Dec. 30--Of all the mainstream forms of pop art, perhaps only in interactive entertainment can a game be a success before it has even been released. For here is a medium that is still growing, both in the types of content available as well as the technology.
The year ahead will bring us titles that tackle cancer, abandonment and unlikely friendship bonds, among other topics. They will take us to new galaxies. In "No Man's Sky," players will become explorers of uncharted solar systems, able to land on a dizzying number of planets filled with colorful new life forms. Next holiday season, "Mass Effect: Andromeda" will be the latest in an epic space series in which personalities have mattered as much as guns.
More unconventionally, some will seek to further blur the lines between television and gaming, as games today increasingly emphasize narrative elements.
The new games will be judged not just on their technical prowess. No longer is some alchemy of bits and bytes a recipe to instant, magical game success. Today, a title like "That Dragon, Cancer," due Jan. 12, can score a win simply by showing the unassuming how games can breach previously off-limits topics of conversation. Cancer, in a child no less? Sure. Games can handle that.
There will, of course, be no shortage of impressive new hardware, from virtual reality headgear to the reveal of a new Nintendo console. Worth watching too is how independent developers began to tinker with the just-released Apple TV, an accessible game console in disguise. Like Nintendo's Wii before it, Apple TV offers the promise of appealing to those overwhelmed by the current complexity of console hardware.
Most of the focus, however, will be on 2016's shiny new toy: virtual reality.
Though we've recently seen entries and experiments in the virtual mobile space, 2016 is expected to be the year when VR finally goes mainstream. Since Nintendo released its Virtual Boy in the mid-'90s, VR has consistently felt on the verge of something great. Thus, having been the next big thing on more than one occasion, it's worth viewing the latest VR overtures with a hint of skepticism.
And yet, what a delight it was to demo "Lucky's Tale" on the PC-friendly Oculus Rift earlier this year, a cartoonish game in which a fox, Lucky, traverses a candy-colored universe.
Never mind that the game's task at hand -- simply looking and hopping around a fully vibrant and digitized world, one where treehouses and bridges sprouted before me -- was a joy. It reminded me of seeing "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" as a youngster, the first time it seemed possible that an animated universe could intermingle with our own.
More tense was "Edge of Nowhere," in which I slowly navigated icy tundra to avoid dangerous, mystical creatures. If I wasn't exactly transported to the arctic, by wearing the VR goggles I was fully closed off from the outside world, allowing myself to completely give in to an immersive game.
