The gaming industry does not look like the people playing their games. Everybody plays games, yet not everybody gets to contribute to making games, explains Jessica Hammer. It’s an incredible loss for the game industry. In Hammer’s experience, her game design classes look more representative of the world than they do the game industry. For example, her classes tend to have at least 50% female students. They also reflect a more accurate depiction of the population in terms of racial diversity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

And after 15 years of teaching game design Hammer has learned just how much her students are always able to surprise her. Even when imposing strict constraints such as: “You’re going to make a non-digital game one of whose main materials is water, good luck,” they are able to produce exceptional games. Hammer suspects that part of this incredible creativity comes from having a diversity of life experiences and social perspectives that they’re bringing to the table.

When people ask her what they should learn to be a game designer, her answer is simple. Be curious about life. If you consume primarily games, or geek media, or stories, or experiences of people just like you, you are going to make boring games. The secret to brilliant game design is to be what she refers to as ‘a little bit of an intellectual magpie’. You should be looking around the world for fascinating and shiny things that don’t already appear in games so you can bring them home to your nest.

When we talk about diversity in the game industry, we’re talking about people who have a leg up on what we already see in games. They don’t have to go out and collect shiny things. Jessica Hammer is a woman in the gaming industry. There is already an incredible set of experiences to build on. That’s one of the reasons that she believes indie games are one of the richest sources of innovation in the gaming world. Because the barrier to entry is lower, and you see an enormous amount more diversity than you do in, for example, triple AAA games. And that innovation is filtering up into mainstream games. And for Hammer, her vision for the gaming world’s future is to see women, people of color, and queer creators who are the source of this creativity innovation be rewarded and paid for it.

”I think the future of gaming is having different voices, colors, shapes, and bodies as much as possible,” Says Anya Combs. “I think we as a nation, especially in the US, are changing pretty drastically, so it would make sense that games, art, and entertainment would follow suit with that.”

“When we’re talking about inclusion when it comes to games themselves and the representation that we see within characters, there are two things we started to see. We started to see that the representation that we’ve seen in video games have become multilayered, and they’re not as stereotypical,” Erin Simon explains.

For example, if you look at the first Street Fighter, those characters, especially ones who are people of color, they’re very stereotypical and borderline racist. The companies behind these games are starting to understand that can’t be the representation that you see. They started to make some of these characters that people found problematic more complex. They gave them have layers of different personalities especially within the storyline. We’re starting to see that.

Customization of characters has been another big one. Allowing people to pick the skins and giving people options to pick if they want to play as a male or a female. Within the options of playing as a male or a female, they’re able to pick the skin color that they would like, the hair, and have that option to mold and build a character that they feel could look like them. Of course, there are some bumps along the road with that.

“As we know, African Americans are very underrepresented in the game industry- especially from an ownership perspective. The last statistics that came out and only 3% of developers are African American. The issue with that is without that representation, we’re not able to move the industry forward,” Says Ahmed Abdullah.

“We’ve seen this in other industries, as well. You go back in history, and every time we’re able to open up who actually gets into that industry, we get different games. We get different types of content.”

That’s happened in sports, where African Americans excelled very well. It’s also now happening in the entertainment industry. You’re now seeing the movie industry starting to take in people of color for more of a directing role. Now you’re seeing different, unique content. It only helps everybody.

It’s very important for African Americans to really take in this industry because there’s so much more to grow here. It’s going to happen, and it starts with you. It starts with all the people that are young to go ahead and make sure this next generation can really dive into this industry.

In the future, technology will be embedded in everything. So, we’re not going to have devices, like a camera and laptop. Instead, when we go see a movie, like Iron Man, it is just going to be embedded in our environment. d we can expect the games to go in a similar direction. Having and playing a console or PC will be obsolete. As we are walking down the street, elements of games will be part of our life.
Gamification
When games are simply embedded in our lives, it becomes gamification. A similar event occurred in a Nordic country, where they put pianos on steps at a train station. People were encouraged to walk more while also playing tunes. People took the stairs more often because it was entertaining.
The same thing could happen in gaming. We will not actually be playing a game, but it will be embedded and embodied into whatever we do in our lifestyle. We are just living inside a game.
The Evolution of Technology
Technology is like an interactive language that has already existed, that may not adapt to new forms. “So, if you look at early television,” Jessica Hammer says, “it’s radio plays where you can see the actors. And I think the same thing happens with games.” As gaming technologies advance and develop, people will need to understand new kinds of experiences.
We are still grappling with AR and VR as new kinds of gaming technologies. Video game designers are still trying to figure out what makes virtual reality games unique experiences beyond just taking existing games and porting them to a virtual reality setting. To Jessica, that is one of the fascinating things about doing game research in the context of computer science. It is less about changing the technology inside the game but rather the way games are played, discussed, consumed, and engaged with.

