Where will games be in 25 years?

This week we've been celebrating Eurogamer's 25th anniversary by looking back at some of the games and the people that have shaped our past quarter century. We've also been recommending our favourite games you can play right now, with The Eurogamer 100. Now, however, we invite you for a look at the future of video games - written not by us, but the people who are actually going to be building it.

Where will the world of video games be in another 25 years? It's a topic that seems intrinsically linked to where the world will be in 25 years. The prevalence of AI, the growth of cloud systems and the continued improvement in VR/AR technology all loom large - but there's also real positivity here for the the future of our favourite medium as it continues to mature.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed!

Jake Solomon, XCOM designer

"I'll be 70 something? Jesus Christ. I still think there will be single-player games - major things like RPGs. There will be social experiences, but any type of predatory or opportunistic monetisation just never works in the long term. You'll still see the games that we love to play, story-based, single-player games. I guess I would argue for: 'games won't be that different 25 years from now'.

"There will probably be some new types of games. The demographics of gamers will probably broaden internationally, to cater for underserved markets. The cost of games is prohibitive for a lot of international markets, that's got to change. Free-to-play is very popular in non-western markets, just because of the cost of premium games. Free to play games won't win against premium games once the cost is achievable in those regions. I feel good about the game industry moving forward."

Goichi "Suda51" Suda, design legend, Grasshopper Manufacture boss

"We'll be at the PlayStation 30 or so, and instead of having an actual console it'll be sort of like a digital parasite that you insert in your body. They'll be something organic, about the size of a baseball with some sort of tentacles coming out that you use to jack the 'console' into your neck.

"PlayStation and Xbox will be like something from the Cronenberg movie Existenz. But Nintendo will still be making awesome consoles and handhelds, continuing to set the standard for video games like now."

Hannah Nicklin, narrative designer, former studio lead of Die Gute Fabrik

"After the collapse of the Thwaite's Glacier in 2032 and the wet-bulb heat emergencies in North China, South Asia and the Persian Gulf, a large part of the world went into crisis mode. The overnight rise of sea levels by several metres decimated many economies, and game-making wasn't high on people's list of priorities; especially given the international quality of the industry.

"Communities fractured, millions of refugees sought places to retreat to, infrastructure building and decarbonisation became a priority. The rich retreated to their yachts, private jets and islands, but after a number of fatal incidents revealed a concerted activist plot to eliminate billionaires altogether the smart ones donated vast sums to rebuilding, and repatriated as only mildly rich. Large parts of most country's economies were nationalised, and I was lucky enough to live in a country which made an urgent shift to a carbon-free economy. It took a decade for us to catch our breath.

"Though we didn't spend much time developing games in the 40s, I never stopped designing them. But they were more like the games you played as a child. Not digital. Games like counting magpies, or not stepping on the cracks in the pavement; making bets with fate so your loved ones survive the dysentery going around, or that miracle of miracles the picture you posted on the missing person's board in every city you pass through is found, seen, that they find you, and that you can hold each other close once again. The next city, that will be the one."

Gareth Damian Martin, Citizen Sleeper writer and designer

"It's really hard to know where AAA is gonna go. We're gonna have to see somebody propose something more than the 'forever game'. Everybody wants a Destiny, but Bungie is about to go under. It's the same as Netflix - everyone wanted to be Netflix for a while, but then Netflix doesn't work. Things will have to change. That scares me, but I think we won't be that far from where we are now.

"You look at what people are making and there's such great stuff happening with a game like Indika for example. 11-bit is doing great work to sell that and others like The Thaumaturge. They're actually managing to build a small audience around themselves that will support really cool work. Indika is also fascinating because it looks like a AAA game - because of Unreal Engine now and MetaHuman, you can have a team of like 20 people and still have photo-realistic people in your game. That's a really interesting space and it's eating up the ground under AAA in a fun way."

