It seems to me that the future of game development, in terms of minimizing the barrier to entry so anyone can easily make a game, would look a lot more like Google than like Photoshop. And it wouldn't look at all like Visual Studio. ;)I can imagine a knowledge network of algorithms and components and behaviors, built up by people searching a space, as in Electric Sheep, and then organized and filtered by people participating in some kind of social network metagame.
If I am putting together an environment sketch and I'm looking for some procedural water ripples for a fountain, I'd be able to search for these procedural components as easily as I would for a web page. I'd be able to navigate through the space of algorithms at a finer level, too, like Biomorphs, to tweak an existing component without ever touching any code. And if I wanted to, I could modify the code directly.
Whatever social rewards I'd gather through my creation would automatically trickle down to those who created the components I used to make it. In this way, there would be an ecosystem of people creating, evolving, filtering, and combining this procedural material from which games are made and recycled back into.
I'm not saying it will happen, but something like that will have to happen before creating games becomes a mainstream activity. It's a tough problem, but I'd love to see it solved. How do you turn software engineering into an art form?
*image from one of my favorite flash animations, Pencilmation*
4 comments:
I'm not sure about games becoming a mainstream activity.
And isn't Little Big Planet already doing something like that?
I'm not sure about it either, but I'm pretty sure it would have to look like that if it does happen. ;)
LittleBigPlanet is doing level design. I'm talking game design. Something like what Gonzalo Frasca describes in Videogames of the Oppressed.
Cool perspective. Currently reading through Videogames of the Oppressed. Woah, this is great.
I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but your blog is totally awesome. I don't know when you'll consider yourself to have enough experience to leave your current job (as mentioned in your interview), but make sure to let me know when you do!
That means a lot coming from you. Thank you! :)
I'll keep you posted on my indie game development journey. I think this will be a good year. :)
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