zoombapup
08-23-2007, 08:51 AM
Here in the UK we have a communications regulator that monitors media and its usage in order to prevent monopoly and in general to make sure companies arent going OTT against thier customers.
Anyway, the annual report just came out and I thought it might make interesting reading for anyone who is looking further out into the future and thinking about products say 5-10 years down the line. The report talks about changes in use of various media and emerging trends etc.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/cmr07/
Couple of interesting bits from the "key points":
1) Analysis of time spent online reveals that Britain is a nation of shoppers and social networkers. More time was spent on eBay than on any other web site, and social networking sites Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are all in the top ten sites by time spent.
2) Women aged 25-34 spend over 20% more time online than their male counterparts. ‘Silver surfers’ also account for an increasing amount of internet use with nearly 30% of total time spent on the internet accounted for by over-50s (although, as over-50s account for 41% of the UK population, their internet usage remains significantly lower than average).
What a lot of this suggests to me is that currently, we are on the cusp of becoming very much a nation of digitally connected people who shop, socialize and get our entertainment from the internet. It also suggests that socially oriented media will tend to win out as this trend continues.
What does this mean for games? Well, I've long thought this, but I strongly believe that online games with a strong social element are going to gain popularity. I think there will be considerable fragmentation in that you might have a couple of "large scale" social online games. But most users will search for niche social experiences that interest them and engage them. As we get better at delivering online gaming experiences with the social aspect I would think that this fragmentation will broaden the overall user base (essentially this is the boutique MMO model).
So for instance, it might mean that doing a scalable MMO based on fishing might garner a strong social following among the angler community. Of course some of the major players (i.e. say something like News Corp) will try and create the bigger social experiences, it depends if they can make them compelling enough to deliver to the mainstream user, but they have the disadvantage in requiring a huge infrastructure that somehow must be monetized.
I'm doing some digging into using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud as a scalable server cluster to be able to do this kind of large scale boutique MMO system on an indie budget. Right now they're lacking some infrastructure calls in thier API's that will make it possible (i.e. you cant determine when you instantiate a server instance which physical location you will be getting).
Man, this is one exciting time!!
Anyway, the annual report just came out and I thought it might make interesting reading for anyone who is looking further out into the future and thinking about products say 5-10 years down the line. The report talks about changes in use of various media and emerging trends etc.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/cmr07/
Couple of interesting bits from the "key points":
1) Analysis of time spent online reveals that Britain is a nation of shoppers and social networkers. More time was spent on eBay than on any other web site, and social networking sites Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are all in the top ten sites by time spent.
2) Women aged 25-34 spend over 20% more time online than their male counterparts. ‘Silver surfers’ also account for an increasing amount of internet use with nearly 30% of total time spent on the internet accounted for by over-50s (although, as over-50s account for 41% of the UK population, their internet usage remains significantly lower than average).
What a lot of this suggests to me is that currently, we are on the cusp of becoming very much a nation of digitally connected people who shop, socialize and get our entertainment from the internet. It also suggests that socially oriented media will tend to win out as this trend continues.
What does this mean for games? Well, I've long thought this, but I strongly believe that online games with a strong social element are going to gain popularity. I think there will be considerable fragmentation in that you might have a couple of "large scale" social online games. But most users will search for niche social experiences that interest them and engage them. As we get better at delivering online gaming experiences with the social aspect I would think that this fragmentation will broaden the overall user base (essentially this is the boutique MMO model).
So for instance, it might mean that doing a scalable MMO based on fishing might garner a strong social following among the angler community. Of course some of the major players (i.e. say something like News Corp) will try and create the bigger social experiences, it depends if they can make them compelling enough to deliver to the mainstream user, but they have the disadvantage in requiring a huge infrastructure that somehow must be monetized.
I'm doing some digging into using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud as a scalable server cluster to be able to do this kind of large scale boutique MMO system on an indie budget. Right now they're lacking some infrastructure calls in thier API's that will make it possible (i.e. you cant determine when you instantiate a server instance which physical location you will be getting).
Man, this is one exciting time!!