UNITED STATES—The future seems to be coming towards us faster now than ever before. Things are changing rapidly in all aspects of our lives, but perhaps that change is most pronounced in the way that we spend our leisure time.
Entertainment is widely available, and there’s more of it made available every day than any of us will ever have the time to discover. Live shows, events, and bookable activities are plentiful, but more than anything, the brand-new digital world has contributed to endless entertainment.
But now that we have more entertaining content than we can hope to enjoy, what can be improved? What might we see next? Let’s speculate on the future of entertainment.
Focus On Accessibility and Convenience
Everything today that’s available on our computers is also available through our handheld devices, and this is especially true for entertainment.
The trend is clear when we look at something like online gambling. Playing casino games is becoming easier than ever through roulette apps and poker sites that we can access instantly from anywhere, simply through our mobile devices. This goes for any other type of digital entertainment, too – music listening apps, video games, and Video-on-Demand apps can now all be accessed on the go.
Additionally, we’re seeing a continuing trend towards more and more convenience in every aspect of digital life. We’re also seeing increased speeds – nowadays, we expect screens that respond in real-time and pages to load in milliseconds.
And the future? It’s likely even more convenient. While we almost have access to everything in seconds, it might be hard to imagine how we could introduce even more accessibility.
One way could be a reduced need for clunky physical screens – perhaps through eyewear, virtual screens only we can see, or even other lighter devices. In the future, devices are even likely to be navigable by eye movement or thought alone.
On top of increased convenience, this will make devices and entertainment more accessible to people with certain disabilities.
More Personalization and Interactivity
Advanced algorithms and new AI models have enabled us to experience customization like never before, but we’re only just getting started.
We can already see that people are experimenting a lot with AI for fun’s sake – generating characters, stories, and other personalized content just for the laugh of it. But generative AI might also have a more solid role in entertainment when being incorporated into stable environments with predefined characteristics and boundaries.
For instance, custom cut scenes that fit both a character, a story, and the player in a story-based game. A game could allow the player to go where they want to go while still staying within the confines set by the developer, who has an overarching goal for where the story could go. That would be very powerful and engaging to see in a game, and could also widen the audience for games, making it suit many more tastes than a traditional game.
It could also be a lot more subtle than that. Smart algorithms based on data collected by the user, such as those used on social media, are currently one of the most effective ways that AI is used in entertainment. Perhaps it’s possible to implement similar algorithms to other means of entertainment as well.
A Partial Return of Analog Fun
While many analog means of entertainment, such as board games, books, and creative activities like painting or knitting, have largely gone out of fashion, they’re likely to also partially return. In history, we often see a swing in one direction – in this case, the digital – and then a swing back in the other – the analog. While analog forms of entertainment are never going to get back all the space they had in the past, it is likely to return in part as humanity rediscovers the charms of offline options and the grounded feeling of working with your hands and seeing physical results.
Although not everyone is likely to return to the analog, a decent part of the population might once again incorporate these more traditional types of fun.
A good example of this already happening is reading. We can see that despite the increasing popularity of the Kindle and audiobooks; studies show that readers still prefer reading books in their physical forms. Similarly, there are still online communities for board games and the many physical and creative hobbies out there, and many of them are growing quickly in popularity again.
An Unfathomable Future
The future is hard to predict, even looking just a few years ahead, and even for things that seem fairly simple. What’s more doable and reliable if you wish to think ahead is to start looking at the things that likely won’t change.
We know that humans will keep seeking comfort and convenience, and that will be reflected in our entertainment choices. People will also keep loving stories, as we have for thousands of years, and that, too, is going to be reflected in the way we entertain ourselves.
Although it’s hard to foresee just how that will show up in our daily entertainment, as these and other permanently important elements can take many forms, including books, games, movies, and other types of media and genres of fun that we can’t anticipate yet.