Jenova Chen, Thatgamecompany designer and co-founder

"In 25 years, video games will have been around for over 80 years, much like cinema had by the mid-20th century. When cinema reached that milestone, it had already become a widely-accepted artistic medium and the dominant form of entertainment. I believe video games are on a similar trajectory.

"By then, games will be recognized not just as games but as a powerful form of storytelling that shapes and reflects culture globally. How we experience interactive content may evolve dramatically, but the emotional depth and the ability to convey meaningful messages will only grow. Just as cinema became a mirror of society, video games will continue to expand their role as a rich, immersive medium that profoundly impacts our lives."

John Epler, BioWare veteran and Dragon Age creative director

"There's always the temptation to say it's going to be a technological shift, but at a certain point we come to the place where we can't make graphics better. Ultimately, it's going to be about finding that balance between player freedom and authored content. To me that's the most interesting challenge. How do you manage to allow players freedom in your world, freedom in this space?

"25 years from now I'm hoping technology resources will make it easier to build content in ways that allow for branching but also still have that feeling of hand touched-ness that you lose a little bit when you get to procedural content."

Meghna Jayanth, writer and narrative designer

"In the shadow of brutal ongoing layoffs with no end in sight, platformisation and increasing extractivism plaguing game design, it's hard to be hopeful about where I think video games will be in 25 years. It's hard to be hopeful about the way the world is going, period. But we have to hope, and we have to imagine otherwise in order to make it so - and to me, that is the true potential and possibility of video games. We can remake the world every time we make a game.

"What I hope for the future of video games is that we are sustainable, democratised, imaginatively liberated and of genuine value to our players as human beings rather than 'consumers'. I hope we've turned away from designs of addiction and extraction. I hope the gun has lost its primacy in the way mainstream games conceptualise interaction. I hope we turn away from ballooning budgets and timelines, and there's more space for more people to make weird, small, experimental, challenging work, and find an audience. More than anything I hope we are all making and playing games in a better world, rather than providing distraction and dissociation from the one that's crumbling around us."

Åsa Bredin, head of Mojang Studios

"This summer, I spent some time with my son playing retro arcade games. As someone who's worked in gaming for 15 years, it was a full circle moment for me - connecting over games I grew up with and having the characters, the worlds, the art form transcend across generations. It made me think about how video games can enable deep connections and bring joy to players of all ages in every corner of the world.

"In 25 years, I hope games are doing even more to help build a better world. Video games today can be a force for good, an outlet for people to express their creativity, a way to build community. As technology advances, it is becoming easier for people to build games and share their artistry. And as more people create games, I'm excited to see the many unique stories that are crafted."

Jon Ingold, Inkle co-founder

"In 25 years time, Disney's lawyers will have found a way to copyright the concept of storytelling itself, so it'll be illegal to make any kind of narrative content at all. Games will become purely abstract and non-digital to avoid litigation: multi-dimensional chess sets, playing cards with nine or 10 different suits. Darts will make a big comeback, with customised dartboards featuring pictures of your favourite characters' butts.

"Steam will still exist, but will require developers to pay a monthly subscription to be allowed to host their game, for free, on the platform. Disney's cultural wing will give grants to children to draw pictures of new characters, whom they will then of course own. Poetry will be the language of revolution but will be very hard to understand. Only the poor will pay taxes.

"The Olympics will be held in VR, and the winner in most events will be a shy man from China with a server farm in his cellar. Healthcare will be done by lottery, except for plastic surgery. The Mars colony will be due to open 'next year', every year, but investors will keep piling in the money. Star Citizen will not have come out yet. Peter Molyneux will be working on a new game.

"Bananas will taste different. Bees will be robotic. COVID will still be around, but everyone will pretend it isn't. RPGs will seem over complicated to kids, who will prefer to read books. The sky will be purple. Hawaii will be purely mythical. Destiny 2 will be a subject of academic theological research. A robot called Geoff will announce new games, endlessly, all the time."

Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida, Square Enix legend, FF14 boss

"More than 90 percent of what we call games consoles will be gone. But there's a possibility that Nintendo might still have a platform. It should be possible to play games on all devices, and almost 100 percent of gaming will be on the cloud, so definitely there would be no need to have machine power on the players' side. It will be similar to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and it will be subscription-based.

"As long as you pay the subscription, you will be able to game 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. With regards to which company would probably come out on top in terms of the business battle, I cannot say. Truth be told, I do have my own personal prediction, but if I say anything here, it's probably going to get me into trouble. Let's just say that I was not asked about that."

Yuji Hori, Dragon Quest creator

"I really can't imagine what it's going to be like in 25 years, but maybe games will have come out from the monitor. They'll be more real, whatever that means."

Charles Cecil, Broken Sword creator

"Adventures - more so than Broken Sword - are so much more than games. They are interactive narratives. They are interactive entertainment. Games is in many ways a demeaning term. So as we go forward, story and innovation in control systems, and the way we appeal to communities is going to be at the heart.

"Think of the way that a lot of people thought that VR was going to dominate. But why would it dominate? People play with their children, their parents, with loved ones. Why would you do that in a VR environment? Why not share the experience? I'm going to say all of these things are going to stay. I don't see why we should have a paradigm shift in the way that people play."

Christine Love, writer and designer

"In 2049 we're going to look back and see this era as far, far more dated than looking back on 1999 does now. We'll be shocked by how same-y everything felt, the big homogenising movement currently going on across the board. AAA games are all the same open-world game about gaining experience points to level up nodes on a skill tree with microtransactions and loot and a season pass. Indie games are all about recreating one's favourite childhood game. Mobile games need to be a gacha casino to unlock JPG girls. We'll probably even forget that there were tons of innovative games lost in that conservative mix because of how everything was controlled by just a small number of platforms with a dying press and streaming trending towards only a tiny number of games with broadest appeal.

"We're going to get tired of that really soon, and see a shift towards games taking more ambitious swings to stand apart from the crowd. We'll learn a lot from our present moment - what things don't work, how to make things feel more approachable - and increasingly see games apply those lessons to ideas that feel different. As an indie developer, I think we're going to focus more on our own unique audiences instead of trying to win the lottery on the Steam top sellers page. 'I'll play that game since it's on Game Pass' is going to feel as quaint and ridiculous as 'I watched that movie because it just happened to be on TV' does now.

"We're going to realise the best way to stand out from that huge crowd is through their themes: games that answer questions you never thought a game would make you think of, games that feel strongly opinionated, games that don't resonate shallowly with every single person but instead are deeply meaningful to a few, games that make decisions that only that specific game could ever make in service of that specific vision. Really, that's something we all already know we need in our hearts. I'm hopeful to see an era defined by that."

Craig Duncan, Rare studio head

"I'll be 72 in 25 years and would like to think I'll be sitting with some fellow grey gamers still playing games together, on an even bigger projected TV image from a tiny projector and smiling and laughing with shared experiences. I'd like to think I'd have access to all my favourite games everywhere and be able to take many trips down memory lane revisiting experiences I enjoyed through my gaming life, telling others why this game matters and how it made me feel playing.

"I would hope there were games I could still play with friends and family regardless of device, and be able to share experiences with them both synchronously and asynchronously where our friends lists are dynamic and it's easy to find friends to share with. I love the idea of more social games where players leave real imprints and experiences for each other, that a world had genuinely changed due to the action of other players, and not just in a destructive way.

"Are there ways players can create delight and surprise for other players passing through a world they had a part in shaping? It's hard to predict even 10 years and change is so prolific in gaming. The future is ours to define, but I think will be based around how we play and how connected communities are inside game worlds adding to the experience, as well as how insanely fast internet speeds will facilitate more instant access to all the things you love."

Shinji Mikami, former Capcom and Tango Gameworks legend

"AI is going to become a lot bigger and a much more prominent element in game development and game creation. You'll be able to stick it in a game and have the AI decide for itself 'Okay, so this character, how would this character think? How would this character talk? How is he going to react in a situation?'

