What do you think will be the next big fad in video gaming?

And why? By this I mean mechanics, themes, tropes, that sort of thing. We've seen cover-based shooting in many releases over the last few years, and the post apocalypse has been a prevalent theme for a while now. Post your ideas and why you think it will be the Next Big Thing.

The adventures of SexyToad. Screw Mario and Peach. Toad has to go save the female toad. Whatever her name is.

I was going to say, how are we supposed to know if it hasn't even started yet? But now, I think I know what I have in mind, I think more games will adopt the conversation wheel. Well, that's what it seems like anyways. Even Kojima was talking about that with MGS5, and how he liked it in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Free to play

Anything that makes games easier on consoles. Regenerating health in Halo CE started the whole thing, now we have cover that started in Gears of War so we can idle in safety and shoot instead of having to be on the move and getting hit and repeating levels a lot. Thank you, Xbox games.

What else is there to make games easier on consoles? That will be the next fad.

My guess is, teleporting melee. Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2 gave you the ability to hit a melee button and have your character teleport a few feet and aimbot their knife into the enemy. Then teleporting animations in Killzone and Crysis 2 began surfacing, and now in Far Cry 3 you can hit a single button and have your dude teleport with a knife to the enemy, then somehow shoot two more guys in one swift animation. I also think I saw something similar in the new Tomb Raider E3 trailer.

So the next generation of consoles will grace us with games where you no longer have to risk your life or get detected by getting close to the enemy and skillfully swiping your knife or baton in a way that would knock them out/kill them, with the chance of missing and getting screwed. All you have to do is hit X when the prompt shows up, 3 meters away from a guy, and the game will do the rest.

Bear physics.

It's the billion dollar question and nobody knows the answer.

First person farming sims.

Madden DOTA.

Reddit integration of dialogue trees in games on the PS4. Self explanatory really.

@AhmadMetallic said:

Anything that makes games easier on consoles. Regenerating health in Halo CE started the whole thing, now we have cover that started in Gears of War so we can idle in safety and shoot instead of having to be on the move and getting hit and repeating levels a lot. Thank you, Xbox games.

What else is there to make games easier on consoles? That will be the next fad.

Yeah circle strafing man, getting shot while having you're character look like an action figure was soo cool...

Headsets that wont work if you're an annoying 10-20 year old who acts like a moron online. 
 
At least that's what I'm hoping for when it comes to games

Free to play-style costume shops. Like TF2 hats. They'll be everywhere, even in $60 games.

Also, cheap plays to show us a hero's "humanity" and "vulnerability" by having them get needlessly brutalized and/or shackled with a helpless child companion. Hollywood's been on this trail for years.

@AhmadMetallic said:

Anything that makes games easier on consoles. Regenerating health in Halo CE started the whole thing, now we have cover that started in Gears of War so we can idle in safety and shoot instead of having to be on the move and getting hit and repeating levels a lot. Thank you, Xbox games.

What else is there to make games easier on consoles? That will be the next fad.

Yeah circle strafing man, getting shot while having you're character look like an action figure was soo cool...

we need more input from angry "hardcore, purist" gamers in this thread. i've only seen one so far. booooring.

Multiplayer Joust games.

Dinosaurs... I hope.

randomized loot drops and real money auction houses

@ZeForgotten said:

Headsets that wont work if you're an annoying 10-20 year old who acts like a moron online. At least that's what I'm hoping for when it comes to games

I would pay 500$ for that easy.

.

@ZeForgotten said:

Headsets that wont work if you're an annoying 10-20 year old who acts like a moron online. At least that's what I'm hoping for when it comes to games

Make that any age and I'm right there with you.

we need more input from angry "hardcore, purist" gamers in this thread. i've only seen one so far. booooring.

@AhmadMetallic said:

@UitDeToekomst said:

we need more input from angry "hardcore, purist" gamers in this thread. i've only seen one so far. booooring.

We need more tired, label-filled one-liner comments here, a much cooler contribution than actually discussing game mechanics.

We definitely need less of you.

The patterns for Legos are now over so games companies can do fake Legos (like Bricks).

I expect that due to the success of the Lego games an unscrupulous game company (most likely Zynga) will make Bricks games.

@ZeForgotten: @ZeForgotten said:

Headsets that wont work if you're an annoying 10-20 year old who acts like a moron online. At least that's what I'm hoping for when it comes to games

I want this as well!

