Trends of Game Development

There are so many developments in games lately and in the past few years and just as there are that, there are many trends and developments that are akin to a scientist having the freedom to do what ever they way. In a way that scares me as much as what I see from reading. I am a woman, what real chance do I have in a male dominated industry where big breasted woman are the main 'female' characters?

Nada, zero, zip, nothing. That's how I feel when I read these articles about current developments. As gamers and future developers we need to pay attention to not only our imaginary worlds but also to the real world and its trends. So in saying this, I consider the most important thing for the future to be open source or SDK development. If you do a search on the net for free SDK you will find a dozen different ones to play with and enjoy.

Unreal released their game engine for free download with a clause that you can use it fully but when you start to make money, there will be a certain percentage taken out after the first 50k. For a developer, 50K might not be a lot but with a engine that birthed UT03, Borderlands and Gears of War how can anyone go wrong? And they are not the only ones. Valve has one, CryEngine has one and there are many others. I haven't looked closely at the others because I was already super impressed with Unreal's engine to begin.

Allowing developers, those underdogs, a chance to use a top engine to create a game will bring new light into the industry. Whether it is a first person shooter or a RPG, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that there are dreamers out there wanting to see their dreams made into reality even if its on a TV or monitor. Its the ideas created that keeps the industry running, not the new fabrications that arrive though they help keep things impressive.

A development we should all see coming out soon is the impressive Oculus Rift 3d headset. I can't help but think that VR is not just a sci-fi thing anymore(Holo Deck anyone?) but also a path we have just started on. Think of all that came out of sci-fi story. Star Wars, Star Trek... both have given those dreamers ideas to step towards and finally someone, through current tech, has realized the potential of VR using relatively inexpensive parts.

While this has been around since motion  pictures at least, 3d was too expensive to make it something public. But it will be here within a year or so, it won't be pretty at first, it won't be smooth but it will be here and I can not see any reason for it to up and disappear at all. People want more reality in gaming, they want to see games just as we all see real life. That takes hardware, software and talent to get to this point. As they say, our future is here and now.

 Resources:

Poh, Michael(2013) Future of Gaming: 5 Exciting Emerging Trends http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/future-of-gaming/