What do you believe is the face of gaming today?

Should be an interesting poll

FPS hands down and face down.

if it was PC gaming, I would say RTS, but for gaming in general, FPS

Not even a question - Shooters

I'd say FPS for everything (consoles included) FPS are hands down the face of gaming. For PC's - It's a tough tie between FPS / MMO's. MMO's attrach such a wide audience, while shooters generally attract the same crowd over and over. In the end... I think MMO's win (I no longer play them) with FPS as a close second.

Yup.. FPS's are by far the face on every platform IMO as well. MMO's have a huge audience.. and at first I was going to choose that.. but ifyou think about it for a moment.. Most all MMO gamers play FPS games too.. but not vice versa. Not all FPS gamers play the MMO's. At least that is the majority of people I know personally.

I'd argue that MMOs, not shooters, are the face and future of gaming. First they attract a much more diverse audiance then shooters, while still being very popular amongst the traditional gamers that flock to shooters. Secondly MMOs are currently very popular despite a lack of availability across all platforms. As more MMOs appear on consoles they will become far more popular then any other genre. Also MMOs are problably the easiest of all online genres to implement cross-platform online play which means their communities will dwarf any game that is split up amongst differnt platforms. Thirdly MMOs are the most attractive games for the gaming industry to produce. They have long life cycles (WoW still growing strong since 2004) and present the largest return on investment with subscriptions and other fees.

I believe FPS is the style of game that will dominate. You don't have to be shooting, you can be exploring and doing other things. Pretty much just a simulation of what you'd like to do for fun in real life. Everything else that isn't immersive was developed with computers as the limitation.

If you asked developers for Atari in the 80's if they had today's processing power, I think they would have you in a Space sim killing Invaders.

So, as we get more and more powerful computing, I am guessing we will move farther away from platformers etc.

Now, if only we would get back into making some really good VR glasses with head tracking, that was a good idea that never really caught on.

I think your kind of confussing what makes the FPS genre. It's not the perspective (first person) as much as it is the gameplay - the fast action, reflex oriented twitch game. Thats why you can broadly lump in 3rd person shooters as well as old side scrollers into the same genre, but not something like Oblivion, which can be played entirely in the first person but is cleary not a FPS. In fact the first person view in Oblivion is often desirable because it requires less processing power the the 3rd person view in which more must be drawn. Other genres like, namely simulations and strategy games, could never really be done in the first person but still require as much if not more processing power then a FPS for various reason, usually AI. If you were to look to the future of gaming I would argue that AI will far surpase graphics as far as the main need for more processing power. Graphics will reach photo realism very quickly after which there will not be much more to acheive. AI however is just beginning to scratch the surface of what can be done and already requires a great deal of power. This is where multicore CPUs will be come more and more usefull in gaming, where as today anything above 2 is useless and many games dont even use that many.

Speaking for myself, FPS-3rd person. Most people would agree.

But, MMOs are becoming quite important for the PC.

True, however if MMOs were more readily available on consoles I think this would change. Say for example World Of Warcraft launched next month on XBox Live. MMOs would surpase shooters so fast that even Master Chief would be doing one of those "WoW - What's Your Game" commercials like Mr. T. and William Shatner.

The Shat man! How much money does that dude have? I personally find him annoying... especially after he came on a local radio show for an "interview" and he spent the entire five minutes promoting some stupid timeshare thing in Las Vegas... poor radio hosts couldn't get a single question answered. /hijack

Back on topic - I wonder what's going to happen to WoW once the "Next Gen" MMO is released by Blizz. I know it's currently under construction... so we'll have to see.

I hadn't heard anything about Blizzard making a next-gen but it certainly wouldn't suprise me. As far as how it would effect WoW there is a couple of things you have to consider. First off Blizzard is one of the few game developers truely devoted to PC gaming and it has paid off huge for them. So it would be hard to envision them putting there PC products behind console. Secondly Blizzard is know for having a very long development cycle. I wouldn't be suprised if by next-gen they mean the NEXT generation of console (PS4?/XBOX720?). Such a time frame would fit in perfectly, or maybe slightly behind, that of a WoW successor and would very likely be a cross platform extension of whatever Blizzard's next MMO is. Just my guess.

Turn-based strategy has definitely the face of gaming. Who doesn't love a rousing game of "Heroes of Might and Magic 3"? [/sarcasm]

Naw, FPS for sure. Kind of sucks though, because it is a scapegoat for the crazy people who get in gunfights/shoot everyone and then video games get condemned like the Devil.

Haha, I almost missed the /sarcasm and was about to post a big WTF.

Yeah, but its mostly in North America where this happens. (This meaning, being able to so easily shift the blame away from the person actually responsible. "Your honor, she only ran over her husband 37 times because she played lots of GTA and thought he would respawn"... give me a break... ) In China, some dude set another kid on fire and claimed that he was a fire mage from World Of Warcraft. The Chinese officials didn't buy it and locked him up for a few years with some big fine.

Don't believe me?

Source: http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/1 [...] en-bu.html

face of gaming:
online quizzes. there's nothing more self-indulgent. who wouldn't want to sit at a keyboard and give people their opinion all day?

MMO's: 4 votes
Shooters: 8 votes

I was expecting some more WOW fanybois or other MMO players to see this thread.

Good to see shooters still strong after so many years though.

When taking all the gaming platforms into consideration my vote was a check on the FPS/3rdPS option. While MMORPG's have huge momentum currently (especially WoW) for the PC platform, it still doesn't over throw the plethora of FPS's (popular ones especially) for all the platforms currently. Honestly it didn't feel to good voting for "shooters" as the face of modern gaming since I myself prefer a good RTS or sometimes a hint of RPG but in my opinion, for now and the future I see shooters as the dominant gaming genre for some time to come.