Occasionally I am given to flights of fancy when imagining what things might be like in a future where I take my anti-aging medication while playing virtual reality video games in my flying car. Careening through the air toward whatever future-job it is I'm doing at the time – perhaps selling coffee pills at Neutronstarbucks – I will immerse myself in the tactile experience of playing Final Fantasy Nineteen wherein nanotransistors in my limbic system are electronically stimulated to actually give a crap about the main characters.

There are any number of Duke Nukem jokes to be inserted *here*, but I leave it to you to devise your own.

The truth, however, is that the future will probably be pretty much as boring and ground-locked as the present always seems to be. When prognosticating, it's hard not to describe days where nanotechnology robots project a virtual reality directly into your consciousness giving gamers a real sense of place within their digital playgrounds. Unfortunately, in the foreseeable future, the truth is probably that gaming will change in subtle rather than monumental ways. So, what might gaming really be like in a decade?

The Past

The best place to begin is probably in the past. We can look at where gaming was a decade ago in comparison to now as a measure of where it might be after this new millienium enjoys its own Super Sweet Sixteen.

1997 was a big year in video games, running high on the newly released Nintendo 64 and upstart Sony Playstation. Sony's surprisingly popular system was proving a much more formidable foe than anyone might have guessed the year before, and had scored several notable coups with support from EA and Square. E3 had moved to Atlanta to enjoy its 3rd year in operation, and featured big PC titles expected to take advantage of Intel's freshly announced Pentium II chip including 3DRealms showing their latest effort Prey along with the announcement of a sequel to their hit Duke Nukem 3D. Final Fantasy VII, Super Mario 64, Dungeon Keeper, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, Age of Empires and Quake II were among the many big gaming hits of the year along with the first big success for a young genre when Ultima Online went live in late September.

Windows 95 was an entrenched operating system with millions of users. IBM's Deep Blue was the first computer to defeat a chess grand master in a match. The first rover landed on Mars and began to explore for signs of water and life, and in a very general sense it's fair to say that life in 1997 was pretty much exactly like life in 2007. So too was gaming.

The Present

So what has really changed in the last decade? It's more surprising to note the things that haven't really changed. The console wars are still going on with both Nintendo and Sony pretty much playing their strategies they way they did ten years back. Microsoft has filled the gap left by Sega, though the games division is headed by the same guy who ran Sega in 97. While we have plenty of new franchises to enjoy, in many ways we are still talking about the same ones we did 10 years ago including Final Fantasy, Mario, Star Wars, Quake, Warcraft and more.

But, most importantly we have not fundamentally changed the way we are playing. We are still playing games from established companies like Nintendo, Blizzard, EA, Eidos and Lucasarts, and we are still mostly playing them with familiar interfaces and controllers. Only Nintendo has made much real effort in changing the way we interact with our games with the DS and Wii, but even those changes are more in the style of interacting rather than any kind of fundamental shift.

On the PC virtually nothing of significance has changed. We install our games on Windows machines, many with Intel processors, using CDs or DVDs and then interface using a mouse and keyboard. We use 3D acceleration, though it is required now, and we usually have to patch our games and update drivers to make them work.

Basically, games are only improved from the technology standpoint of better graphics, better AI, better multiplayer and improved options sets. That's not really a complaint, but were you to take someone from 1997 and put them in front of a copy of most PC games, odds are they'd have very little trouble installing and playing the game. We do have a lot more multiplayer options in modern games including being able to take our consoles online, but by and large the changes are not exactly paradigm shifts on the way we interact with games, so when we think about gaming in the future, that's a fact we should keep in mind.

The Future

So what of gaming in 2017?

I think it's probably fair to say that, just like our hypothetical 1997 gamer, were you to take a 2007 gamer and put them in front of a 2017 system, they'd probably get going with very little trouble. The mechanics of gaming are simply not likely to change dramatically over the next ten years, even with the success of the Wii and DS. Changes in the fundamental concepts of gaming will be slow and incremental, and while we will probably have entirely wireless systems, save a power and display cord, we will still be playing with controllers or mice. [side note: I just spent fifteen minutes looking up whether the plural of a computer mouse is mice or mouses.]

