Skyrim is unique because it gives you an huge immersive playing field and you can be (almost) anything you want. I know there are a lot of games who promise the same, but Skyrim delivers. I for one have chosen to be a Battle mage (NERD! I know….) who is bad to the bone. Sneaking around, stealing shit and murdering innocent town people. Kind of an obvious choice but there are also people playing as a pacifist enjoying the game without killing anyone. You can become a soldier, cook, alchemist, lumberjack, farmer, warrior, mage, thief, murderer etc. The possibilities are endless. This is one of the first games which really let’s you create your own story. You can follow the rigid and linear path of the main quests, but nobody says you have to.

When you are not into Fantasy, try to look past it and see the beauty this game really is.

P.S.: Want to know more about the game and what people are doing with it? Read the special Skyrim reddit version. People share their experience with each other and it gives a great insight in the way people experience this great game.

Wordfeud
The gaming sensation of the moment. Everyone is playing this smartphone version of Scrabble. Wordfeud revolutionizes the way we play against other human players. Wordfeud is doing  for gaming what E-mail did for post mail. You are not depended on a time or location to play against someone. And you can play as much opponents as you want at the same time. Wordfeud in itself is a simple game but imagine the possibilities if you apply this to turn based strategy games such as Civilization or Massive Online Role Playing Games. THAT would be really awesome.

Minecraft
This game puts you in a world full of resources. These resources can be used to build (almost) anything. You can build houses, tools, explosives, traps, etc.

But don’t waste too much time because when the night falls… that’s when they come: The creepers. Their sole purpose is to destroy you. Build a shelter, pray it’s good enough and wait till the morning for the creepers to return to their holes.

The gameplay, although very entertaining, is not what is unique about Minecraft. It is the way it is distributed. Early alpha versions were made by just one person (Notch) and released as soon as it was playable. It didn’t matter that the game wasn’t finished. Release fast, get feedback, improve and release again. By asking a small fee Notch has made millions and is now leading a big studio working full time on Minecraft and other games. This success story is most definitely going to change the way games are published. Fast, early and low-cost.

Chain World
This is a game you will never play. Not because you don’t want to, because you can’t. Jason Rohrer created a variation on Minecraft  for the 2011 Game Design Challenge, but with a catch. The game lives on one single USB stick. Let me emphasize: The only version of the game is ON this USB stick. You start up the game, play until you die, and pass on the stick to someone else and you never tell anyone what you have seen. All the progress is saved on the stick. So the next player can experience the changes you have made to the world.

So instead of a massive multiplayer game where everyone can join in at any time, this is a very exclusive gaming experience only available to a lucky few. I’m intrigued by this concept and hope to see a lot of individual USB games popping up so we can all have an individual unique gaming experience.

I agree with Mr. Vesterbacka in the sense that the way we will buy and consume games will change. But to claim consoles will disappear in the near future is ignorant.  Games like Angry Birds are fun on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones but get boring pretty quickly. Gamers want to play big games with immersive story lines and high-end graphics. Which is impossible on current tablets and phones. Because of this I believe console gaming will keep on existing next to small cheap games playable on low-end devices.

But I also think the way games will be sold on consoles has to change. Instead of putting down sixty bucks for a game, part of the game (the core) will be downloadable for a small fee or maybe even for free. In order to make money game publishers can provide downloadable content (such as levels, missions, extra weapons, etc.) for which gamers have to pay. Another way to make money is to enable monthly payments for online play. Part of this income can be used to provide quality servers.

The way we play will not change. But the way we pay, will.

Here is my idea of how to fix this:

• Foursquare: Before people check in ask them a random question about the location they are checking into. If they answer the question correctly they have checked in. If not they will be denied their check-in. This way people have to acquire some knowledge about the location before they are able to earn a badge.
• Waze: Instead of navigating people to a certain destination why not give the player the option to navigate to the destination on his or her own. If they take the shortest route (depending on miles driven) they deserve points. It requires skill to drive the shortest route.

Games need to be more than just mindless actions in order to gather points. Games need to be challenging the player in order to keep it entertaining . The best player needs to win, not just the one who has the most time to spend.

I’m a gamer. So I check the news on game websites quite frequently. Everyday some news item pops up with a game developer (or executive) running his mouth claiming this game they are working on is the best we’ve seen yet. “You can do this and that and when you do this… this will blow your mind!” And it does! It’s truly amazing what they are promising, and in most cases the game does deliver. But the WOW-factor isn’t there any more. I already expected it to be in the game. I’ve already become accustomed to the fact that I’m able to do that kind of stuff. And most of the time it sounds great but when you’re playing the game it becomes boring pretty quickly. A great example is Assassins Creed. When the first gameplay movies were released every gamer was drooling. But when you play the actual game the features become repetitive and annoying. I understand there needs to be some kind of buzz about the game so that it can become a big seller on the day it’s released but please keep some features a secret. Let us gamers experience the WOW-factor when we are playing the game so we can tell all their friends. Leverage the power of word to mouth. Under promise and overachieve, I bet it will work out great.

This game is revolutionary, not only for the game industry but in the way we interact with machines. Scribblenauts gives you so much freedom. Imagine if Scribblenauts was purely touch-based and you had to scroll through all the available objects (which I guess must be thousands). First of all the game would be less fun and second of all it takes a long time to find the right object. Sribblenauts gives us a little peek into the future of how great games (and interfaces) can be.

(P.S: If you ever play Scribblenauts first spawn ‘God’ and then ‘Satan’ and see what happens!)

When you play someone online (in a ranked match) you receive or lose ‘skill points’. The more ‘skill points’ you get the higher your ‘skill rank’ becomes. How much ‘skill points’ you receive or lose depends on:

• Skill rank of the opponent.
• The difference in stars of the teams being picked. (If you pick a 3 star team and beat an opponent playing with a 5 star team you will get more skill points when you win).
• You get skill points for completed passes, possession, shots on target, successful tackles, etc.

You only get ranked in the leaderboards if you are one of the top 10.000 players. At the moment you have to get a 1600+ skill ranking to get into the top 10.000.  I believe you can get a maximun of around 50 skill points for one match.  Also when you play a match and the game is paused or finished you will see points being displayed below your username. These points are not your ‘skill points’ but your ‘EA World points’ so you can ignore them. To see your ‘skill points’ and ‘skill level’ go to ‘Player Hub > Career Stats > Skill Points.’

Good luck! If you have any questions please comment.