People have been talking about virtual reality forever. Dan Shefelman remembers a time when it was going to be huge in the ‘90s, but it never reached the heights people predicted it would at the time.
Maria Hwano details what virtual reality is and why, despite not taking over as people thought it would, it continues to capture the imagination:
“If I had one or two words that I have to explain it, it’s just the experiential aspect of virtual reality. You’re actually living it. You feel it. You’re experiencing something that actually isn’t real life in your world.”
The way Hwano sees it, people still love talking about it. There have been multiple booms that at times have even felt like fads. Virtual reality has even been talked about in education
“As a computer scientist, VR is brought up a lot,” explains Hwano. “People ask me about it. People love talking about it. People like to ask opinions about what’s going to happen with virtual reality. It’s a very interesting question.”
As exciting as VR technology is, Maria Hwano believes people need to understand where the technology is currently, and what its evolutionary process might look like.
“A long time ago, when the computer keyboard was not a thing, it used to be a one-to-one input. It was on a piano and a sticker was put on it. And a signal was given to do input. It wasn’t until 10 years later that somebody created the keyboard that we take for granted right now. That’s how long it takes to make a keyboard. So you can only imagine how much we don’t know about the potential VR might have.”
Still, the future of virtual reality is full of possibilities, especially when it comes to augmented reality.
“Augmented reality is basically taking what’s around you and – through a phone or some device – and placing something there virtually so you can see it on the phone,” Dan Shefelman says. “It’s an illusion, obviously, but it’s using the environment around you and putting assets in it. . .You’re using the space that you’re in.”

Gaming is becoming an increasingly sensory experience. Pong, as a 2D game, was satisfying. Now gamers are expecting to play tennis in a VR on Mars.
Another big part of the future is going to be Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality. You’ll be playing a game in an actual space with minuscule glasses and not a giant Oculus while interacting with other people and holograms. There will be multiplayer games fighting a hologram in the middle of Times Square. That technology is already available, but games are now going to use it on a large scale. Games will come out of virtual reality and the console, into public spaces.
Sluice, a web-based multiplayer game made by The Molecule, a company in New York City, is a harbinger of the future.
Web-based gaming is going to be huge. People walk by a giant screen with their iPad or phone. There’s rain coming down, and there are little paddles and buckets. Anyone can log in and control a paddle. There could be over 100 people walking by and playing this game, the point being to fill up your bucket.
That a game could be an open platform in an open space, where people come with their phones, connect to the game, and play simultaneously, is fascinating. In Pokemon Go, people were connecting and playing the game in a real space.
If there’s a real dinosaur coming down Broadway, and everyone is shooting it from different places with their iPhones, that would be cool. I would play that game.

Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) was an exciting era in gaming, especially for game designers who were curious about how such a project could work. For those who are unfamiliar, Twitch Pays Pokémon is a social-experiment-slash-game played live on Twitch, where actions and decisions are crowdsourced via the chat function.
Dan Shefelman lived through that moment and remembers all the fascinating ways the game evolved around its clear obstacles.
“I thought we’d seen it all. We’ve seen multiplayer games, we did platform games, we had FPS, we’ve just seen every genre possible. And then, Twitch Plays Pokémon comes around.”
The most glaring obstacle was how thousands of commands given by the chat could be distilled into one cohesive decision so the game could progress.
“[I asked if] it needs to take one input and the character moves. And they said no, all these people are putting in that input and they’re – somehow – getting averaged. Well, you know, at one point, then a voting system came out.”
The technology also had to answer the question of lag. If a user gave an input from South Korea, and another user gave an input from Brazil, which would arrive first? Would the first one count before the second? These questions were slowly rising, and communities developed out of the solutions people found. Eventually, they developed a voting system, until another problem arose.
“The voting system went away and it was just this incredible phenomenon of how we deal with, basically, overpopulation . . . Maybe it’s almost like a democracy deciding on a policy. And they did.”
This happened outside of the game, and players returned ready to navigate it as a team, like a crowd-sourced game.
“We as a team, a world team, we can beat that by coming together as communities to plan and strategize, to play one game,” says Shefelman. “Like a million people played one game together with one character. And that was basically a new genre.”

