While I agree that there will be more Journey and Edith Finch, I dont know that I agree that it'd be a majority? I think we'd see a lot of projects along the lines of Cave Story and Undertale though. Ie, games that have artistic vision but also work as just fun games to play (jury may be out on whether Undertale is fun, but Cave Story definitely is). Not saying that Edith Finch and (especially) Journey aren't fun, but they are definitely moreso experiences than they are fun games. And I think quiet a few game designers are going to be more focused on making fun games than artistic experiences. Like keep in mind, most devs are going to be people who enjoy playing games. If they're making the games they want to make, many of them are going to be more focused on being fun than being artistic. All in all though, I think things like Cave Story are probably going to be the backbone of video games post-capitalism. Stuff thats both fun and artistically deep.
The only thing I think might entirely or at least mostly go away is massive open world games. At the very least, we wouldn't be getting them all the time, as without worker abuse they'd take many years to make baring technology developments start going the way of making game development more accessible. There would still be a demand for them, because there are people that enjoy them (myself included), but I'm not sure how many people would be willing to make them.
Actually, another thing I just thought of is sports games. We definitely (thank god) wouldn't be getting yearly releases on every sports franchise. The thing I'm wondering though is like, are sports games actually interesting to work on? Would there be devs who want to work on them around? Again, I'm quiet certain there would still be people that want them, NBA 2K and Madden remain extremely popular. But unless those people all decided "well noones making the new Madden so I guess I'm going to learn the necessary skills to work on them" I don't know who's going to be making them.
Military shooters wouldn't go away, but there'd be less of them for sure and there would be much less of a focus on graphical fidelity and more focus on fun. We'd also probably see a return to a focus on narratively deep campaigns. Not saying every military shooter would be Spec Ops the Line though, that would be grim lmao.
I've thought about the open-world question a lot, and I think we might see a lot of cases of teams of artists making the open world, and then making it freely available for other teams to put their stories and things in. I know a lot of my artist friends like working on big singular projects like that, so it's something that will still be made, definitely, but won't be made in the same way. Open world games that are at a fnv/fo3 level of fidelity would see a resurgence, I believe. Mainly because fnv/fo3's open worlds are considerably less time consuming to create.
Yeah I can't imagine we'd get many if any games along the lines of Ubisoft stuff where there's a big open world filled with lots of busy work. Thing is, those types of games work for me because im an aspie who loves busy work and completionism, but I totally get/agree that they're kinda artistically vapid and I can't imagine devs given artistic freedom wanting to make games like that. Like I imagine Assassins' Creed and Farcry would continue as franchises, because I think most franchises would continue (and many would be revived) in a world without IP laws restricting fans from making games in the franchise, but they'd probably be fundamentally different. Like less busywork and the worlds wouldn't be as huge as Odyssey's and Valhalla's, like smaller worlds and the stuff to do would be way less repetitive.
I'd have to imagine that much of the busy work in many modern open-world games is somewhat procedurally generated, so it'd be pretty likely, with those tools being freely available, that creating games just about simpler busy work and stuff wouldn't be too hard, especially if full environments are freely available. I think something like Destiny 2 would get a lot of benefit from freely available assets, cause so much of the production time and cost of Destiny 2 is tied up in creating its environments. Of course, you get issues with visual continuity and such, but that's all fixable, especially as procedural generation tech gets more and more mainstream in 3d art.
Yeah I've thought a LOOOOOOOT about how developing technology will make game development a lot more accessible over time and especially so without IP laws preventing the sharing of assets and code.
