Games Must Empower Users to Acquire Skills for the Real World

What is the Current State of Gaming?

More than 3 billion people worldwide play video games at least once a month, and over eighty-three percent of gamers buy their games and in-game items online. Personal computers remain the main platform for gaming, followed by PlayStation, and Android Phones.

What do you Like About the Current State of the Gaming Industry?

As new digital primitives become available, gaming can now provide the property rights to in-game items, as well as better model real-world processes. Games using augmented or virtual reality (AR/VR) lets users acquire skills relevant to real-world economic activity.

What do you Dislike About the Current State of the Gaming Industry?

Games should ultimately empower the user to acquire skills that users can apply in the physical world, and spark creativity in the person playing a game. However, many games prey on human tendencies for short-lasting dopamine hits, leaving them ultimately dissatisfied.

Few games foster collaboration of users, but emphasize combativeness. A study that analyzed the effect of gaming on mental health found that problematic gaming habits correlated with maladaptive coping strategies, negative emotions, low self-esteem, a preference for solitude, and poor performance in school.

What Piece of Gaming Tech do you Like the Most and Why?

Augmented reality is by far the most useful innovation in the gaming space, as it integrates digital and real-world component so that users can acquire dextral skills without being exposed to the externalities of failing at a task. While this is useful for military applications, the more important solutions will be seen over time, as users discover affinities for tasks they would have not explored in the ‘real world’ (medical, engineering etc.).

Setting entertainment purposes aside, games serve to explore solutions without having to incur reputational or monetary consequences. As such both children and adults can approach new areas of interest, while not feeling exposed to the downsides of experiments failing in the physical world. Augmented reality provides the best intermediary for that use case.

What Piece of Gaming Tech do you Think is Lacking?

In as much as gaming employs interaction with other players in a virtual world environment, social cues transferred to avatars are still lagging behind the human’s ability to discern nuances in non-verbal communication. The latter is an important skill for successful interpersonal exchange and is

deteriorating in persons spending more time interacting with non-player characters and in-game personas, than real-world human interaction.

Other elements of gaming technology lacking today are user-owned and operated systems that can facilitate ‘play-to-earn’ functions without the need of a centralized commercial entity that may discontinue game or game elements based on corporate objectives, rather than the wishes of the user base.

Lastly, the most important concepts will evolve out of structural changes around the concepts of persona (user controlled data), avatars (presentational subset of user controlled data), and profiles (data the platform attached to the former concept) - i.e. cryptographic primitives under a persons control. These are the necessary components for the transition of digital skills and reputation to the individua. (more here).

Lastly, What is the Future of Gaming? Where is the Industry Headed?

As gamers are more and more exposed to digital assets, they will build up an expectation of being able to own all their in-game items, virtual land, and other assets, rather than having to license access to a game environment. While true “metaverse” experiences are likely still at least a decade from being a technical reality, decentralization of games aspects can already be observed. The latter will likely include permaweb features in which aspects of a game are permanently stored digitally on a decentralized storage system such as IPFS or Arweave.

Also read: More Than Just The Future Of Gaming