@AhmadMetallic: It'd would have been if games back then had the same maneuverability/smoothness and great animations Max Payne has in Max Payne 3 you should have linked me something like this :

Wich is more accurate by your description of "make games like this because console games are too easy for us PC players who end up playing the same game anyways".

@SexyToad: That sounds appealing, but where the fuck is my Waluigi game!

@AhmadMetallic said:

@UitDeToekomst said:

we need more input from angry "hardcore, purist" gamers in this thread. i've only seen one so far. booooring.

We need more tired, label-filled one-liner comments here, a much cooler contribution than actually discussing game mechanics.

We definitely need less of you.

If you can predict it, you should really go and use that talent to make a bunch of money.

@spokkeh: Player Generated content, shipping tools with games to let the users add their own free DLC to other users.

@AhmadMetallic said:

Anything that makes games easier on consoles. Regenerating health in Halo CE started the whole thing, now we have cover that started in Gears of War so we can idle in safety and shoot instead of having to be on the move and getting hit and repeating levels a lot. Thank you, Xbox games.

Regenerating health was mainly done to make games easier to design more than making them easier for the player.

In the next generation, I'd like to see boss dynamics shift from the sort of pre-rendered cutscene type kills we see in games like Dante's Inferno or Castlevania: LoS, and turn them into something more free flowing. Sure, the boss could still have multiple weak points, but it would be up to the player to exploit those. Boss fights this generation feel altogether way too scripted.

@AngelN7 said:

@AhmadMetallic: It'd would have been if games back then had the same maneuverability/smoothness and great animations Max Payne has in Max Payne 3 you should have linked me something like this :

Wich is more accurate by your description of "make games like this because console games are too easy for us PC players who end up playing the same game anyways".

A friend was playing that when it came out and during a wild gunfight he shot the sombrero off someone. Sitting on the couch, we were shouting instructions for things that usually can't be done, so we commanded him to position himself so that the sombrero would fall on his head while still shooting dudes. He did this. The sombrero landed on his head and the character now had a hat. The game gave him a point bonus because it was awesome and a feature. That game got two thumbs up because of that. That's not even on popular hat-based PC games like Team Fortress 2 right?

Free to play.

@Izbaadin_Islamabad: To be honest I don't even know what game that is, I just search for : PS2 thrid person shooter on youtube , but I love games where you can shoot the sombrero out of someone's head.

-Pre-order the Legendary Edition to get the ending.

-And I would say $70 dollar games but Special editions are already that. Yup guys they got use (well, not me). And no an aluminum case for your game or an art book isn't worth $10 more.

@ZeForgotten said:

Headsets that wont work if you're an annoying 10-20 year old who acts like a moron online. At least that's what I'm hoping for when it comes to games

Make that any age and I'm right there with you.

Near future future games. been calling it since BF3, and I was right: blops 2, future soldier, gaurantee there will be more after that and it will end when they release Battlefield 2143

Imagine if GTA3 and onwards had been based on movies like El Mariachi and Desperado and you have Total Overdose 1 and 2. The nearest thing to it would be the Just Cause games, except they're not as crazy.

The GURPS system applied to video gaming. Basically take one character from a game and move him or her to any other GURPS enabled game. Take your Dragon Age 3 character and move him to Saints Row 4 then send him to Rainbow Six Patriots...or something like that.

@AhmadMetallic said:

@AngelN7. All games that didn't have any cover, and made the combat much more enjoyable when you were on the run trying to pull off awesome movie-like scenarios by using skill and some trial and error, rather than hiding under a chest-high wall and pulling a trigger.

To you maybe, but that doesn't mean everyone feels that way...

@AhmadMetallic said:

@AngelN7. All games that didn't have any cover, and made the combat much more enjoyable when you were on the run trying to pull off awesome movie-like scenarios by using skill and some trial and error, rather than hiding under a chest-high wall and pulling a trigger.

To you maybe, but that doesn't mean everyone feels that way...

Always Connected/Always Online-features.

Diablo 3 does it, Sim City does it, Demon's/Dark Souls does it, Wii U has a basic version of it sort of available as a native system-level feature. That shit's gonna be everywhere soon.

@DeF said:

Always Connected/Always Online-features.

Diablo 3 does it, Sim City does it, Demon's/Dark Souls does it, Wii U has a basic version of it sort of available as a native system-level feature. That shit's gonna be everywhere soon.

But unlike the other , Demon/Dark souls you can opt out of it and still play the game without having to forcibly connect to the internet.

