A topic that frequently comes to my mind when considering the future of video games is the idea of "infinite content" and how to make the gaming experience supposedly "last forever". With MMORPGs, such as Runescape, World of Warcraft, and EverQuest, it certainly seems possible to an extent, because developers are consistently adding and adding new items, quests, skills, enemies, areas/regions, and/or other such features; this is what keeps these types of games alive. These games don't necessarily have "infinite" amounts of content, but they have the appearance of infinite amounts of possibility due to continuous amounts of additions.
But what about other types of games? Most single-player games don't seem to have infinite content because most people play the game, live the experience, and move on to the next game right away. Perhaps they revisit the game in the future, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has "infinite content" to last forever. Not to mention that most games nowadays are focusing more and more on Multiplayer content rather than the Single-player, storytelling experience.
Now, what usually comes to mind when thinking of "infinite content" is the argument between Procedurally-Generated Content vs. Handcrafted Content.
Procedural Generation is an algorithmic method to tell the computer specifically what type of content to generate in a way that makes logical sense in the game world, including quests, new levels, items, etc.
Handcrafted content is actual content that was created and designed by the actual developers and placed in the game manually.
Procedurally-Generated Content seems to be a plausible approach to allowing "infinite" amounts of content in the future, yet it is NOT perfect; the major problem is repetitiveness. No matter how much content the developer adds for the algorithm to generate, eventually these amounts of content repeat themselves again and again. This includes things such as the same types of quests/missions, the same types of plotlines, the same types of places/items, etc.
Handcrafted content is always limited and thus never "infinite." However, most of the time having handcrafted content is a good solution to making the game experience seem infinite. This is because players can play the game without worrying too much about randomness and repetitiveness, or possible algorithmic bugs in the generation that make the game unbearable!
To conclude today, games don't necessarily have infinite amounts of content; rather, it is the experience that these games provide for players that makes these worlds seem to have "infinite" content to last forever. This is what makes games so powerful.
