Google game designer pens principles for the future of gaming

In the wake of Google's first game, Ingress, project lead on the mobile alternate reality game John Hanke suggests three principles for gaming's future, according to an article in Co.Design.

Hanke's advice is about changing how people think of games. His first principle is to "uproot the couch potato" who isn't tethered to a television with a mobile game. In fact, that conceit underwrote Ingress' development.

"The whole group started with this idea of, 'How can we get people out into the world and seeing things that are there but they didn't notice before,'" Hanke said.

Hanke also believes that developers should "think beyond the phone" to expand the possibilites of real-world gaming and create "innovative ads" to accompany the games beyond the freemium model that has proven popular with social game developers like Zynga.

"I personally feel like that model is kind of at a dead end," Hanke said. "You're seeing games that are less and less fun to play. They're really just hooks to get you to that point where you have to start plugging in quarters for more."