The future of game development
polycounter lvl 6
Hello people
I am staring to get nervous about technology (or lack of), maybe its 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 cant 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 thats what scares me; People are too lazy to learn how to use a PC, and so the smart arses 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 70s 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, its 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 dont 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 70s 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 cant 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 its there, no mouse, keyboard or touch screen in sight.
Pure blissfulness if you dont 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
Replies
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
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
Also, the chicks with dicks comment is a really rude and offensive thing to say.
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!!!
I misread the thread..... :poly136:
http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/11/3864912/gamers-encourage-publishers-to-keep-making-the-same-games-says-david
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.
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.
sold
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)
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.
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.
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.