Stumbled on this cool article from IGN earlier today that lists ten trends in gaming ten years from now. It attempts to describe briefly what games we’ll be playing in ten years time. Sony Entertainment (a big publisher of games) invited several leading game-makers to discuss what video game development will look like in a decade. The list in the article was based on their discussion. Very interesting, take a look. Three trends among those listed that may impact learning in a big way are:
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Always – connected gaming experiences – a always-connected environment will probably lead to an entirely different sort of game-play; we can’t even visualize what that might be like.
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Single-player gaming will end – We are already seeing more and more competitive, collaborative, synchronous, multiplayer game environments that are engaging vast audiences. As developing such games becomes cheaper, and devices with computing and bandwidth are available with users, there is no reason why learning games of the future will not be collaborative/competitive in nature. As a social animal, that plays; such types of gaming will have a big impact.
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Virtual reality – as they mention, we are finally close to realizing the promise of virtual reality. This means individuals will be able to interact with a virtual world in ways that are not possible right now and will almost certainly include totally new forms of interaction. This sort of game technology will make for very effective simulations.
