The future of game development

repete

Hello people

I am staring to get nervous about technology (or lack of), maybe it’s my age but I think something more sinister is happening. I am sure you have read the win 8 critique and I have tried win 8 on a laptop and yes I gave it a chance but I just can’t gel with it and I wont even bother trying to do any serious work on it. I have seen the workarounds that are being produced to make it more win 7 like but this is not creative imo and defeats the purpose, these are bloody work-arounds and that’s what scares me; People are too lazy to learn how to use a PC, and so the smart arse’s are designing hardware and software for lazy people, so the domino effect affects the creative types and global frustration levels increase.

The gaming industry are on the same boat by producing games that look and play easy, most of them play themselves with one button multiple kills, loads of cut scenes and a whole lot of eye candy that burns out your gpu for a few hours of game play plus we get sequel after sequel of the same monotonous poo, who the fukc makes these decisions btw are they planetary advisers dumbing down the majority or is the modern consumer really that shallow?. Frank Zappa complained about the direction of the music industry back in the late 70’s and warned the musicians back then on an impending clamp-down on variety, talent and the choice of music available to the public, needless to say it fell on deaf ears. Just look at that industry today, it’s plastic wrapped eye candy with glamour videos featuring chicks with dicks wearing meat dresses plus a lot of looping and triple dipped remixing to boot

Software companies are also jumping on the “update” bandwagon with each new version filled to the teeth with even more bloat that we really don’t need to get the job done but thankfully not all of them are complying to this madness. I am not implying that we sit at home drinking our vintage wine with some 70’s vinyl playing in the background whilst we play doom 3 on an old 19” crt with the lights off, I do like the advances that have been made through technology but lately it all seems fake to me, stuff is being made and wasted at an astounding rate and the planet cannot keep up with it. Tried and tested formulas are being changed just for the sake of “this new tablet or software is really what you need”. What happened to innovation that incorporates these tried and tested formulas that worked? Why keep reinventing the wheel just to see if it sells?

We might be level designing with only our voice in a few decades and I can’t wait for that, a whole new world created by me and my voice and the computer then? well that will probably be built into the wall so you cannot see or hear it and you wont even know it’s there, no mouse, keyboard or touch screen in sight.

Pure blissfulness if you don’t like the “hands on approach” a one voice command that solves all your hard surfacing and texturing demands :poly121:

Have a good weekend.

Cheers:)
Pete

VPrime

We are currently building a technology to make indie game development (or prototyping) easier, more modern, more mobile, and fun.
Plan to launch around spring.
The platform is limited to 2d games.

It's not at the level of making levels by voice, but maybe one day

ScribbleHead

VPrime wrote: »

We are currently building a technology to make indie game development (or prototyping) easier, more modern, more mobile, and fun.
Plan to launch around spring.
The platform is limited to 2d games.

It's not at the level of making levels by voice, but maybe one day

Wut?

@Repete,

I reckon i'm pretty much feeling just the same as you are at the moment :S

Justin Meisse

repete wrote: »

Frank Zappa complained about the direction of the music industry back in the late 70’s and warned the musicians back then on an impending clamp-down on variety, talent and the choice of music available to the public, needless to say it fell on deaf ears. Just look at that industry today, it’s plastic wrapped eye candy with glamour videos featuring chicks with dicks wearing meat dresses plus a lot of looping and triple dipped remixing to boot

yes, because all the creative people realized they don't need the record labels - make whatever music you want and sell it directly to your fans, screw the record labels.

also, "chicks with dicks"? not cool, man

ZacD

The music industry is a lot more established than the game industry, and they are slow to catch up with new and changing technology and a new youth market. If you really want good and unique artists and music, you want to find independent artists and labels, there's thousands of them out there. Big publishers and record companies are pretty much the same thing, they know what makes them a profit, so they stick to the same routine. But the gaming community is embracing indy games and new and unique experiences. I am not worried at all about the industry stalling out and not innovating, the industry is very volatile and always changing, so it's always going to be full of variety.

Also, the chicks with dicks comment is a really rude and offensive thing to say.

Paradan

I think right now were starting a new season of game development, we saw what went wrong last time and we've taken note. There a new crop panted in the form of the indie scene, not all will sprout. Those that do will turn into small studios with somewhat independent means/funds.

Don't worry about windows 8, theres a great article (over at Wired I think) about it causing Gorilla arm when used on a desktop. Workstations aren't gonna go away, they've been around for over 1000 years. It's like being afraid of cars making it so that we all forget how to walk.

We've got about 4-5 generations of CPU left before we hit a physics wall. Thats in maybe 10-15 years, or one development cycle in Valve time. During that time things that are expensive now, like 3d printing are gonna drop in price, and 3d printing isnt that far off from home lithography. I wouldnt be surprised to see "downloadable" open-source hardware in the next 10 years.

BTW, last year I was in the same frame of mind as you, the thing that set me off was Nvidia's new cloud-based graphics processing.