A few things have changed.
One is that esports has become more accessible to a wider range of people. So, the affordability of gaming consoles, gaming moving towards mobile, and free gaming, have all grown exponentially over the past few years. Consequently, it’s been easier to get gaming in front of more people.
The second thing that has changed is what I call the mainstreaming of esports, where you see esports information on sports networks such as ESPN and others. You turn on your TV, in some instances, and watch esports competitions live.
That is only going to increase because esports is ultimately a global sport. We believe that there are three global sports at the end of the day: soccer, basketball, and esports. Those are the three sports that anyone can, theoretically, play at any moment of the day.
So, that’s why you see the growth of esports all around the world; because it is a universal language in that regard. It’ll only grow as technology, communication, and connectivity keep growing.
In terms of breaking into the industry — for anyone who’s interested in pursuing a career within the esports landscape, I would make a few recommendations.
One would be to familiarize yourself, as intimately as possible, with the landscape. What are the top games right now? What are the next games coming out? When and where are the big tournaments? Actually, you should attend a big tournament.
Besides, are you reading the trades of esports? Are you following esports journalists on social media? Are you watching the events online? You need to immerse yourself in the space if you’re not from it. If you’re not a native, you can’t be an outsider looking to just break in; there are so many on the inside that already want these positions. So, you have to learn as much as you can in the gaming space.

The second thing I would suggest is to look for organizations that are interested in becoming part of the gaming space. As you see more non-esports traditional entities and sports organizations get involved, — whether through investment in esports organizations or owning and operating esports organizations (such as the Cleveland Cavaliers owning and operating a team in a professional esports league) — there are more and more non-esports endemics who are tasked with leading this shift.
Therefore, if you can get to people like me first before others (people who know the space and have the connections and the knowledge), you’re going to prove your worth and help yourself potentially solidify a position. Because people like me need people who know the space.
There are going to be more endemics and organizations getting involved in esports. So, knowledge of the esports landscape, performance, and connections is a gold rush.
We’re still so early in the gaming space. It feels like esports has gotten really big over the past few years. Think 10 years from now; we’ll be looking back at around this time and realize that only a handful of games were franchised and had leagues. Theoretically, a decade from now, that could be the norm. So much could change.
So, I would say this: Learn as much as you can and make contact with as many organizations and people looking to be in the gaming space.

Competition has always been at the core of gaming, and esports is a great example of the evolution of gaming over the last 50 years. Esports really began in the 1980s with Walter Day who, via his organization Twin Galaxies, hosted competitions to determine the best players for arcade games like Donkey Kong and Tetris based on high scores that spectators could watch. Today, esports are more in line with traditional sports, with leagues in such varied communities as NBA 2K, Call of Duty, and Overwatch.

The next esports milestone looks to be in game development itself for both Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X, but particularly PS5 due to its storage architecture. Because of the way the hardware is built now with the SSD structure, as well as the elimination of hard drives, the jump in game development is akin to comparing an old record player to an iPhone.

These developments seem to signal a major milestone in overall entertainment in the gaming space, helping the form continue its transition from being an activity that only a few players can enjoy at a given time to something more like sports that thousands, even millions, can enjoy worldwide, whether you’re a gamer or not. NBA 2K League has even been featured on ESPN alongside “real” sports.

In the future, the acceptance of esports by major outlets will continue to make such an event the norm rather than the exception, especially as more games are created to work in this kind of sports format.

From its humble beginnings in the arcade, esports have become one of the greatest examples of how gaming has evolved to become the juggernaut of entertainment it is today.