Games industry veteran Trip Hawkins (founder of EA, 3DO and Digital Chocolate) has just given a keynote entitled "The Supercasual Social Revolution" at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle. The gist - a new generation of gamers, brought up with the internet, mobile phones, iTunes and social networking is seeking a new kind of game - social, viral, accessible and playable in short sessions on any hardware at hand.
He also talked of disruptive games, which break out of the tech-aware ghetto and attract complete non-gamers - Wii Play and Fit spring to mind, though social virtual networks came predictably into reckoning.
So are you an Omni Media Gamer? Do you know any?
It's early days yet. Sure, there are plenty of browser games technically playable on both PCs and smartphones; plus, several mobile titles (Hands-On's World Poker Texas Hold 'Em 2 for example) are designed specifically for competitive online play between phone and PC users. But the big dream of, say, Xbox vs PC vs mobile gamers is yet to materialise, hampered by infrastructure, interface and other hardware issues.
But as Hawkins attests, times are changing. On mobile you have 3G iPhone with its freely available SDKs, plus OpenSource Symbian and soon, Google Android. On console there are XBLA, PSN and WiiWare, all encouraging small-scale innovative development. It'll just take one very good, very simple, very connected game, perhaps delivered as a viral Facebook or iPhone app, something that'll keep pushing content at busy users, that'll use new elements like GPS... Then, well, Hawkins may just be on to something huge... certainly more EA than 3DO.
[Via Gamesutra]
