Comment on How long until the rise of games with mods turns into user created games.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 1 week agoI think you are still thinking from a perspective of making money. I am thinking more like opensource software.
A free engine or engines that handle generic stuff. Then some plugins for common features on top. After that, opensource licensced graphics for tons of things like lights, tables chairs… with associated sounds for moving or breaking. A total noob, could use AI to slap together a concept. Then they or others could tune it if the concept seems fun.
And of course at any point someone can fork it and go in their own direction.
Essentially community, not “developer” driven games.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
So, basically you’re describing open source, public domain game development (rather than just an open source engine like Godot) by the sound of it. This does happen, games like Luanti or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but very rarely. Unlike mods, which tend to be small, quick-and-dirty projects, game development is usually much larger in scope and more difficult. It’s normal for the process to take years of work from a collective of skilled developers and artists. That amount of work is usually just too much for someone to willingly give away for free.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Right, and I was pondering how long until developing a game on opensource components becomes an equivalent effort to what modding is today. With well polished games becoming less common, large mods that overhaul games becoming more common, and AI improving over the next years. That feels like a direction that things may go.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
As is, theres no sign things will go that way quickly. The increase in larger mods is more a product of increased funding and increased (legal) support from publishers. Things like Roblox’s microtransactions make it very profitable, even if a lot of time or money is spent in development. For more general game development, most of it hasn’t changed in about a decade, and I don’t see AI affecting much. AI can’t reliably create good results in any field, nonetheless combining them. Basically, making any large project just costs too much to give away for free.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yeah, it could still be a good while away. AI can help a lot in some places. Not so much in others. Like if you had modules and plugins that can work like legos to make a very simple game. AI can help get your initial game wired up. For the work of making it unique or interesting, AI can’t help as much. Though it could quickly spin up lots of graphics to choose from and such so that a person with no graphics skills could make their game have its own look. The other place it can help is in running tests. Like for new hardware that an engine or what not needs to support. It can even help add tests to some extent, but you still need a skilled person to look over what it did.
My understanding is that there are a lot of boring mundane tasks needed for maintaining the framework and such. The kind of thing that turns off opensource contributors. So maybe some of that can be offloaded and help get more people involved for free on a product that they can then use for free.