Artist in the Long Tail of Future

Style is the dress of thoughts - Earl Chesterfield

Renowned MMO designer Raph Koster says the games are going to be a commodity and driven by the long tail. This means about all the games will be played just by a few people. More importantly, there will be a lot more games played just a few people than games played by a many people.

What does this mean for the game designers? Are they out of their jobs - people can design games for themselves and for others? I think no. Game designers are going to be more important.

Artist, as game designer, is going to be much more important. Right now there are a lot many bloggers, but a popular blogger is not one who puts new content every fortnight (I would put about this as the creativity limit of an average person), but who blogs about 3-4 times a day - all of them rich content making a lot of sense. A blogger alone will not be able to produce content at such high rate. Less so a game player will be able to produce a game.

What this means - artists will come as teams, or companies, brands having their distinct style. Artists will deal with technology a lot more. I expect emergence of (probably) simple and beautifully packaged tools of the likes of ipod, and of companies like Apple.