More than likely AI will be used to fine tune gatcha mechanics, micro transactions, loot boxes and other forms of "not gambling " mechanics in the AAA sector while also formalizing and standardizing "witty" dialog to save paid hours. It may also be used to generate royalty free art assets to reduce production (and not the end product's) cost . Best case scenario, it will flood the market and cause a 1980's style crash that will revitalize the industry.

Pretty sure this was the premise of an X Files episode like 20ish years ago. Except it was something added to TV signals.

You ever see the movie/ read the book "Sphere"? Basically that.

A Mathematician, as that will probably be the closest to a universal language.

An Astrophysicist to locate similar stars.

A Biologist (as well versed as possible in several disciplines) to try to understand their biological makeup.

A High ranking military official to secure any resources necessary to smooth over first contact.

And a Psychologist to help the team cope with the absolute madness/terror of witnessing something no living organism on this planet has ever experienced. Preferably a Behavorist to try and understand the behavioral patterns of the aliens.

I picked 1022 as it was 1000 years ago in order to show the vast difference in how our world looks now as opposed to that point in order to show that speculation on a thousand years in the future is futile. To adress your point, consider the world 300 years ago in 1722. The US doesn't exist as an independent nation, the modern nation state of Germany doesn't exist except as a loose coalition of states under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire, the middle east is almost entirely under the control of the Ottoman Empire and the Mugal Indian Empire is one of the most advanced nations on the planet, dwarfing and dunking on their one day colonial dominators the British Empire. Consider the massive differences between then and now, then try to consider how little of the modern world would have been predictable from the 1722 perspective.

The Carrington Effect's damages were minimal then because the world didn't rely on electricity and electrical signals in the 1800s as much as it does now. Such a solar flare would cripple most electrical devices on the planet, start massive electrical fires in wiring systems and crash virtually all man made satellites. Stop and look around yourself right now and tell me how you plan to survive the next week without electricity of any kind. How much cash do you have in your pocket, assuming you could even find someone who would take it? Do you have a well or do you exist on metropolitan water/sewer? I think you'd find that a lack of electricity would be quite a detriment to your life for as long as it would take to fix and replace damaged systems.

There is a really good YouTube essayist named Lemmnio who does a good video about potential end of humanity scenarios. I highly recommend it, should that be your kind of entertainment. I definable agree that a volcanic winter would be a difficult to predict disaster, but nuclear war would achieve much the same thing. As we've seen from Covid 19 even a relatively mild (by comparison to the plague or the 1918 flu pandemic) pandemic still causes massive problems, all of which effect prediction of future events.

Yup. The Columbian Exchange was Europeans bringing Horses and equine/bovine diseases to the new world while bringing back tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, and syphilis among a few other things. It's actually quite interesting the things we think of as European staples (potatoes and tomatoes specifically) that came about because of the Columbian Exchange.

To be fair, usually speculative fiction uses wild tech advances to examine current social values, but this is a good point to bring up.

I would argue there is no way to accurately predict the future of our world over that long of a timescale. If you'd asked people in 1022 what the future would have looked like, they would not have predicted machines that do labor much less the European discovery of the Americas, which means no Colubian exchange (horses and diseases in the new world, tobacco, tomatoes, blueberries, potatoes and a massive influx of gold and silver).

If you look at the changes of the 20th century alone, humanity went from no heavier than air travel to landing on the moon in the span of 60 years. Major political upheavals rewrote the map of the majority of world, from the treaties at the end of WW1 that carved up the middle east to the post WW2 cold War realities of nation states and spheres of influence to the advent of nuclear arms fundamentally changing the reality of international conflict. And all of that was just 100 years.

That doesn't even account for the outliers and other massive possibilities that could occur at any time. If the Carrington Event (a massive solar flare) had occurred in the modern age, most to all of the industrial world would be wiped out and we wouldn't be able to discuss it on Reddit. First contact with extra terrestrial societies would fundamentally alter every understanding we currently hold. A new disease, a possible nuclear disaster involving a misfire of weapons, asteroid, who knows? But any one of the events could happen today and would drastically alter the next week, much less the next millennium.

The future of video games is as follows:

1. as publishers merge, main stream AAA games become more homogeneous, laden with predatory "not gambling" mechanics designed to get the player to spend more and more while the cost of purchasing games goes up. Meanwhile, the Indie market releases more of the same.

2. All AAA games go always online. Indie market remain the same.

3. AAA game market gets regulated in Europe over gambling mechanics, remains untouched in America. Indies market remains the same.

4. Pushed by falling stock prices post regulation and user fatigue, the remaining AAA market crashes. Indies... you know the drill.

5. Indie games fill the void left behind in the crash. The new seeds of AAA are sown. The cycle repeats.