Gaming, The Next Level!

Have you noticed the enthusiasm displayed by children when playing computer games? “Shoot at the monster on the left, and pick up the ammunition in the corner.” Children display an adrenalin rush when playing computer games. In fact educators have realized the potential of games and now many educational games are available in the market. Adults have also taken to gaming in a big way. A part of astronaut training includes playing computer games. Even the armed forces use computer games to familiarize soldiers with real combat situations. Studies have shown that computer game players have better visuo-motor skills. The video games market in India was estimated at Rs. 700 crores in 2008.

Today computer games can be played on mobile phones, laptops and specialized gaming consoles. After the Iraq shoe throwing incident, there are numerous games available where the player has to throw shoes at an image of Bush. Similarly after the Hudson river plane landing, games are available where the player has to safely land a plane in the river and save all the passengers. There are multiple games based on Bollywood characters.

History of gaming

Gaming requires a screen to view images and characters present in the game, a speaker to play audio and a handheld input device using which the player can control the play. The handheld controller could be a keyboard or a mouse or a specialized game controller consisting of joysticks, buttons and/or rollers.

If you ask an avid gamer what the major improvement in gaming has been over the years, he will tell you it is better graphics and sound. Indeed cleaner graphics and good audio quality have been the major focus of game developers. Today gaming consoles like PlayStation and Xbox use large processing power in the form of dedicated 32- and 64-bit processors resulting in high definition graphics and crystal clear sound. They use advanced image filtering techniques to render smoother textures in the image.



The input device has so far been limited to the handheld controller. Recently Nintendo launched the Wii console which is the first handheld controller to use motion sensing as part of gameplay. The Wii handheld controller includes a spatial motion sensor that allows sensing of the players arm position and orientation. Every movement of the arm is captured by the sensor and forms part of the players response to the game. By adding this one feature the Wii console easily became one of the hottest selling video game consoles.

So this is today. What does the future of gaming look like? What should game designers be focusing on?


Attentive controllers are the future of gaming

Humans are adept at using their hands. So while it is natural to provide inputs using our hands, other forms of input are also possible. To communicate we use speech, facial expressions, eyes, hand gestures and body movements. It is natural to include these forms of input also into gameplaying. The next generation will see us moving from handheld controllers to attentive controllers. Attentive controllers are game controllers that not only take input from our hand but also allow input in the form of speech, vision and motion. Wii has begun to address the last of these by incorporating one form of motion, that of the hands holding the controller.



Heightening the gaming experience is one of the major aims of game designers. Indeed the future will belong to games that allow better player-device interaction. Wii created a flutter in the gaming world by incorporating motion sensing as a new input dimension. But speech, vision and possibly other forms of motion like, gestures can also be captured. Startups in the gaming space have an opportunity to make a major impact on the gaming industry by building attentive controllers that take the gaming experience to the next level. Also importantly speech, vision and motion are mature technologies so these attentive controllers can be built with innovative use of existing technologies.

Incorporating speech recognition into games will enhance the gameplay and also lead to more complex storylines. Say during the game you could ask, “How far to the next ammunition facility?” Today speech recognition and dialog technology have advanced enough to recognize sentences like these and act on them. The response could be spoken back by the computer. Such technology would allow near realistic gameplay situations to be created. In F1 racing the driver often asks questions to his team. Question answering could now be incorporated into the F1 video game.

Gaze following technology has improved enough to know which part of the screen the player is looking. Gaming strategies could be evolved based on this. For example to make the game more challenging and interesting, the bad guys could sneak up on you from the side of the screen that you are not paying attention to. This could lead to gameplay strategies where the player pretends to be looking somewhere to fool the system into making a specific move.

The challenge is now on console designers to build attentive controllers that can take other forms of input from the player. Speech, vision and motion technologies have matured so they can be incorporated into the controller. Gameplay and storyline could then be built around the use of such attentive controllers, taking the gaming experience to the next level.