Kaelan Doyle Myerscough is a 16-year-old high school student and an advisory board member for the Games for Learning Institute, an initiative of New York University. Her favourite video games include the Pokemon and Ace Attorney series. It's a warm July evening and my friends and I are huddled in front of the television with our Nintendo GameCube controllers. Tonight is my birthday, and the game of choice is Super Mario Sunshine. We crack jokes and shout at the screen when one of us wins or loses. The mood is good, and we all leave feeling like the party was a great success.

Over the years, this has become a sort of tradition — moreover, this is the kind of gaming we grew up with. But will things always be like this?

Gaming is an extremely fast-paced industry, so chances are it won't be.

As an avid 16-year-old gamer and an advisor for New York University's Games for Learning Institute, I've recently had to ask myself the question: What will games look like in the next 10 or 20 years?

Education

First, there are games aimed at learning. As an advisor to an institute trying to figure out what kinds of educational gaming work, I've looked quite deeply into the concept of games as an educational tool.

Since the dawn of video gaming, educational games have gotten a bad rap. Although it is true that some educational games are less a game than a math or grammar quiz with bright colours, some recent ones have come out that are quite good, and many of these are Flash- or Java-based games.

One excellent example is the McDonald's video game — produced by Molleindustria, not by the famous fast food company. In this game, you are the CEO of the McDonald's Corp., and you must make good decisions to run the company properly. It is an addictive lesson about business and finance. It also shows the large-scale effects a corporation can have on the world. It is subtle and humorous — and it's a potent educational tool.

This, I believe, is where educational games are headed -learning is being blended more smoothly within the gaming experience. Soon, many gamers won't be able to tell the difference between an educational game and a simply entertaining one.

Mainstream trends

Meanwhile, in the mainstream gaming world, something is becoming very clear: the plot of a game is one of its most important parts.

In the past, this wasn't true at all. Most NES games, even the best ones, had a plot limited to "kill the aliens" or "save the Princess," for example. However, as graphics became better and games could hold more information, something started to change. With games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII, the plot started to take centre stage.

Nowadays, with so many games being released , the way for a game to truly stand out is for it to have unique characters and a gripping plot (Halo is an excellent example of this). In the future, this will become even more important — soon, a solid plot will become as necessary to games as interactivity.

Perhaps more important still is the social aspect of gaming.

Since the 8-bit days, games have been a real-life social experience. From taking turns as Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros., to trading Pokémon, to battling the Covenant with a friend in Halo, most successful games have had a social, multiplayer component — in many cases with levels as large or larger than those in the game's single-player mode.

Net's effects

Something very important has happened over the past decade that completely changed the way people look at social gaming: the internet. Suddenly, instead of being restricted to playing console games with friends at one house, gamers could play with other gamers around the world with only an internet connection.

In addition, hundreds of online multiplayer games have been made. An important example is FarmVille, a virtual farming application that has become the most popular game on Facebook.

Although the internet provides a new frontier for games, I do have a concern with this.

Up until my generation, games have been a very personal, real-life social experience. In other words, the game itself was only part of the fun. The other part was the time my friends and I spent together, making jokes and solving problems in the game. Nowadays, when people don't even have to know each other (let alone meet at someone's house) to play, social gaming is in danger of turning into a much less personal and direct experience. That would be a huge loss.

There are two basic ways social gaming could evolve with the advent of the Net: it could help foster new long-distance friendships between gamers, or games could stop being the friendly and personal experience they used to be. Only time will tell.

Of course, the gaming industry is full of surprises. Every year or two something new and astonishing comes out and turns the gaming world on its head. Fierce competition between game developers (especially the "Big Three" of console games: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft), combined with constant advances in technology, have made gaming a very volatile industry.

This is one of the best things about it. Video games push technological and social boundaries, so it's hard to predict what will happen next. But there is one thing that I am absolutely sure of: games are starting to influence the world at large, and in the future that influence will get stronger.

Games are starting to receive attention from educators and school boards, as the Games for Learning Institute exemplifies.

Likewise, plot-based games are becoming smarter and more relevant to the wider world. The Ace Attorney series, for example, has been hailed as not only a game with an excellent plot, but also a smart critique of the Japanese legal system.

Games are finally being accepted as a legitimate social medium. The Nintendo Wii has attracted a larger demographic than any console system before it, mostly because of its potential as a real-world social game system where people play together.

In the future, games may come to exert as much influence upon world politics and culture as films or books have. Personally, I'm looking forward to it. Because behind all of the technology and plot and educational value, there is a simple message in all games: Have fun together, and you will meet with success.

If the world at large were to take that advice, it would be a much better place.