About a month and a half ago, Jade Raymond left EA Motive. This was a very surprising move as she had helped spearhead the creation of the studio and spent a lot of time working on a still-unannounced game. Now that she's on her own, many people are wondering what Jade Raymond will do next. Thankfully, she may have given us a tease while speaking at Bilbao's Fun & Serious Festival.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, she was directly asked about her next project during a Q&A portion of her presentation. Of course, she played coy considering how early it likely is, but did tease it a bit. She claims that there are "ideas that existed in science fiction books slowly become a reality, and then just become normal," like the Metaverse, and that she now sees the groundwork laid to create something she was actually inspired by as a child:

"I can't yet say what I'm doing. We'll have to call it a top secret project for now. But I think if you listen to some of the things I've been excited about, there's an idea, an opportunity that I've been thinking about for a long time that we're finally on the verge of making possible...

It has been very interesting to me to see a lot of ideas that existed in science fiction books slowly become a reality, and then just become normal. A classic example is the Metaverse. And I'm not trying to build the Metaverse, but it was once a very far-fetched idea and now it's just commonplace. Everyone knows what it is. There are some other ideas like that, which were very inspiring to me when I was younger, and now I see the ingredients are in place to make them a reality. That's the hint."

As you can see, she also revealed that we could get a general idea of what ideas or systems her next project will toy with by looking at what else she spoke about the festival. So, what exactly did Jade Raymond discuss and tease? Well, GamesIndustry.biz honed in on her emphasis about discussing player engagement and how gaming is becoming an ever-social experience.

She sees that games are shifting to a "network engagement" model where they don't just concern just a developer and a player anymore, but everyone in-between. This includes YouTubers, livestreamers, and even viewers. Jade Raymond says she hasn't seen a title that takes advantage of and incorporates all those things yet, even though she believes it to be "really exciting" from a development standpoint:

"In the traditional action-adventure game there was the developer thinking, 'What story do we want to tell? What is the maze or the puzzle that we want to create in each level?' As a player your job was to enjoy the story, but as a rat in the maze find your way to the cheese. The open world is different. It's about creating your own story, where you decide how to do it. You're not the rat in the maze. There's more player engagement.

I think the big question now, and the exciting question for me, is how does that experience become social? How do players not only get to create their own story, but how do you have those stories be social, and how do you share them in the meaningful way? I don't think we've answered that yet, and I think that's the exciting stuff to look into...

Now when I look at what's happening, when I see the exciting things going on in games, I'm seeing a different model emerge, which I think of as a 'network engagement' model. What that means is you're not just considering the player and the creator, but many different roles, and all of the roles in-between.

We've seen the ecosystem change and all these new roles appear, but we haven't yet seen a game that integrates all of those different roles. What does it mean to have a role as a viewer within a game, and not just through YouTube or commenting on a stream? I think that's something really exciting to think about if you design games."

While this tease is very vague, it certainly seems that whatever Jade Raymond does next will be very ambitious and could have a more social focus. As long as it's gaming-related, you can be sure that DualShockers will let you know when she decides to actually unveil it.