Track 7

Track 07

Interviewer: Welcome to the programme, Bob Lamont. Now you’re going to talk to us about the online gaming industry. We’ve had many listeners, especially parents of young children, email questions about the future of the gaming industry and how it’s going to develop.

Bob Lamont: Well, hopefully I’ll be able to answer some of their questions. Firstly, it’s important to remember that this is an industry that develops incredibly rapidly and so it’s difficult to make definite predictions. So, in terms of significant developments that people working in the industry are preparing for, the most interesting is the fact that the age group of gamers (people who play online and video games) will change dramatically.

We predict that by 2020 the average age range will have shifted from teenagers to the over 50s. This is because in the future young people will be using new forms of entertainment but those who are young now are more likely to continue using the forms of entertainment they are already used to in later life.

By 2020 this age group will have been playing the same type of game for half their lives and are unlikely to change. The types of games will progress too from the platform-based games we have now, which we expect people to be using until 2015, to 3D games towards the end of the decade. However, before everyone is using 3D games there will be a period when networked games will become the dominant format.

This is mostly to do with the technology available and the fact that gaming companies won’t have invested enough money to make 3D cheap enough for the mass market until at least 2018. Now, as you would expect, the gaming market will spread so that by 2020 companies will have created a worldwide marketing strategy for every game, therefore reducing the need to create new games for different regional markets.

This is different from today where we see that the online gaming industry is much more focused on the region of Asia and this is likely to continue for a few more years. One final point to mention here is the competition from other forms of entertainment. Over the next decade very few forms of entertainment will be able to compete with the gaming industry.

However, there is talk of movies becoming interactive in the future. This is a real threat. Tech companies will have developed the necessary technology for interactive movies by 2015 and this may attract gamers who like character-based games in large numbers.

Interviewer: Fascinating, Bob. I didn’t realize it was such a complex business. Thank you very much for your in sight…