@AhmadMetallic said:

@AngelN7 said:

@AhmadMetallic said:

Anything that makes games easier on consoles. Regenerating health in Halo CE started the whole thing, now we have cover that started in Gears of War so we can idle in safety and shoot instead of having to be on the move and getting hit and repeating levels a lot. Thank you, Xbox games.

What else is there to make games easier on consoles? That will be the next fad.

Yeah circle strafing man, getting shot while having you're character look like an action figure was soo cool...

Yes, it was:

The challenge and rush of being on the move, reloading/switching weapons and shooting while being aware of the enemies' positions and movement, trying to stay alive. Feeling like a movie star.
As opposed to..

Let's be fair, here: Gears of War on the higher difficulties takes a different kind of skill than twitchy shootdodging. It has a lot more to do with situational awareness and smart use of cover. You're so damn jaded about console-focused games that you don't see how much skill some of them require. That's not to say that Gears of War is perfect, but it does far, far more than you're giving it credit for. And this really isn't a subjective thing, if you actually play it on higher difficulties you'll notice what I'm saying.

You really need to give consoles and by extension console gamers more credit, they're not so insultingly easy or stupid or luck-based as you might think. I've heard you praise Deus Ex Human Revolution, at least to some extent; that game was evidently designed for consoles and then ported to the PC. The original Crysis got a console port and kept everything intact, for the most part. Powers work a little differently, as in you don't have to turn them on and off individually anymore, but how was the original Crysis's system better in the first place? And then there's your very own Max Payne, which was also designed from the ground up for consoles. And Red Dead Redemption. Shall I go on?

I'm not going to sit here and say that PC gaming is equal to consoles in terms of complexity or something like that. I think that PC's do have the potential to give us more complex games - Dragon Age Origins, for example, has a better experience on PC. The Battlefield series is vastly bigger on the PC's. Then there are games like Civilization, which cannot be done proper on consoles. I will, however, argue when someone pops up and says that the presence of a game on consoles, and by extension the console gamers themselves, are somehow less valid than PC games. That's exactly what it sounds like you're saying, and it simply isn't true at all. It cheapens gaming and gamers as a whole and puts a nice big road block in front of progression.

Are you wrong for criticizing practices like two weapon limits, regenerating health, and games that don't do anything except show off their fancy set pieces? Certainly not! But I think those games have a place. It simply isn't the place that you or I want to occupy, and as long as people like you or I or many others exist who want something deeper, then something deeper will keep getting made. It happens this way in movies, it happens this way in music, and it will happen this way in games. It's the best way for our medium to go if we want it to keep progressing, changing, and growing in different ways.

EDIT: Also, Halo CE has a regenerating shield over health that requires packs. Only two games don't actually require some form of medkit - 2 and 3 - the majority of the series has health.

As for an on-topic answer? I don't know. Judging the popularity of Skyrim and Mass Effect, I might bet on talky RPG's that don't rely on dice rolls - but then those games are expensive to make and take a long time, so I can hardly say for sure.

@believer258: brillant. couldnt have said it better myself.

whenever i see somone from the pc master race complain about console games. i tell him to stop playing them. if a pc gamer were to only play games that were released only on the pc. they would run short on games real quick. i love playing diablo 2 and then playing metorid prime and then resident evil 2. why limit yourself? so you can tell yourself that your better than sombody else? enjoy the high horse. ill be having fun "slumming" it playing resident evil 6 and Ico.

@DoctorDanger99 said:

@believer258: brillant. couldnt have said it better myself.

whenever i see somone from the pc master race complain about console games. i tell him to stop playing them. if a pc gamer were to only play games that were released only on the pc. they would run short on games real quick. i love playing diablo 2 and then playing metorid prime and then resident evil 2. why limit yourself? so you can tell yourself that your better than sombody else? enjoy the high horse. ill be having fun "slumming" it playing resident evil 6 and Ico.

Thank you for supporting his argument! They would not run short on games real quick, but they would miss out on many, many experiences.

@believer258: lol im not really supporting it.i only ment that by sticking to one form of gaming you miss out on alot of stuff. its the same for thew sony and nintendo fanboys. peole just need to try to enjoy everything they can and let other people be.

@Aetheldod said:

@DeF said:

Always Connected/Always Online-features.

Diablo 3 does it, Sim City does it, Demon's/Dark Souls does it, Wii U has a basic version of it sort of available as a native system-level feature. That shit's gonna be everywhere soon.

But unlike the other , Demon/Dark souls you can opt out of it and still play the game without having to forcibly connect to the internet.

I didn't say mandatory requirement or DRM, I said "features"!