Like especially interesting to me is how complex of a game you can make as a one person job. Cave Story is probably the most complex one person job game I'm aware of so far, though its possible one missed my notice. And that is very impressive mind you. But will we reach a point in technology where a game on the scale of say, GTA5 could possibly be a one person job if the person felt like doing so? Some things you still need people with special skills to do, like soundtracks and voice acting, but I'm guessing tech can develop even on those fronts. Can you imagine how much it would open things up creatively if you could have synthetic digital voices that actually sound like real people? [Mind you, I don't think professional, flesh and blood voice actors would ever be fully replaced, or at least not in our lifetime, but it would be really cool to have it as an OPTION. Especially to like, create the perfect voice for a character that no living voice actor can reproduce, or even digitally resurrect the voice of a deceased actor wow]. And how about entirely digital orchestral soundtracks (hell actually for all I know thats already possible lmao).
Also I'm not saying that just because it becomes POSSIBLE to do a huge game as a single person means that the majority of games would be, because collaborative projects are fun and sometimes there are things you aren't very good at that you could use someone who is good at it to help you. But it would be cool because some person with an extremely niche idea for a game who can't find anyone to collab with could one-person their passion project and make it real.
Very true and very good points! One of the more recent interesting things I've seen is the JALI face tech. It creates some create looking facial animations, which are traditionally one of the more time consuming and difficult parts of animating a character. Superb synthetic voice would be incredible too because you'd simply have to write emotions and dialogue and a huge part of production would be simplified. Add the facial animation tech and blam, most of a cutscene made. Some kind of "character" driven procedural animation system would be really neat. Something where you could select tags about a character (old, young, muscular, hard life, tired, ect) and the system could create custom animations for that character. At that point you'd basically be writing and having the computer visualize what you're writing.
Another thing that I think has been undervalued that will come with the ending of IP laws is much superior accessibility features. Right now accessibility is pretty much entirely limited to AAA studios, and it would be great for some of the features from the last of us pt 2 and other new big-budget games were as normalized as camera and movement controls.
The other thing that will really make a difference is better curriculum and freely available education for game dev shit. Right now its pretty normal to see simple and basic things overlooked just because someone is unaware, by no fault of their own, of certain best practices or methodologies.
I've not much more to say, but I love the idea of TLOU2's accessibility features becoming more commonplace. High contrast mode was an absolute genius addition.
While I agree that there will be more Journey and Edith Finch, I dont know that I agree that it'd be a majority? I think we'd see a lot of projects along the lines of Cave Story and Undertale though. Ie, games that have artistic vision but also work as just fun games to play (jury may be out on whether Undertale is fun, but Cave Story definitely is). Not saying that Edith Finch and (especially) Journey aren't fun, but they are definitely moreso experiences than they are fun games. And I think quiet a few game designers are going to be more focused on making fun games than artistic experiences. Like keep in mind, most devs are going to be people who enjoy playing games. If they're making the games they want to make, many of them are going to be more focused on being fun than being artistic. All in all though, I think things like Cave Story are probably going to be the backbone of video games post-capitalism. Stuff thats both fun and artistically deep.
The only thing I think might entirely or at least mostly go away is massive open world games. At the very least, we wouldn't be getting them all the time, as without worker abuse they'd take many years to make baring technology developments start going the way of making game development more accessible. There would still be a demand for them, because there are people that enjoy them (myself included), but I'm not sure how many people would be willing to make them.
Actually, another thing I just thought of is sports games. We definitely (thank god) wouldn't be getting yearly releases on every sports franchise. The thing I'm wondering though is like, are sports games actually interesting to work on? Would there be devs who want to work on them around? Again, I'm quiet certain there would still be people that want them, NBA 2K and Madden remain extremely popular. But unless those people all decided "well noones making the new Madden so I guess I'm going to learn the necessary skills to work on them" I don't know who's going to be making them.
Military shooters wouldn't go away, but there'd be less of them for sure and there would be much less of a focus on graphical fidelity and more focus on fun. We'd also probably see a return to a focus on narratively deep campaigns. Not saying every military shooter would be Spec Ops the Line though, that would be grim lmao.