Thing's are gonna be better then fine....

and Global Warming is gonna be awesome!!!

VPrime

ScribbleHead wrote: »

Wut?

@Repete,

I reckon i'm pretty much feeling just the same as you are at the moment :S

I misread the thread..... :poly136:

ZacD

I doubt we are going to hit any major physical hardware wall. We are at a point in cpu power, it's easier to create more cores and threads than just increase the clock speed, but in reality, if we start writing software and applications to better use multiple core cpu's there's not going to be a point where hardware is really holding software back. We'll have something Quantum computers or light based processors in 10 years, maybe not for consumer use, but it's being researched heavily.

ScribbleHead

Interesting read on polygon.com btw on the subject

http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/11/3864912/gamers-encourage-publishers-to-keep-making-the-same-games-says-david

Paradan

yeah there was an interview/open-chat session in Kotaku a while back. It was with an anonymous publisher, and he pretty much had the same message.

my theory is that we(creators of entertainment) "train" our audiences to like a certain thing/style. If you want to do something new, you have to bury the change in the old format for a couple times before making content with that change as its core.

Equanim

I think users, creators, and even reviewers alike are becoming progressively aware/tired of the same re-skinned formulas. They wont go away, but I think we're beginning to see a demographic of gamers looking for something deeper than the next explosive blockbuster. The games industry is starting to mirror the movie industry. Lots of high budget titles designed to appeal to the greatest number of people with a few gems off to the side each year.

Keep an eye on the indie market. Zappa couldn't predict how easy it would be to self publish in the future. The last four years or so were the first I personally started buying games based completely on artistic value, e.g. Dear Esther, Limbo, Outland, etc.

In terms of tech, the mobile market is to TV as the console market is to movies.

Bek

Some people just want to play 'mindless' or 'simple' stuff, and that's fine. Some people like both the simple and complex stuff. That's fine too. People will always like different things, I don't think we have to worry about 'them vs us' or anything like that. Just accept that things you think are shit will be liked by others, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

hawken

so in 30 years we can expect games solely based about chicks with dicks and meat suits?

skankerzero

hawken wrote: »

so in 30 years we can expect games solely based about chicks with dicks and meat suits?

sold

Ruz

I am not 'that' pessimistic about the vid game industry, it's just evolving and going through a bit of chnage at the moment.
having said that I am just about to install doom 3:)

Also I am playing games on my note 2 now and really enjoying it (temple run is a bit addictive)

danpaz3d

I dont really think that it's going downhill or getting useless. As mentioned, its at a transition moment. Ever since this mobile technology was released (smart phones, tablets), there has been a huge split in the market between consoles and mobile which just used to be all consoles. Eventually, I think that the large audiences will split into mobile and PC. From a hardware point, it is getting smaller and faster. I think it's the fact that advances in software can't keep up. Realtime 3d rendering is still a baby. What we know is just vertex, line, triangle, polygon and we have been constrained to use this method as it is all we know (for now).

In the end, a game will still be just a game. No matter how good or bad it is. It is an interactive experience that gives you choice and chance. Just like movies, games will always follow the same core concepts that make it what it is. The fact that AAA companies release shooter after shooter is merely to please a wide audience. Thats where mistakes are being made. You can't make everyone happy. Its better to have some very happy people than a lot of disappointment.

SurlyBird

I think it's anyone's guess where things are going, and that's what makes this industry so interesting. Change is inevitable and that is true in technology like nowhere else.

It's always going to be a gamble to make a creative product, so playing it safe is going to continue to happen until any given franchise or product no longer makes enough money to justify development costs.

Innovation tends to happen with the fringy stuff on the periphery. But that is a pretty risky business domain and a lot of games made there will fail to resonate with the public and never make a dime. Every now and then, though, something cool will come out, get critical mass and take off and make a mint. Then everybody will copy it until it inevitably will be considered another stale, non-innovative genre. First-person-shooters started this way and drive a huge part of the market. FPSs used to be the domain of only geeks and freaks who knew how to set up a LAN and build their own PCs, but now they are pretty mainstream.

I wouldn't get too down or nervous about the industry. The best thing is to keep an open mind, be flexible and figure out how you will contribute and help the industry change and grow. Focus on making your best work and be persistent.

ambershee

TeeJay wrote: »

We're about 30 years into commercial gaming and that's nothing in the grand scheme of things. Compare that to the movie industry:

The first films were made right around 1900. They didn't even add sound until the 20s. So we're basically at the 'first films with sound' stage in gaming. When you look at how rapidly technology moves nowadays compared to then, that to me is an exciting prospect.

Video game consoles arrived around 1970, so that's 40 years. We're past 'first films with sound' and we're into modern cinema. If you're going to use that model, then Like it or not, the big chains popped up in the 1920s (publishers in the 90s) and nothing really progressed from then.

If anything we just hit the 3d gimmick 10 years too early.