Further, we'll probably be playing the same games as we are now, and while new and unpredictable franchises will develop over the intervening years I think it very likely that we'll still have close ties to Mario, Halo, Half-Life, Diablo, Civilization, God of War and others. We will also be playing these games in familiar environments, like on our couch with a television/monitor, with Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony still dominating the gaming scene.

So, how about some specifics. Here is my short list of predictions for gaming in 2017.

* Single player gaming is virtually extinct. Most games contain some kind of persistent world, where single play and limited co-op is done in online instances rather than offline environments.

* The price of gaming will both go up and go down. Here's how. Our current generation of gaming has proved that there is an eventual price ceiling beyond which most consumers aren't willing to go. We know this because we can see the broken plaster strewn on the ground from companies like Sony who've lodged themselves nearly dead in the rafters. Console manufacturers will get the picture and essentially cap the price of gaming both for hardware and software. There's a trick however "…

* Subscription based gaming will expand dramatically and begin to replace traditional retail. The advances in providing downloadable content, the continued combat of piracy and concerns about retail outlets subverting publishers with preowned merchandise will eventually reach a head as the technology becomes widely available for providing consumers with immediate access to games. Sony will lead the way with the lessons learned from their MMO Station Pass and begin providing subscription based games that provide access to libraries of games rather than giving consumers an actual physical product. Killing three birds with one stone, games will slowly transition from being something that consumers buy from a store, but instead games, or rather licenses to play the games, will be purchased directly from the publisher. Gamers will be paying more per year for their gaming but less for the actual products. The majority of gaming's $25 billion industry will be in subscriptions and licenses.

* With fewer physical products provided to consumers, the industry for renting games will also evaporate leaving a vacuum for publishers to fill. When you get the license for God of War V you will have the option of buying a three-day pass, ten-day pass, or lifetime game access for increasing amounts. People with a Sony Universal Account – for only $99.95/year – will enjoy a free 48 hour all access pass to new games and a 10% discount on all lifetime purchases.

* The market for downloadable content for existing games including new missions, maps, cars, levels, etc. will exceed $2 billion.

* Madden will renew its license with the NFL for ten years in 2009 and continue to break sales records. Electronic Arts will also continue to dominate games publishing, though it will pull back on its rapid acquisition of smaller developers and instead broaden its policy publishing games from unsigned developers.

* The PC will continue to be a gaming platform, but the interface for gaming on a PC will be identical to Microsoft's console at the time. Microsoft's next OS will come equipped to run Xbox games, and titles for the console can be played either on the PC or the Xbox; however games will be tied to the system for which they are purchased meaning that if you license (remember, no buying) Halo 4 for the PC, you can only play that license on the PC.

* World of Warcraft will still be running and profitable, though it will be considered antiquated. Everquest will be a dead franchise. As MMO qualities pervade more and more games, there will be less emphasis on creating an MMO experience as we now think of it, though one notable exception will stand out and become wildly successful. It will be set in a science fiction setting.

* A case involving video games and real-world violence will have reached the Supreme Court.

* Europe will become the worldwide leader in game development with more money spent within the EU on producing games than in North America or Japan.

* All three current major console players will still be in the game and relevant. Preparing to announce a new generation, more attention will be focused on the console as a complete entertainment center including direct access to comprehensive libraries of online movies, shows, music and games, easy and complete web browsing, online communities and DVR.

* DRM will be more strict, but less of a hassle for the average consumer. However, interoperability will still be a significant problem forcing customers to essentially choose a single primary console on which to store and access their media. Though individual console manufacturers will continue to grow, the over money spent on game devices will begin to plateau as it becomes less common for consumers to invest in more than one.

I leave the rest to you. What do you think gaming will be like in 2017?