Soccer Gaming

I am delighted to introduce a piece of writing my Tom Horgan, which takes a serious look at where the football gaming industry (and in turn the video gaming industry) may be heading in 10 years time. This article was written mainly for www.pesgaming.com, however I deemed it more than worthy of being included on this medium. As with any piece you may read on Soccer Gaming, please feel free to leave your views and comments should you see fit. Grab yourself a drink and have a read!

The future of Football Gaming in 10 years – it’s a blur!

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together!
- I am the Walrus – Beatles.

Hi I am based in San Diego California.

 I have been playing PES since 2003, first on the PC, then PS2, and now PS3. I threw out EA FIFA when I discovered PES and its marvelous game-play, but I am taking an interest in EA FIFA again having played with their World Cup edition this year.

Predicting the future of a game, which depends on a collection of state of the art technologies, is very difficult and perhaps even a complete waste of time. What makes it more complex again is that gaming itself is changing due to massive online gaming which is altering perspective on gaming business models (e.g. Farmville by Zynga), and the mould breaking Wii which has changed the gaming developer’s perception of where games can go.

So in this article I will firstly discuss the basic evolution of hardware technology encapsulated by Gordon Moore’s now famous observation and referred to as Moore’s Law. This helps us understand where Graphics processors and gaming platforms in general will end up. I expect a PS4, or XBOX 720 sometime in 2012, and perhaps even a PS5 by 2018 – 2020, although tablet computing thanks to the iPad – could produce the next gaming platforms.

Finally I had the good fortune to speak to senior executives at well known gaming companies about what sports gaming in general will look like in 10 years. The insights are quite interesting and not intuitive given that our feedback to Konami generally revolves around, animations, AI, and specific features. The game developers are beginning to see a broader picture which will impact our games significantly.

Gordon Moore – and his observation; The gaming platform outlook

PES and EA FIFA mostly sell on PS3, and XBOX 360 platforms. What we forget is that these platforms are 4 years old. In the world of technology that is a long time. These are not state of the art systems.

At the heart of every technology based product lies an integrated circuit, a chip, be it a fancy Intel microprocessor, an NVIDIA graphics chip, memory etc. Within that integrated circuit you find a common element, known as a transistor, which is the fundamental building block. Some chips such as Intel or AMD’s multi-core microprocessors have over 1 billion transistors inside them. 
Moore a co-founder of Intel observed in the mid 1960’s that the number of transistors that could be put into an integrated circuit or chip of the same size, doubled every 2 years. What is amazing is that this doubling has occurred nearly every 2 years now for 45 years, and looks likely to continue for the next ten at least. To put that into perspective, if I gave you $1 in 1964 and doubled your total dollars every two years, so that in 1966 you had 2, then 1968, you had $4; by 2010 you would have $8.4M. That would make me almost as profligate as a European Bank.

So with semiconductors, the power you had in a integrated circuit back then, would fit into one eight millionth of a chip now. No other economic force or rate of progress such as that of the chip industry has existed in history. It is why we get to whine at Konami and EA’s sorry asses every year that they can do better. We have all taken Moore’s law for granted. The day it stops will not be pretty. 
Now at this most basic level, we can say that in ten years time processing power could, assuming all goes well be 32 times better than it is now. But as we know the PS3 is a machine that is 4 years old, so in theory by 2020 we could be 128 times more powerful than what we are used to playing with today, if we get a PS5 in 2020. This is a big oversimplification by me, but the general idea holds, the power of a PS5 platform would be huge compared to now.
We will have a tremendous amount of memory, multi-core cpus, and multi core graphics processing units. The state of the art in graphics processing which has the potential to be a complete CPU solution for the gaming platform of the future is made by NVIDIA and AMD’s ATI unit. These have several processors within the chip.  Software tools, such as Microsoft’s DirectX11 allows developers to use these processors to add further realism. The key trends will be increased tessellation (more smoothing of corners, and greater surface detail) and geometric performance (better depth of field, more graphic content and information). To put it into English - Henry Moreton of NVIDIA says with regards to gaming graphics “We look at the film industry as an indicator of where we should be going in terms of the quality of their computer graphic content. We can create imagery that looks like Toy Story (1995 (1), 1999 (2)) now, but we can’t do the character effects seen in Pirates of the Caribbean yet” He is referring especially to the Davy Jones character rendered in 2005. 
At the heart of the PS3 lies a proprietary NVIDIA graphics engine (RSX), which was made purely for the PS3. NVIDIA are now producing graphics chips for use in Netbooks today that are 3 to 4 times more powerful.
So 10 mores years get is to the level of realism of Davy Jones and not Woody.

The bottom line is that graphics won’t take a tremendous leap over where they are today until we move to a new platform – say late 2012, but that move will be significant in terms of surface detail, lighting, shadow, camera angles, and movement. Animations could increase 4 fold by that time too, since the additional computing power would be present to leverage them. By 2020 we will have unbelievable graphics, compared to now. I predict we will be able to see mud patches open up on the pitch after extended use, dirt appear on a player, scars and scrapes on legs, socks droop, variable rain, Mourinho graying before our eyes (he’ll be bald by then anyway), perhaps even a zoom in feature as you are playing so that you can home in on the action. Replays will have complete depth of field when you zoom in on a player, crowds will be rendered in great detail. Hair will flow on players, as will gear when moving. There will be so many in-game animations that you will be surprised constantly by one you have not seen before. Stadiums will be a delight to look at; with perhaps a possibility to navigate your way through them, as if you were walking around it. Frame rates will be such as to support full 3D rendering at 120 frames/ second.

