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.
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.