Posted by: Jane Douglas

“Evolve or become a niche,” said game designer David Cage at his Game Developers Conference keynote speech.

According to Cage, gaming has come to a fork in the road, with the path that game makers pick now set to determine the fate of games as an entertainment medium. 

Games can go one of two ways, either becoming like comics or movies. In the comics model, games would become like comic books, with a very limited but stable market, plus “aggressive visuals and niche themes”.

This is the fate of video games if we stay on our current course, says Cage.

The alternative is the movies model, in which games will evolve to become “emotion simulators offering depth and meaning” and mainstream “by reaching all audiences”.

“”Do we want to be comics, toys, family entertainment or movies?” asks Cage. His preference as a self-styled games auteur is clearly for movies but right now, he says, games are (grown-up) toys and family entertainment first, partly akin to comics – and yet, if ever, to undergo the same process of maturation and self-discovery that cinema did in decades past.

The risk of staying “niche” and limited to a small audience is a concern of Cage’s – and if the traditional hardcore gamers need to be neglected to go mainstream, so be it.

“Be ready to lose your core audience,” he told the game makers of the GDC audience.