“It hooks kids when their young.”

– Kotaku.

“I’m convinced that video games are Japan’s stealth strategy to turn our kids’ brains into silly putty as payback for dropping the big one on Hiroshima... The trouble began last summer when my sons started spending virtually every unsupervised hour camped out in front of the computer screen engaged in multiplayer role games like World of Warcraft and Counterstrike.”

– The Wall Street Journal (editorial).

The rapid advance of game technology and their ballooning budgets has resulted in some new trends that I think may become more familiar over the next few years.

Trilogies seem to be the new way to pitch big games.

The basic idea is that so much investment is required up front to create a new franchise that two more installments down the line (with lower production costs) are all but required to recoup the cost. This is sometimes referred to as a “Lord of the Rings” model, since that is supposedly how most of the profit on those films was made. Sequels tend to do well in games generally, and this development model ties in very nicely with marketing (“the story we wanted to tell was just too epic for one game”) and with Wall Street (“we aren’t just publishing games – we’re creating lasting entertainment franchises”). Additionally, if the first game tanks, the next two can always be cancelled. So, it seems like we can expect to see trilogies, whether the material really calls for one or not. Tying in with this is the next trend:

I’ve witnessed a few conversations about the possible identity of Surfer Girl by a group of men. This is how they play out:

1. Surfer Girl probably isn’t actually a woman.

2. If Surfer Girl is a woman, she’s probably some kind of secretary or an assistant to a powerful and well-connected executive.

3. Yeah. Surfer Girl must be, like, this receptionist who sleeps around everywhere to get all her information... well, she may also get messages from tipsters from time to time.

The conversation usually diverts from there into some stories of promiscuous women that the people in the group have heard about.

“The videogame industry has literally never had a year like 2007.”

–Next Generation.

“In looking to the future, we inevitably look to the past as a guide.”

–GameDaily.

“Listen, writing is hard.”

–The Escapist.