones would become as versatile as a PC, eh... not in my world. When the new phone is as powerful as today's PC there will be a better PC or laptop, and the trend never stops unless the current input devices become antiquated.

Firstly, learn what dogmatic actually means, please.

Secondly, while it is true that you can make PCs more powerful than mobile devices, it's wrong headed to think that because they are powerful they will be the front runner, especially when you look down the line at technologies that are already there or soon will be without going too far in the future which tosses the idea of Desktop PCs out the window near completely.

You can currently buy a cable and controller for your tablet/phone and hook it up to your TV and it runs well enough to replace consoles imo and all it really needs is that tablet/phone needs more storage and a game or two that are must plays that is only available for mobile. With developers looking towards mobile more and more this is an inevitable. Storage-wise we are seeing vast improvements on, and even without, most are wireless and can use cloud storage....and this goes into why desktops are going to phase out.

We're soon going to have very light, very portable, screens, or screens integrated into everything. It's also the fact that we are moving to having lots of mobile devices with cloud computing so all that's left really is a viable replacement for the UI (Keyboard/mouse) or some way to give the same level of comfort and control as them. Once that happens there is no reason for desktops on any level, but before that, right now if we had that they're only really useful for rendering, gaming, things like that. Most everything else that the common person does can be done with a tablet and the cloud storage available for free. So I think what will happen is that not only will Mobile get more powerful, but also that Desktops will instead become server/render farms that handles the local cloud and communicates with an outside world...think of it like a smart modem/router.

More importantly than all that though, whether this actually happens or not, this a whole new area of game experience that game designers could and should dive into. To not, seems to me like a waste of ability that we have, especially for those who have a large world lore and like to build game worlds in general. There is just a lot of potential imo, from advertisement, to education, to telling a story, to maybe new genre of games that have not been explored yet.

...could all be turned into a game because you can make it competitive and more easily tracked by people.

Wasn't that a ST:TNG episode? Use a personal-electronics video game as a vector?

I can imagine the big brother NSA-style implications.

Meh, I'm not talking about data that isn't already public to begin with, but being skittish about your information at this point in time is a bit too late, especially if you're using the inter nate

What do you guys think of the concept of a "Continuous Play Experience"?

In some ways, it's already here. And the first game I know of that used something along these lines was Activision's "Spycraft" in the mid-nineties When you first log into Spycraft, you give it your mobile number, your fax number, all your various ways of being contacted. The game would then "push" gameplay to you at times when you weren't actively playing, giving you new bits and pieces of the game's story and new developments.

Yeah, it's just too bad no one has delved deeper into the idea of how you could use more modern devices rather than fax machines and antiquated cell phones that can only make phone calls... who wants to make phone calls any more? lol

What do you guys think of the concept of a "Continuous Play Experience"?

as mentioned above, spycraft did it first (well, at least i _think_they were first! <g> ). a brilliant combining of computer game and real world technologies that showed the possible future of a game you play all the time in the real world as well as on your pc (hopefully not against your will, like in the movie "the game").

given the pervasive intrusion of modern telecom and computing into every facet of ones life, the potential for a game played in the "real world" as well as on desktop or mobile computing devices is high.

it could be single or multiplayer. multiplayer offers the opportunity to setup interactions between players that occur inn the real world. "meet someone at some place and time" to get your next clue. or "meet someone at some place and time" to hand off the info you got to your new contact. and the two players, having never met each other, would meet in some diner, at 4pm on a tuesday, and exchange the game info for the password saying "i delivered the info", so both could continue on their lines of play, perhaps intersecting again, or not.

of course this opens up a whole new can of worms RE: cheating. what if i meet you at IHOP, give you the game data, but you give me a bogus password? what if i find out where you live, have a gun, and am off my medication? <g>. you watch, some day we'll here about somebody who died as an indirect result of playing one of these types of games - accidental death, crazy with a gun, something like that. give, i don't know, what? 10, 20, 40 years? it'll happen.

