As a game developer the one thing I know for sure is that no matter what happens I will still be making games. If I'm no longer working in the industry, or heck, if the industry doesn't even exist in the same way it does now, I will be solo developing games for whoever cares to play them. This is what I've chosen to do with my life and I'm never giving up.

I do not want fallout smell immersion 😆

Game industry future: it's your funny little hobby, now get back to mining.

In 50 years we're all going to be fighting for cans of beans in our own immersive Fallout experience called real life.

When people ask me "how do I see myself in 5 years," I throw off a picture from Terminator or Mad Max, according to my mood.

In 10 years the world will be struggling to recover from the dillusions of AI psychosis that made us think it can replace us, which lead to a massive financial crisis.
A gigantic economic and tech recession will lead to the collapse of the AAA industry.

Most people won't be able to afford hardware that can play new games, so optimised indi-like games will become the new norm.

Lack of oversight, brain drain, and no skill preservation effort will lead to the recovery period taking a decade longer than it should. (Isaac Asimov's Foundation speaks of this)

Tim, interesting thoughts and I would say the music industry has gone through a similar evolution ~20 yrs ago
Reminds me of how the home studio/audio interface technology was a bit of a creative destruction to the music establishment
Pre 2002 or so bands had no choice but to sign with a studio gatekeeper because the technology was so rare, expensive, and large
This business model made some great music and also destroyed alot of bands who did not kiss the ring of the studio, producer, record label, etc
Home recording came along and made bands independent, and instead of 5-10k for an album, a band can spend 5-10k for the equipment and maybe at most ship their audio files off to someone else to mix and master
So creatives have the ability to completely control their process and work, but this has also meant the music market is flooded with low quality music

Imo if I was to predict the future of the gaming market off the music market, the journalist, the reviewer who people trust and follow, the radio dj personality, is going to be incredibly important to keep the industry going when people just do not have the time to play through all those games
And I also would not be surprised if we see some indie personalities as the face of the games company pop up, like celebrity developers
Like a steve jobs, todd mcfarlane, who can make people buy in and cultivate their little cult of personality and community without some giant market influence

135 years, you wake up and the water purification chip is fried and you have to leave your shelter and go into the wasteland to find a new one.

15:48 "You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy!" ~ Back To The Future 2

I'm sceptical about so many games made by one person, I think even in 50 years games with need a mix of people to solve creative problems.

That 50 year prediction sounds absolutely horrific to my personal sensibilities lmao.

Who's going to play the oncoming flood of games made by one person teams?  Interesting thought if AI does get that good, but imagine the amount of crap on steam. It's bad enough already.

Can't wait for 1000 mmos released on steam every hour!

If I ever get an embedded dermal touch pad I’m calling the Pip-Boy 6000

And it must run on ARM so I can say “I have ARM in my arm”

Great, we will have ads in our dreams in 50 years.

Issue with game industry right now is that they keep trying to go as broad as humanly possible while targetting niches has shown to make way more money because you actually hit a target demographic instead of nobody.

I cannot stand the greed that has infected every facet of life that now cannot be escaped with games. First, they ruined new titles, and now they're forcibly updating or launching new editions of older titles that delist the old versions from stores, all for a worse product.

I can't imagine a person ordering a game specifically for themselves. Most people want to be surprised and blown away and not just get exactly what they want. This is why they don't replay one game again and again till the end of time, but crave new things.And criticism of "it's the same old thing again" is not rare. Most people can't even describe what do they want in definitive terms.

I really love and respect your optimism Tim. I just find it really difficult to share it when it comes to AI. I think it definitely can help developers but I don't trust these big gaming studios to keep people around when they can pay 2 or 3 guys to manage an AI and save a boatload of money.

Although if I do try and be optimistic for a minute, I think that the amount of small independent studios are going to skyrocket. Instead of having a handful of top dogs releasing AAA games, you are going to have thousands of smaller, independent studios releasing comparable games. It could be a net positive for the gaming community, but too soon to tell.

I think the most important thing for devs to keep in mind (Not a dev myself, just a long time gamer) is disclosure and transparency when it comes to using AI. When a game releases and I find out that they used AI after the fact I feel kind of tricked in a way. If they say we only used it for placeholders, etc. I think well why didn't you tell me this from the start? Would you ever have said anything if someone didn't call you out? How do I know you are telling me the truth? If devs are transparent up front about if and how they used AI in their game I am way more likely to play it and be cool about it.

Tim can you please give us your prediction on what the games industry will look like in 40,000 years?