The Future of Game Dev (Except in St. Louis)

ksquire writes "Ben Sawyer, of Digitalmill, has published an interesting article at Avault.com about the past, present, and future of game development. Sawyer argues that the game industry is going more and more toward 3rd party development tools and '4th party' publishing -- meaning that game developers are essentially tool developers for game enthusiasts to create mods (also using tools like Alienbrain or Discreet's GMAX). I'm really curious as to whether the Slashdot community thinks we'll see a future era of standardized game tools and developers courting modders, or if we'll continue to see more specialized game engines. Maybe a greater PC / Console split?" Meanwhile, over in St. Louis, the Free Expression Policy Project has filed an amici curiae brief by 33 media scholars saying that "Most studies and experiments on video games containing violent content have not found adverse effects." They're trying to stop the county from banning violent games -- Wired has the story. ksquire points out that "Sawyer also wrote an article, Serious Games: Improving Public Policy through Game-Based Learning and Simulation, which was discussed on slashdot."

netphilter and TCPALaw get credit for the Wired link. Previous Slashdot stories on violent gaming include this one and this one.

TCPALaw's full comment was (minus a dangling modifier): "Wired has a nice story on the St. Louis ban on violent video games. If the ban sticks (it was upheld by Judge Limbaugh against a constitutional challenge... Rush Limbaugh's uncle ... the same judge who struck down the federal ban on junk faxes as an abridgment of free speech - go figure) it could be extended to MP games available to play over the Internet."

Comments

Mods begat popularity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at Half-Life. I can still, after how long now, fire up Half-Life and join a decent game.

Hell, I can still find Quake 2 servers around, and there's still a few Quake 1 holdouts.

Gamers love mods. For the developer, it gives them a chance to experience how games are made first-hand and also gives them an arena to show off their skills to existing gaming houses.

For players? Depending on the mod community, it's like buying one game and getting ten in return. And everyone likes to save money, eh? ;)

Engines don't necessarily need to standardize.

[Myshkin]

What would be cool to standardize would be the 3D modeling language and behavior scripting representations. After that it is a matter of compiling the world models and behaviorisms into the games custom binary representation.

We aren't that far from this now. There are a number of *common* engines. Various generations of Quake and Unreal seem to be used in all sorts of games. If both of these could compile levels and models designed in a standard 3D editor, others would surely follow.

Game Devs == engine makers

[Anonymous Coward]

This perspective only holds in the PC game enthusiast market. The PC market is only a fraction of the total videogaming market and the enthusiasts are only a fraction of that.

The really big market for games is not on PC but on consoles, where customization is pretty much unheard-of. If you think that the industry is getting large enough that 3rd parties can create a market selling tools or libs or whatever, then that's absolutely correct and has been so for over a decade. If you think the market is going to 'decentralize', think again.

Re:Banning violent video games

[stratjakt]

Games in the US do have a rating system, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board). It's completely voluntary, and all publishers have their stuff rated. Unlike movies who fought tooth and nail against ratings.

It's also more specific than anything on movies or TV. A game doesn't just get M for Mature, but there's a short list of icons explaining *why* it got the M. Ie; Language, Adult Situations, Realistic Blood and Gore, Cartoon Blood and Gore.

Thing is, while most retail outlets are now refusing to sell M rated games to minors, there's still a big whoopty doo because of things like Columbine, where the fact that the shooters played video games was blown out of proportion.

Right now one of the big "targets" of the video game lobby is Grand Theft Auto 3. Now first off you have the title, then you have the box art covered with stylized mobsters, pimps, and prostitutes. Then you have a fairly prominent M for Mature, with underneath: Adult Situations, Coarse Language, Violence, Realistic Blood and Gore.

Yet noone clues in that this isn't a game for 6 year old Billy.

AFAIK, there's no legal accountability if Billy gets the game. Thats what they want, and they wouldn't dare hold the parents or gaurdians responsible for their childs welfare. It must be someone in corporate america's fault.