MMOs where you can play a minigame on your phone when you can't be at a real computer are pretty cool. But I definitely don't see the mobile market replacing larger gaming rigs as the future of gaming. Actually I think gaming rigs are going to get bigger as play with a set-up that includes VR goggles, 2 handheld button/trigger wands, and an omni treadmill becomes more widespread and standard.

There is a concept known as gamification which is similar to what you are talking about. Its where you introduce game concepts into none game activities to provide motivation and encouragement to users. For example there is a fitness app called Zombies, Run! which allows you to complete fitness missions and earn points which you can use to build a base and unlock game content on your phone. Or there is a site called doulingo where you earn levels and achievements as you progress in through online language courses.

Gamification has a lot of potential and I'm sure we'll see more uses in the future.

Companion apps for a game are a fun idea I've yet to see one that was any good though. It would be fun to have a separate game experience that you can play on the go that contributes to the console/pc experience. It could be a creature breeding sim, or maybe a tower defense/ city builder game/ or maybe a cyberpunk hacking sim that can you pick up and play whenever.

Well aware of gamification, and this is similar but a much better vector as it can be done without modifying other things to do with the situation.

For example, with the running thing I mentioned. Most people have these devices and kids must take gym classes. If the school has you download an app that reads the data off the accelerometer and transfers it to a server and can be activated and such during gym classes and those types of thing, yes you have a gamification, but it's a natural transition rather than saying, "here's this program and now try to level up by running" or some other poorly designed version of the concept.

Similarly with home work, if you have homework on a cloud network you can have a teacher see what the student is doing and trying, how much they get done, how long it takes to solve each problem, etc etc, because all of this is being done in the cloud and because it is teachers can not only "gamify" the education, but they can also customize and improve their teaching by being able to see where people are struggling, if they are.

If you start looking at it from this angle it becomes clear to me that Game Designers are the architects of tomorrows digital infrastructure, to improve it. And then if we tie it back in with a continuous experience you could have teachers pop quiz students at random times, you can allow students to complete homework where-ever however, and and all these different aspects ^.^ And not to mention you'd have a dedicated place to learn and ask questions that could be infinitely expanded if you really wanted to as it would be a nodal system.

This vector is better than "gamification" because gamification needs large expenses being spent on remodeling the infrastructure of schools and businesses which is all together waaay too expensive and risky to bet on for companies and politics would never support it, but adopting a continuous experience via mobile devices which can slowly be invested in school by school and then let the businesses adapt to being able to see what type of workers people are...then add in a "leveling" system. That is so non-risk and beneficial to everyone that I'd certainly be investing in trying to create that software right now for schools if I had the money and knowledge to do it.

Of course that is just a side thing ^.^ I was just pointing out that CPE (Continuous Play Experience) would also work there.

As far as the risks someone brought up. Indeed there are plenty of risks. This is similar to my solution to the bandwidth problem in highly populated urban areas. The obvious solution is a P2P network that connects people in an area to the closest hotspot so that the bandwidth that is available isn't actually touch because you're working on a different band and sharing it across multiple devices... The problem with this however, if it worked, is that it would be incredibly easy to track someone down as you could ping them through this network and know exactly where they are...in fact you'd know where every one is in relation to you using this network... The risk is mitigated by that same feature though... If you suddenly disappear from the network or something like that people will know so many factors about where you were that the culprit would be fairly easy to track down. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that as it can be use for good or ill.

Another component of it is that it only works in areas that most need it...which is odd to say it but it's true. Such a network would only be effective when you have enough people to connected to a hotspot from any where in the area... so if there are few people in the area it fails, but you don't need it because there is enough bandwidth in the area for you to tap into... on the other hand if there are a ton of people, it would work, but you'd also likely be in an area that is having problems delivering enough bandwidth to everyone so it is needed for you to use something like this.

The same could be said for such games where you need to meet up and such and for the risks. Same risks exist, same sort of safety... and you have the similar problem of it only works if you're somewhere where people are around.