Surveying two experts in game arts to look at their precious stone balls and foresee the fate of the game design. Zachary Walter, chair of the undergraduate game art program at California College of the Arts (CCA), and Jessica Vazquez, a former gaming journalist who manages CCA’s 4D studio, predict a boom in augmented and virtual reality games, independent game design, inclusive games, and gaming communities before very long. They additionally anticipate that game arts will progressively obscure into different types of art, entertainment, and commerce, setting out opportunities for game creators across industries.

Virtual reality and augmented reality will grow in popularity.
“Extended reality (XR)—virtual reality, augmented reality, and inventive hybrid forms—is the major trend in video game development,” says Walter. New creation platforms, such as Unreal Engine 5, will empower game designers to deliver progressively rich virtual conditions, and the development of more modern eye-tracking innovations will permit gamers to encounter these vivid universes more naturally. “Everything will feel more real, more heightened,” he says.

We’ll likewise see a mixing of tabletop and virtual reality gaming, Vazquez predicts. Role-playing games (RPGs), like classic Dungeons & Dragons, are now being augmented by digital spaces. For example, Roll20 permits players to add maps, audio effects, and character plans to their gameplay. These “virtual tabletops” protect the tactile analog game insight yet improve it with vivid online devices.

“Expect that kind of hybrid experimentation to grow,” says Walter. “We’re already seeing people hacking the Quest virtual reality headset to enable them to move through the real world for a hybrid experience.”

Alternative funding and distribution channels will transform game designers into entrepreneurs.
Walter and Vazquez agree that game designers will progressively be entrepreneurs, managing their products from inception to distribution. “The accessibility of game design software, crowdfunding, and online distribution platforms will continue to fuel the growth of indie game design,” says Vazquez.

Individual game designers want to take their games off laptops to freely advertise. With reasonable professional-quality tools, from 3D printing to visual scripting to phones that support XR technologies, independent game artists can design the game according to their imagination. They can directly appeal to fans for funding through sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo without attracting venture capital. When the game is created, designers can share it directly with gamers with the help of distribution websites like Steam, Ko-fi, and itch.io, eliminating the studio system.

“We are on the horizon of a golden age for individual game creators,” says Walter. “Without the gatekeeping of industrial studios, they can take the game design in innovative directions.”

The rise of independent game designers will result in more inclusive games.
Independent game artists and small independent studios, liberated from the need to attract venture capital or mass crowds, will change the face of game design by making more customized games that consolidate different universes, storylines, and characters, as Walter and Vazquez foresee.

“Inclusivity is already exploding in the indie RPG space with the popularity of games like Into the Mother Lands,” says Walter, referring to the Afrofuturist sci-fi odyssey RPG developed by BIPOC game designers. You’ll also find games that explore queerness, disability, feminism, and Jewish identity.

“We are seeing this trend at CCA, where we have a diverse student body,” says Vazquez. “Students in our game art program seek out more inclusive games to play, like Ikenfell and Spirit Swap, which feature queer characters, characters of color, and characters with diverse body types. They are also creating games that reflect their individuality. It’s exciting to see them making games based on their personal stories and subjective experiences.”

One more indication of the developing comprehensiveness of game design is the rise of organizations that promote diversity in the field. Vazquez refers to the show put on by GaymerX, which supports queer individuals and culture in the video game space, and the game developers at COLO Expo as specific examples. “There are more and more events like this around the world that are expanding diversity around games,” she says.

In-person and online gaming communities will expand.
The social association that games give has helped many individuals through beyond two years of social detachment. “The Among Us craze showed us that people are looking to build communities around games, and socially networked gaming is only going to grow over the next few years,” says Vazquez. Playing online games opens ways to worldwide gaming communities, with users communicating with one another inside the game or employing multichannel platforms like Discord.

“Gaming is not something you do privately in your home anymore,” says Walter. “Games provide a space for us to rethink and refashion our social relationships.”

The boundaries of game arts will continue to blur.
Games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon have proactively made progress in narrative film, with varying achievements, and Assassin’s Creed is coming to Netflix. Be that as it may, Vazquez predicts we’ll see a more significant amount of the impact of gaming on past variations before long as producers and animators use game creation platforms like Unreal Engine.

The surprising popularity of Dungeons & Dragons as a type of passive entertainment likewise addresses this separation of limits between genres. “D&D was designed to be interactive, personal, and ephemeral,” says Walter, “but now shows like Critical Role feature professional actors who record campaigns and stream them on multiple platforms as video content and podcasts.”

Also, expect the line between games and different everyday issues to additionally disintegrate sooner rather than later. We are as of now seeing the blurring of marketing and gaming, and Walter guesses that combination will turn out to be more consistent later on since the intuitiveness and reward design of games can be so strong. In any case, he calls attention to the fact that game design can reform ways to deal with treatment for trauma and different therapies and emphatically affect education.

“The overall trend we are seeing is the blurring of the boundaries between the game world and everything else,” says Walter. “In the future, games will cross boundaries of genres, cultures, technologies, and platforms.” “The future of game design will be some new hybrid thing that we can’t even imagine yet.”

Credit: Forever Geek