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Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

a16z.com

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Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#11

Post by kevingadd »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #5

And who is going to pay for this? Is a16z gonna fund a few game engine startups? The skills needed to build a game engine seem relatively niche and a lot of the talent has already been captured by the big players. I suspect that the most felt impact of AI tooling will be an increase in shovelware generic games. I also suspect that curation will become even more important as developers try to shove as much AI crap as…

There are game engine startups out there but I suspect veterans are going to stay far away from a16z money because they look clueless.

An industry vet I know recently complained to me specifically about a16z, unprompted, after seeing some of their PR like this. He recently raised 8 figures for his games startup.

Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#12

Post by kevingadd »

tkirwin wrote: post #2

It's time for new game engines

What does a "new game engine" solve for anyone other than investors? Why not improve on existing technology by adding new features, improving workflow, or enabling users to target new platforms?

Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#13

Post by simion314 »

catapart wrote: post #4

As a game dev, most of this sounds unappealing. A "next gen" game engine would let me open it up and describe the type of game I was making and then plop me into a scene with all of the basics set up via non-desctructive, procedurally-generated content that I could edit and refactor in a real-time environment and then one-click-export to common platforms. For example, I could type "a open world 3d game", or "a pong-l…

I agree with you, I also looked into existing games that provide some level and quest editor and except Bethesda games there is almost nothing. So today if I have an idea and want to experiment I either have to mod Skryim/Falout or use RPG Maker.

I tried to make something in Unity, it is such a waste of time, watching tutorials you see magic like "you import this model from X but notice it looks shit, that is because you need to go in this menus here and tick this checkbox here". Or I had the issue where I tried to make a character run, the C# code worked fine it moved the character around as I pressed the keys, but the run animation did not played even if I done all the steps correctly and the animation was 100% working, there was no fcking error,warning or hint on what is going wrong - just a waste of time for a solo person to try create a small thing (I do not want to sell any game so I am not a threat for the pro devs and I had not intention to put it on Steam either so please don't send me hate comments)

Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#15

Post by kevingadd »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #8
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it seems like you're working at a16z, are you gonna convince leadership there to help fund these initiatives?

I honestly thought that’s what this was. I’m sure they will fund them especially since the a16z games seems to have sunk a lot of money in crypto junk so they need to do the “AI-pivot”. At least an engine could be a viable business

Engines being a viable business is kind of questionable in 2024 and on. There are lots of free or very inexpensive options already out there with incredible documentation, tooling and asset store components available, so any new startup has to compete with those on cost and capability simultaneously.

If your goal is to build a viable business instead of just scam your investors, you probably either have to try and compete with Roblox by creating an ecosystem where you siphon revenue off of your customers and their customers simultaneously, or sell actual product (sort of like how Epic bankrolls their stuff using revenue from their games) alongside tools.

Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#16

Post by filterfiber »

ary wrote: post #3

How does Source 2 not make it onto this "Market Map"? It's mostly used by Valve and a smaller number of studios than something like Unreal, but it's viable none the less. I suspect it has a much broader user reach than several of the entries on the Open Source end of this map. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source Perhaps it doesn't qualify by some arbitrary "next generation" status, but Unreal does?

AFAIK there's no public sdk for it, only a single third party game is in development and it's by the developers of garry's mod (one of the biggest third party source "1" games).

I'd consider it still proprietary, at that point you'd want to add Snowdrop (ubisoft), RAGE (Rockstar), REDengine (CDPR), Frostbite (EA), etc.

Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#17

Post by [deleted] »

ary wrote: post #3

How does Source 2 not make it onto this "Market Map"? It's mostly used by Valve and a smaller number of studios than something like Unreal, but it's viable none the less. I suspect it has a much broader user reach than several of the entries on the Open Source end of this map. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source Perhaps it doesn't qualify by some arbitrary "next generation" status, but Unreal does?

[deleted]

Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#18

Post by Tanoc »

ary wrote: post #3

How does Source 2 not make it onto this "Market Map"? It's mostly used by Valve and a smaller number of studios than something like Unreal, but it's viable none the less. I suspect it has a much broader user reach than several of the entries on the Open Source end of this map. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source Perhaps it doesn't qualify by some arbitrary "next generation" status, but Unreal does?

It's also missing Panda3D, Armoury 3D, and Construct, which are all used in very well known indie games. While including GDevelop which is a teaching tool for children not actually meant to create commercial software, and Dreams which isn't a game engine but a sandbox game for the PlayStation 4 for creating interactive fiction. And meanwhile Yahaha isn't even a game engine, it's Web3 software designed for Decentraland and Horizon Worlds, which are so dead the corpse doesn't even smell anymore.

Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#19

Post by akaij »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #6
tkirwin wrote: post #2

It's time for new game engines

Well, it seems like you're working at a16z, are you gonna convince leadership there to help fund these initiatives?

I thought he was just joking, a reference to the a16z article "It's Time to Build" :D

Re: Unbundling the game engine: The rise of next generation 3D creation engines

#20

Post by sim7c00 »

as the article seems to imply roght at the start,it would be so interesting to marry game enignes with asset creation tools. those could use AI, or not, but i feel a big issue now which is hardly addressed is the plethora of tools used outside of the game editor of an engone like unreal, which makes creating games a mess of.tools, difficult workflows and a mess of export and import shit to sift through. i wish there was a one tool to make the entire game kind of thing. generative ai or just integration of blender and texture tools etc. into ue5 fully. running these tools.side by side requires such an extreme computer...
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