"There's not a whole lot that can be changed as far as backgrounds, but animations and stuff like that could all be, in 25 years, completely AI-generated. And so the importance of the creation of backgrounds and actual animations, I feel that there's going to be a much bigger gap than there is now. That's one of the things that is a bit daunting."

Michel Koch, studio creative director, Don't Nod Montreal

"There is a terrible answer, and a hopeful answer. For my sake, whatever the new displays or tech we have, I hope I can still play a game where I don't have to be completely in a VR headset. I'm not sure I want a chip in my head, but maybe that would be better than wearing something heavy like that."

Tanya X. Short, Kitfox Games co-founder

"I'd like to be optimistic. Let's say that by the year 2050, any game consoles and electronics are made from sustainable and/or recycled materials rather than newly-mined rare earth metals. Controllers retain the same basic shape as past generations, but it's simple to adjust their size, texture, and configuration for your personal comfort. With a new generation of gamers ever more aware of working conditions and developer realities, more developers will feel emboldened to show their true selves and passions through their work and public presence, resulting in a stunning variety of content and innovative gameplay.

"The gap between tiny teams and giant productions will narrow as publicly-available tech becomes more powerful, naturally encouraging most larger game teams to cap at 200 heads. The 2050 "micro-AAA" game typically offers extremely wide cross-platform multiplayer experiences, with a breadth of content and systems that would have been impossible 25 years ago, stitched together seamlessly (and unevenly) by artificially intelligent game engines. Meanwhile, Kitfox continues to employ very small teams, offering experiences deeper and richer than ever, though I contribute infrequently, as officially I'm retired to play with my cats full-time."

Jesper Kyd, Assassin's Creed composer

"I'd love to be able to put on a pair of glasses in my house and be in a location like the Starship Enterprise. And every window and wall and door handle is rendered in-game, so you can just completely transform the space you sit in, but it's still all the same. You don't bump into stuff and your brain is not confused. And then you add your friends into that world as well.

"And then you could hang out there, like with my parents who are in Denmark and I live in Los Angeles. That type of thing is so clunky right now and we have prototype stuff that can kind of make it, but once all that stuff gets really, really smooth... man. We can't even imagine how great it could be."

Hannah Flynn, Failbetter Games communications director

"This morning, my seven-year-old and I were playing Cat Quest 2 on the sofa, cheering and laughing and generally cutting it up together. In 25 years, I'll be 65. My kids will be 29 and 32. (Jesus.) I hope future me is still enjoying playing games with her children. I hope the industry at large has taken a hard look at the waste we've been responsible for, and that we've focused on other, more sustainable ends.

"Maybe if she's canny enough, future me will have picked up some skills in the maintenance and repair of old controllers, and we'll be unpacking our refurbished Rock Band peripherals at Christmas to play with the family. I hope so."

Sam Barlow, Her Story, Immortality writer and director

"25 years sounds such a long time but when I think back that far, it's slightly devastating to see how little progress games have made. Perhaps after the next remaster of a remaster there will be some form of phoenixlike rebirth. Games are now grappling with kinds of freedom and openness and my hope would be we understand how much more "authored" open experiences can be.

"The point of player freedom might not be an abdication of authorship but bringing the player closer to the creative work of the author, letting them swim together in the waters around the act of creation. What a future!"

Lucy Kyriakidou, Disney's Illusion Island art director

"As the industry matures even more in the next 25 years, we will see the stories get more diverse, more personal, and covering subjects that are not only fantastical but also more human. When it comes to my discipline, I am excited to see the innovation that will come in the art styles we see. With the quest for realism now in the bag, it is the exploration of other sources of inspiration that is taking its place.

"Indie games are in the forefront of this evolution, taking the most daring steps in both the stories they tell and the art styles they experiment with, ensuring the medium's popularity in all the different demographics. This is what I believe will keep happening as different audiences ask for more of these personal experiences and developers themselves seek to have more control over their careers. I can't wait!"

