Gamasutra - Starr Long Interview

Gamasutra interviews Ultima Online developer Starr Long on the future of games.

Patrick Miller: You're giving a talk at GDC Next about the future of games, so this interview is rather opportune! I'm curious: Which trends got left on the editing room floor for your talk?

Starr Long: My talk is focused on current trends that will dominate in the future, so I had to leave out some things that don't have currently strong trending. The biggest edit I had to make was artificial intelligence, because I just don't see enough evidential trends to support a dominating event in the near future. Another big edit I made was cloud computing.

The really interesting trends are going to be mashups of existing trends. My favorite prediction is when 3D scanning and printing collides with user-generated content in games.

PM: What were you hoping to get out of AI and cloud computing?

SL: The AI dream is to have AI that can pass a Turing Test and be fun to interact with at the same time. I still haven't experienced that. Physics as we know it now feels like the limiting factor for Cloud -- the speed of light and all that jazz.