The future of social gaming.

I think the the future of gaming will mostly revolve around social gaming. What makes these games so popular amongst players and producers is that players don't become tired with the after they have beaten the game. Social games have exponentially more complexity than a coder could ever write since there are X number of players shaping and controlling the game. Social games also provide many opportunities for monetization, weather it be upgrades or level packs, or a virtual currency like in second life.

I also see an increase in the amount of resources being devoted to mobile gaming. Mobile gaming has already shown to be a mojor force since the opening of Apple's App Store. Mobile gaming is also a perfect vehicle for social games because it is on a portable device with constant internet access and allow the user to easily access the game whenever they have a free moment. Since many social games require constant checking in to monitor the players status in the game world this allows the user to do so more while on the go.

I think that being a digital digital designer for the gaming generation will certainly have it's challenges. Gamers will be used to feature rich, fully immersive environments with many layers of depth and interaction. So the gamers will expect either an interface that reflects the level of complexity that they are used to in the gaming world or the exact opposite. Simple, clutter free, easy to find information. I think that there has already been signs of this effect in browsers (Yahoo to Google) and in social networking sites (MySpace to Facebook). So, the challenge for designers will be to disseminate which treatment should be used where. The importance of being a good designer is as important as ever as interface will be getting more and more complicated or simpler and cleaner, they still need to stand out and be engaging and usable.