10 Biggest Dangers To Gaming Right Now (From A Dev's Perspective)
1. Inconsolable (The End Of The Games Console)
You wake up. You wipe the honey from your eyes. You open your curtains. You notice your sister has smeared your pillow in honey, as a cruel joke. It’s the 25th of December, and Santa’s been.
A large, distinctly Sega Mega Drive-looking box sits against the hearth of an obviously-fake coal fire with the kinda wobbly faux-fire light-thing inside it. You know the thing. Your eyes light up as you unwrap a copy of Golden Axe that your dad forgot to lay to one side for you to open last. Your mum swears at your dad. You play Sonic The Hedgehog for the first time, the eleventh time, and the fifty-sixth time that day. The clunk of the removed cartridge, the smell of the instruction manual - the situation is altogether intoxicating, an ineffable gestalt, a dream outside of dreaming.
The gaming console is a magical thing. It was that day in 1991 that I discovered I wanted to make games like Sonic the Hedgehog. The console itself was a statue - a monument, something to be revered. When my friends came to play Golden Axe with me and gasped with a distinctly nineties “whoa!”, I was awash with pride.
Every gamer has one of these stories - it might be an Amiga, or a PlayStation, or a Nintendo DS, but the story is the same - one of enchantment and utter joy.
Gaming is, inevitably, moving away from the console. Whether it's in a few years, or in a decade or so, eventually the need to have a specialised gaming box will be a redundant concept, because we’ll just access all of our games anywhere, likely on a smart TV or a phone; technology is advancing so rapidly that consoles ostensibly become outdated the day they’re released.
Arguably, this is a good thing, but to an old fart like me, there’s nothing like encircling that shrine, that big plastic box, and knowing… it’s game time.