Tomorrow’s gamers want life to be a game

Gamers are evolving along with the gadgets they play on and tomorrow’s gamers want to be liberated from darkened bedrooms and tethered consoles and mix-up gaming with real life, found Latitude Research.

Gamers of the future were found to be very socially conscious, heavily engaged with the “offline” world and driven to improve themselves and the world around them. To this end a whopping 95% of gamers would like to see games that combine digital content with the physical world around them and their day to day lives.

The possibilities are endless, explains Latitude in a video presentation, drawing on a person’s location and even mood. Augmented reality can alter environments and create virtual gaming platforms that can be used for fun and education alike.

One such game gaining popularity is Parallel Kingdom, a real-time multiplayer location-based role playing game. A fantasy world is overlaid on top of a Google map of a player’s current location in which territories can be claimed, monsters found and dispatched and vast terrain explored all while working together with other players to achieve goals.

Gamers also want games that challenge them and drive them to do better in life such as beating a gym buddy on the treadmill or getting the best mileage from their car.

“The gamers of tomorrow won’t be limited by platform or location. As technology becomes more seamlessly integrated with our lives, everyone will be a gamer, and the world around us will become the ultimate playing field,” said Natalie Stehfest, a senior research analyst who led the study and who heads up Latitude‘s qualitative research team.