I’ve long thought about what the next iteration of consumer social looks like – text > image > video > what next? For a while, it seemed like it could be audio (Clubhouse) or music (long list of music social startups). But if you think of every new wave of consumer social content being more immersive than the previous, audio and music lie in the same quadrant as image or video. What is the next most immersive media format after video? It’s not rocket science to say gaming. The idea of games being social is not new at all – Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, Twitch, Discord are multi-billion $$ companies.
However, here’s what’s different: gaming is still at the YouTube stage of the video journey, not at the TikTok stage. Roblox creators are still technical: you have to download their software (studio), learn how it works, and it’s usually a multi-person and multi-week effort. In that sense, Fortnite and Minecraft are HBO, Roblox is YouTube, but there is no TikTok yet. With generative AI (sorry yes, I’m a VC and i can’t write without using the words genAI) – the barrier to creating games is rapidly going down. I don’t just mean genAI to generate 3D game assets – I mean genAI to create casual games from scratch. If you can think of a game idea and write it, then genAI is finally at a point where it can generate both code and game assets, and soon, animate as well. Of course, these games will be lower-fidelity and much more casual, but that IS the point. These lower-fidelity casual immersive experiences will change the way we *define* a game – the way TikTok changed how we define ‘videos’ vs. the HBO or even YouTube era, this next wave of game creation can change how we define ‘games’ vs. the Minecraft or Roblox era. Anything that is immersive and multi-modal (sorry, the VC in me) can be called a game – and I believe this will be the next new media format after video. Many more people have at some point thought “should I be a TikTok influencer?” vs. “should I start a YouTube channel?” – the lower-lift, lower-fidelity, casual nature is a feature, not a bug.
As these casual games are made and played, I can squint and see them being the new media format underpinning a new social network. If I squint VERY hard, and channel all my techno-optimism + VC jargon, I overlay this with VR – genAI helps you create immersive, casual experiences easily, and VR lets you be truly be immersed in them.
Fwiw I thought of this not as ‘what is the future of gaming?’ – I’m thinking of games as the next ubiquitous media format, much like video today.
Ipshita Agarwal 