Predictions - Game Design Theory - page 154

hrough the Desert all have digital versions available. Websites such as
TouchArcade.com (a website for video gamers to find out about new
video games coming out on iOS) review some of these games, exposing
a whole new audience to them. The web's board-gaming mecca, Board-
GameGeek.com, reached 400,000 registered users in 2011, with growth
rapidly escalating. Carcassonne was even released on Xbox Live Arcade.
Suddenly all these video gamers are finding out about this other
world. They are experimenting with some of these games and I can't help
but expect that their reactions will be similar to mine: this is what I have
been missing. The opportunity to make interesting, difficult, and am-
biguous decisions that I can't take back. The opportunity to explore a
game that won't get completed, a game that I can play for years. Isn't this
what a game was supposed to be all along—something that I could really
explore ?
Of course, board gamers were well aware of the existence of video
games—very few people in the developed world aren't aware of the in-
credible phenomenon of video games. But I think board gamers prob-
ably have something to learn from video games, too. The phenomenon
of these two worlds merging will be helpful for everyone (although dra-
matically more so for video gamers).
New platforms will continue to emerge that will facilitate the merg-
ing process. One of the most interesting is the Microsoft Surface, which
is essentially a very large touch-screen tablet. If these ever become af-
fordable, they will revolutionize the way we play video games and board
games, and will be a massive step forward in merging the two worlds.
Sports
What about sports? Well, I think the sports and video-game worlds will
merge as well. On one side, we already have the increasingly popular pro
video games, such as Street Fighter , StarCraft , and League of Legends .
These video games function in a very similar way to sports both cultural-
ly and mechanically. We also see the same phenomenon in board games:
obviously, classic abstracts like Go and chess are played professionally
worldwide, but newer games such as Magic: The Gathering also have
tournament play that's very popular. Many other board-game design-
ers are working on developing tournament play for their games, such
as David Sirlin with his Fantasy Strike games. It's quite possible that as
these board-game and video-game leagues become more and more seri-
ous, they may eventually become as popular as physical sports. At that
point, it will be hard to distinguish what constitutes a sport and what
constitutes a game.