The significant boost to CPU power will also give us greater AI capabilities, and game play wizardry. Ultimately Konami and PES will be full on simulations, and the game play difference will come down to who is better at understanding football tactics, and real world game flow. How the controller changes will be interesting – I would expect that tackles will be felt, as will ball kicks either in your hand, or perhaps even an extension of the effect to your leg. Become a Legend, will have much greater similarity to you. You may even be able to rent time at a mo-cap studio and pay for a download that will render you more faithfully in the game. 

But…But – there is an additional way games can evolve – The Developers view.

The gaming developers such as EA and Konami hate platform changes. As one of them said to me – imagine making a movie and every-time you want to make a new one, you have to start everything from scratch – design and make new cameras, editing gear etc. This is how a change from PS2 to PS3 feels like for them. They have to re-engineer all their in-house software tools, learn a new way to code a platform. In his view it takes 2-3 years for a company to transport a core game from one platform to another. Because you don’t get to optimize things for some time, until you are familiar with the new platform. This may partially explain why Konami struggled to adapt to the PS3 in 08 and 09. A good rule of thumb may be that if you are the dominant game developer for one platform, then you will not be for the subsequent platform. Because, you want to extract as much revenue or turnover out of the old platform as possible you don’t focus your resources on the new one. Until gaming platforms are based on open standard systems, this dynamic will continue. Developers can go bust from this transition and have.

So the game developers want to find new ways to make money off their product, which in itself will change our experience considerably.  I learned the following having interview some people at senior levels within the Industry;

1) Accessibility: Hardcore gamers drive the interest, the chat, and the current business model. But gaming companies want more newbies to take up their game. There are 12 - 15 million of us football fans who buy these games every year or so. That is a drop in the ocean when you think of all football fanatics. So a key development will be to make the game more accessible to absolute novices. The two button controller option in EA’s World cup 2010 is an indication of what is in store here. I have a four year old son. One day I will play against him – do I want to have to teach him how to use the controller, or do I want to be able to have him play with the least amount of fuss. Accessibility is about getting more people involved in the experience without the need for a hardcore gaming background. 

2) The evolution of DLC, towards valuable content. Today we are used to DLCs that fix a problem, change a jersey, team rosters, new balls and what not. In the future expect this to be the way we buy our game platform (heck the game may even be free in the future), get weekly updates from leagues around the world in terms of players ability scores, and scenarios from major competitions. EA sports are showing the way here with their NBA Live 10 DLC. They pay a company to watch every live NBA game on a given weekend, and rate each player’s contribution in that game according to parameters that are found within the EA game. Then you can DLC the latest matches, rosters for these games, and the latest performances of the players in order to re-create these matches. Bringing close to real time performance of the professionals whatever the sport to your gaming experience is the trend. So imagine you are in master league and you are tracking the Premier League season, you can essentially play the same match list and have up to date player performance stats in your game. It is all about blurring the distinction between your game and the real world. It is also about finding a way for you to pay for content. Would you pay a pound to download Stamford Bridge to your game – I would. Konami will consider ways to modularize their game to allow them to sell you add on features such as new stadia.

3) Massive Online Communities. If you have not heard of Farmville, you don’t surf enough, and you need more work for your idle thumbs. It is played by 60 million people a day. Imagine every man woman, and child in the UK, and beyond playing the same game every day. Zynga’s Farmville is a game changing sensation (mind you I wouldn’t touch it).  The company is the latest Facebook, Youtube type phenomenon. It changes the world. All gaming company’s will try and emulate that. So they will encourage you to go online, and not only play peer to peer, but will want you to play on their cloud, so you buy more, and get advertised to more. Again – and trust me I am not a shill for EA, but their 2010 World Cup game shows the thinking here. They include a scenarios mode, where you play a game from the qualifiers and continue the action after an event such as that imbecile’s handball against the Irish. EA are also offering scenarios that will be available for download after each of the world cup games. If I am correct it was originally generated by Konami in their PES 2008, where they provided a scenario, and you had to complete the game, and certain challenges. EA have taken that to a new level. In the future I expect these to include the event itself, so that your game will have the replay of the goal that occurred in real life, and you take it from there, or try and stop the goal that occurred. I keep thinking of Thierry Henry and how that goal could have been avoided. More ways to keep you engaged with the online community is what this is all about. The more time online, the more you are likely to consider buying online. I expect more competitions, run by the companies themselves, with grand prizes. Would you pay to play in a competition online, if you could win a trip to the world cup, and have dinner with the WAGs? You might. The online performance will be there in 5 years time, and it will be a much better run affair then it is now. I can envisage us buying new commentators, stadia, competition entries, even animations in the long run, scenarios etc.

4) Blurring the line between fantasy and real life.  This is where you will see the biggest changes and the beginning of the key trends for the 2020s. There is work going on to bring your own personal reality into the gaming experience, and using the professional’s expertise that is embodied within your game to improve your own real life performance. Did you follow that? You get to compare your performance to a professional captured within the game platform, and then learn and improve from the interaction. An example would be; you buy a ball, the ball has a chip inside it. Every time you hit it, it records the pressure your foot put on it, the speed, and revolutions it underwent, and how far it travelled. You run home, put the ball beside your Playstation 5 and the information is uploaded automatically to your “Become a Legend” self. This information then varies your kicking parameters in game. I made this up, but this is the sort of thinking going on. You would then get in game tips on how to shoot like a pro, perhaps even tailored to your kind of shooting. Your game becomes your mentor.

And so we blur the line between your in game reality and reality itself, learning from each other.

I hope that we have 2 maybe even 3 developers in the football gaming world. Competition brings out the best, so support the weaker one if and when you can. It is not about which game platform is better today, but how each can enable the other to advance the game to football utopia. It’s all healthy in the long run.

Thanks

Tom.