Mobile AR & VR Games in 2020: Six Scenarios
One of my recent projects has been helping the mobile games giant Rovio in thinking about where the mobile games market is going for Virtual and Augmented Realities.
Last week in Munich at AWE Europe (October 2017), I had the privilege of presenting results of this collaboration with Rovio’s EVP of Games Wilhelm Taht joining me on stage. This article summarises the process and the results. If you are interested in the details of the methodology, or would like me to help your organisation with similar approach, please drop me a line!
You can also download the full report.
Foresight for product strategy
Without going into too much detail regarding the foresight methodology behind the scenarios, let’s still outline certain key premises for this kind of work: First, the future does not yet exist, and neither is it predetermined or inevitable. Second, there are multiple possible futures, and therefore our action or inaction today can influence how future shapes up. (These starting points I have adopted from foresight literature; from thinkers such as Maree Conway.)
Consequently, if you are working in mobile games, and AR and VR do not seem relevant to your current product portfolio and strategy, by minimum it is useful to have a strategic stance to AR and VR. As Bill Gates has famously stated, we tend to overestimate technological change happening over the next two years, but underestimate its effect ten years ahead, and complete inaction might leave you only to react to new developments rather than leading them from the front.
Multiple potential futures
A useful visual metaphor to think about anticipating future is the so-called cone of plausibility, where a torchlight is shown toward the future. The seemingly obvious path where the future will take us is in the bright centre of the spotlight, whereas the less predictable and uncertain futures reside in the darker peripheries.
Identifying these probable, plausible and possible futures obviously can not be done with complete certainty. What can be done is systematically identifying and tracking events, in a specific context like the mobile games market, which potentially influence those futures.
Event Impact Analysis
This is so-called ‘Environment Scanning’ i.e. evaluating things happening, things that seem to be happening, and things that might happen. For example, how will the launch of standalone VR headsets influence where mobile VR is going? Or, what will Facebook’s upcoming AR studio tool mean for mobile AR content production?
Getting stakeholders to discuss which events they deem important, and what impacts they might have functions as input to the foresight process. This we did in a small group at Rovio over a number of sessions. To keep our discussion focused, we employed a theme, which in this case was worded into an assumption that with a certain timeframe, “VR & AR Mobile games are gaining market share”.
The output, then, are scenarios which encapsulate and combine the events into narratives about the future. Scenarios are meant to inspire thinking about studio and individual product strategies through generating discussion and, importantly, uncovering assumptions the team might have.
At their best, scenarios can help identifying one scenario as the kind of future that speaks to the studio’s ‘DNA’ and trigger an impetus into creating that future — instead of reacting to futures that others have created with their actions.
Scenarios are meant to narrate futures that can connect to the company’s past and present. They provoke questions, both general ones such as “what might we need to do?”, or more specific ones: “Which scenario(s) has an intuitive fit for our studio and we can start executing towards?”
Six Scenarios: Probable, Plausible, and Potential Futures
Given Rovio’s business, the scenarios have particular common themes, such as how could the free-to-play business model become feasible in mobile VR, or which factors are key in improving domestic adoption and/or making VR or AR headsets cool and desirable for consumers. While games is the focus here, the scenarios aim to acknowledge the fact that developing and distributing games does not live in a bubble, but is part of the broader mobile ecosystem.
Probable Futures
The scenarios below should be read as if they were news articles published in 2020, looking back at how something came to be. I’ll let the scenario slides speak for themselves, but provide a brief context before each set of two.
The first two scenarios outline aspects of the future where no significant unexpected changes have occurred, but events have proceeded more or less on expected trajectories. The longer the time frame, the more unlikely such baseline scenarios become, because in most cases something unexpected happens, influencing a number of trajectories.
For the relatively short three-year span we are talking about here, a set of probable futures are still a useful exercise because in the dialogue of creating them, individuals and teams need to voice their assumptions about the current state of things, etc. They establish a baseline from which more adventurous scenarios can jump off.
Probable Scenario — Location-Based VR and domestic adoption:
Probable Scenario — The short-term fate of VR games market:
Plausible Futures
The next two scenarios narrate plausible futures, which means that in their conception, I gave more improbable events a degree or two more weight. These variables include assumptions and evaluations of developments regarding success of VR for marketing and branding purposes, and how user-generated content is going to establish itself in the space. The second scenario distils a possible product roadmap for Apple’s approach in creating a feasible AR ecosystem.
Plausible Scenario — Subscription services instead of in-app purchases:
Probable Scenario — Via Airpods and Apple Watch to generations of AR glasses:
Potential Futures
Lastly, with two wildcard scenarios, we point some more degrees into the unknown. These scenarios encapsulate potential developments in Facebook’s efforts in “bringing VR to billion people”, and how a mobile VR title, buoyed by standalone headsets, could reach the heights of Pokémon Go’s success.
Potential Scenario — Casual gaming as a driver for social VR:
Potential Scenario — Nostalgia, family-friendliness, and culturally relevant franchise as a recipe for mobile VR gaming breakthrough:
Finding a Preferable Future
After considering the three types of futures outlined above, one of their directions might signal a Preferable Future for your company. Another set of scenarios in that context would help in unlocking creative and strategic thinking around the specifics of that future.
How to find and connect a preferable future with the present, meaning current skill sets, areas of strength, and resources to execute, is the strategic move to start creating your company’s future role in the face of these emerging technologies.
Thanks for reading!