Peter Molyneux, 22cans founder

"In my eyes, there are three things that we're going to see happening in the next 25 years. I think Hollywood are going to continue to be fascinated with games and keep on coming for more game stories and narrative. The success of Fallout and, to some degree, the Witcher, and the deal between Remedy and Annapurna to bring Control and Alan Wake to the big screen, shows that games have the kinds of worlds where Hollywood can really get stuck in.

"AI is going to be a real game changer. There will come a time where AI will be used to create huge parts of a game - AI-generated characters, animations, dialogue, VO, there is so much that AI will be able to tackle.

"And finally, I think that AI will open the doors to everyone and allow anyone to make games. You will be able to, for example, create a game from one single prompt such as 'Make a battle royale set on a pirate ship' and your AI will go and do that for you."

Nina Freeman, Cibele, Tacoma designer

"When I think about what the games industry will be like in 25 years... the first thing that strikes me is that I'll be 59 years old. That's not too far from the average age of retirement here in the US! So, the thing that fascinates me the most is considering who will be making games in 25 years. Even in the span of my 12 or so year career, I've seen many folks come and go. I wonder how many of the folks who started at the same time as me in a similar space will still be making indie games. We all know that the audience's interests evolve quickly from year to year, but developers themselves... I think their interests shift too, albeit at a varying pace.

"Some developers devote their careers to a certain genre, whereas others jump around and work on lots of different games. I'm excited to keep track of the careers of the many developers I admire, and especially those who started around the same time as me. It'll be amazing to see what inspires new developers to enter the industry as well, but... there's something special about watching one's own generation evolve over such a long period of time."

Ed Beach, Civilization franchise creative director

"In 25 years, the integration of games into all facets of our life will be nearly complete. Games will become a standard component of our educational systems, full companions to us while we consume entertainment, and seamlessly available to us wherever we travel. I'm hopeful that they will also help us bridge cultures and more firmly link diverse world communities, but success on that front is probably less certain."

Derek Yu, Spelunky designer

"Video games will always be an artform that advances hand-in-hand with technology, so we'll inevitably take more steps toward full-sensory immersion. But what excites me at least as much is the possibility of more interactivity - the unique element of video games. I envision open worlds that are perhaps smaller than we have now, but so interactive and interconnected that they'll feel larger than ever.

As interactivity increases, I can also see people specialising more and more in specific roles within these games and shaping the experience for themselves and for other players. We already know how much people enjoy creating their own games within games and that will only get more popular. I imagine game-making will become as ubiquitous a hobby as writing or cooking in the future - a form of expression and communication that can be done as casually or as seriously as you want."

Marc Merrill and Dylan Jadeja, Chief Product Officer and CEO of Riot Games

Merrill: "Technology will advance to enable custom, dynamic content on a personalised level that is unimaginable today driven by huge amounts of individualised data. The fidelity and realism of VR/AR experiences delivered to you via cybernetic implants, such as future versions of Neuralink and other incredible technology, is going to seamlessly blend reality with the virtual, and players will be able to control their experiences via next generation interfaces such as via thought."

Jadeja: "We're confident the golden age of gaming still lies ahead - a future where games have moved firmly into the centre of culture and transcend traditional entertainment. This isn't just about games participating in the media landscape; it's about leading it. By weaving together TV, film, music, and competitive arenas into game universes, gaming will be a primary medium for people to commune, express themselves and make lasting memories. As our industry drives this shift over the next 25 years, games become not just a part of the cultural fabric but a connective, engaging element that defines it."

Paul Bellezza, executive producer of League of Legends

"As of today, not many grandparents are gamers, but by 2049, that will have changed. So, in a world where everyone on Earth has been exposed to games, what does 'play' look like? For me, I see a world where grandparents, parents and their children can play games together – and not just simple party games. For me, I imagine it's a Sunday, I'm with my wife, children, close friends and their families, we're having a barbecue, and we're all just having a good time building, crafting, and raiding together in-game."