I've thought about the open-world question a lot, and I think we might see a lot of cases of teams of artists making the open world, and then making it freely available for other teams to put their stories and things in. I know a lot of my artist friends like working on big singular projects like that, so it's something that will still be made, definitely, but won't be made in the same way. Open world games that are at a fnv/fo3 level of fidelity would see a resurgence, I believe. Mainly because fnv/fo3's open worlds are considerably less time consuming to create.
Yeah I can't imagine we'd get many if any games along the lines of Ubisoft stuff where there's a big open world filled with lots of busy work. Thing is, those types of games work for me because im an aspie who loves busy work and completionism, but I totally get/agree that they're kinda artistically vapid and I can't imagine devs given artistic freedom wanting to make games like that. Like I imagine Assassins' Creed and Farcry would continue as franchises, because I think most franchises would continue (and many would be revived) in a world without IP laws restricting fans from making games in the franchise, but they'd probably be fundamentally different. Like less busywork and the worlds wouldn't be as huge as Odyssey's and Valhalla's, like smaller worlds and the stuff to do would be way less repetitive.
I'd have to imagine that much of the busy work in many modern open-world games is somewhat procedurally generated, so it'd be pretty likely, with those tools being freely available, that creating games just about simpler busy work and stuff wouldn't be too hard, especially if full environments are freely available. I think something like Destiny 2 would get a lot of benefit from freely available assets, cause so much of the production time and cost of Destiny 2 is tied up in creating its environments. Of course, you get issues with visual continuity and such, but that's all fixable, especially as procedural generation tech gets more and more mainstream in 3d art.
Yeah I've thought a LOOOOOOOT about how developing technology will make game development a lot more accessible over time and especially so without IP laws preventing the sharing of assets and code.
Like especially interesting to me is how complex of a game you can make as a one person job. Cave Story is probably the most complex one person job game I'm aware of so far, though its possible one missed my notice. And that is very impressive mind you. But will we reach a point in technology where a game on the scale of say, GTA5 could possibly be a one person job if the person felt like doing so? Some things you still need people with special skills to do, like soundtracks and voice acting, but I'm guessing tech can develop even on those fronts. Can you imagine how much it would open things up creatively if you could have synthetic digital voices that actually sound like real people? [Mind you, I don't think professional, flesh and blood voice actors would ever be fully replaced, or at least not in our lifetime, but it would be really cool to have it as an OPTION. Especially to like, create the perfect voice for a character that no living voice actor can reproduce, or even digitally resurrect the voice of a deceased actor wow]. And how about entirely digital orchestral soundtracks (hell actually for all I know thats already possible lmao).
Also I'm not saying that just because it becomes POSSIBLE to do a huge game as a single person means that the majority of games would be, because collaborative projects are fun and sometimes there are things you aren't very good at that you could use someone who is good at it to help you. But it would be cool because some person with an extremely niche idea for a game who can't find anyone to collab with could one-person their passion project and make it real.
Very true and very good points! One of the more recent interesting things I've seen is the JALI face tech. It creates some create looking facial animations, which are traditionally one of the more time consuming and difficult parts of animating a character. Superb synthetic voice would be incredible too because you'd simply have to write emotions and dialogue and a huge part of production would be simplified. Add the facial animation tech and blam, most of a cutscene made. Some kind of "character" driven procedural animation system would be really neat. Something where you could select tags about a character (old, young, muscular, hard life, tired, ect) and the system could create custom animations for that character. At that point you'd basically be writing and having the computer visualize what you're writing.
Another thing that I think has been undervalued that will come with the ending of IP laws is much superior accessibility features. Right now accessibility is pretty much entirely limited to AAA studios, and it would be great for some of the features from the last of us pt 2 and other new big-budget games were as normalized as camera and movement controls.
The other thing that will really make a difference is better curriculum and freely available education for game dev shit. Right now its pretty normal to see simple and basic things overlooked just because someone is unaware, by no fault of their own, of certain best practices or methodologies.
I've not much more to say, but I love the idea of TLOU2's accessibility features becoming more commonplace. High contrast mode was an absolute genius addition.