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Excerpt from Superdata’s 2019 Digital Games and Interactive Media Year in Review 2019 was yet another banner year for the video games industry. Revenues are steadily growing 3% year-over-year (with mobile games revenue making up more than half of the total). Yet, the more the industry grows, the more some things stay the same. Sensor Tower’s Top Mobile Games Worldwide Revenue for November 2019 Nowhere is this more obvious than from seeing last year’s Top Mobile Games, where we see the list being dominated by the same old stalwarts. Case in point: Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, Fate/Grand Order and Fantasy Westward have all been in the Top 10 for 3 consecutive years.

There’s always innovation happening in the game industry though, and disruptions can happen in the blink of an eye. 2020 can be the year that we shake up the status quo, with new kinds of gameplay that will energize players, both old and new. Here are 3 design trends that game developers can use as inspiration in making their next big hit.

1. Machine Learning No video game has been able to capture the free-form nature of a table-top role-playing game yet, where players are able to take the story whichever way they want it to go. Nick Walton’s AI Dungeon 2 though, comes very, very close. And it does so by using machine learning. AI Dungeon 2 — Interactive Storytelling using Machine Learning Machine learning has fundamentally changed how we design software and collect data. It has already been successfully implemented in most of the day-to-day applications that we use — from traffic routing to image enhancement. It has yet to weave its way into video games as deeply though, and, when it does, it will change how we both design and play games.

There is change afoot though, and it comes not just from the game industry. The zeitgeist of our time is trending more and more towards decentralization, openness, and breaking free from oppressive platforms. We see this with people’s discontent with centralized authorities such as social networks and governments, as well as with the onset of technologies such as cryptocurrency and blockchains. Consequently, great game designers have started thinking along the same lines. What if we could remake our game designs — not just mechanics and meta games — but also the overarching attention-based economy? What if we made our game economies more decentralized and open?