When Epic MegaGames released Unreal in 1998 it was an absolutely monumental title for PC gaming. Let's take a nostalgic look back at Unreal and its expansion...
What’s bonkers to me is realizing that this is only two years after quake 1, which in turn was only three years after doom, which was less than a year after wolfenstein 3d. We went from Wolfenstein 3d to Unreal in 6 years.
I remember that, too. It feels to me like some time around 2010, game graphics finally reached a stride where they all looked quite good, and any further development since then has been incremental… but for that first decade, it was unbelievable how rapidly it was progressing.
What’s really bonkers is that in 1 generation we went from 8bit blocks on the screen to photo realistic 3D scenes. It’s been incredible to see an entire industry appear in 1 lifetime.
Totally agree that what comes next will be incremental. We won’t see that rate of advancement again, and more sadly we don’t seem to see the experimentation either, at least not in the mainstream publishers. The 90’s and early millenium was mad with everything from doom to MDK, deus ex, citizen kabuto, command and conquer, Nox, homeworld, mad experiments in voxel engines like Outcast, space sims like freelancer and freescape. Today it’s much more risk averse with incremental updates to established franchises, unless you delve into the indie gaming scene. But that’s also been cool to see re emerge like the legacy of the 80’s bedroom programmers.
I’m not too worried about the lack of innovation from the AAA games, as an indie game enthusiast. For the moment, there doesn’t seem to be any threat of corporatocracy wiping out the indie scene. When you look back at the innovation in the 90s, while it wasn’t indie by our current standards, the “wild west” nature of it all meant that the work the innovators were doing at the time was quite analogous to the typical small scale passion projects done by modern indie. The craze hasn’t died off, it’s just mingled with big studio stuff now.
And while those big studio things are less inherently innovative, we do still see things like Half Life Alyx now and then. I don’t think it’s a bad time to be into gaming.
Yes, you are right. It matured. The mainstream publishers were definately similar to today’s indie gaming scene. That’s where I gravitated to as well.
I think the tooling is probably the greatest innovation of the current generation. For the first time you can download incredibly powerful frameworks like Unreal engine and godot down to Pico 8 that put professional quality production tools in the hands of anybody with imagination to create, plus the communities and the platforms to publish. There’s never been an easier time to make stuff and put it out there than there is today.
Godot is so enticing to me. I was heavily into RPG maker in the early oughts, not so much out of any love of the jrpg genre but just because it was mind blowing to be able to generate any kind of game so easily. Of course, now I have a “job” and “kids” and I probably won’t be able to play seriously with godot until the latter grows up and possible until I retire from the former, but it’s always there… beckoning…
Ha same! One day I’ll remake that 8bit title in pico8… or watch the kids do it! It’s a long ways from figuring stuff out from magazines, and complex technical manuals. It kind of got much harder during the 16bit era where the machine got harder to fully understand, like the Amiga compared to bbc micro or spectrum. 68k assembly was hard by yourself. But for sure, godot, gamemaker etc have made it accessible again, and programming is still a useful skill to have on your resume. It’s fed me long after my uni certificates expired!
What’s bonkers to me is realizing that this is only two years after quake 1, which in turn was only three years after doom, which was less than a year after wolfenstein 3d. We went from Wolfenstein 3d to Unreal in 6 years.
I remember that, too. It feels to me like some time around 2010, game graphics finally reached a stride where they all looked quite good, and any further development since then has been incremental… but for that first decade, it was unbelievable how rapidly it was progressing.
What’s really bonkers is that in 1 generation we went from 8bit blocks on the screen to photo realistic 3D scenes. It’s been incredible to see an entire industry appear in 1 lifetime.
Totally agree that what comes next will be incremental. We won’t see that rate of advancement again, and more sadly we don’t seem to see the experimentation either, at least not in the mainstream publishers. The 90’s and early millenium was mad with everything from doom to MDK, deus ex, citizen kabuto, command and conquer, Nox, homeworld, mad experiments in voxel engines like Outcast, space sims like freelancer and freescape. Today it’s much more risk averse with incremental updates to established franchises, unless you delve into the indie gaming scene. But that’s also been cool to see re emerge like the legacy of the 80’s bedroom programmers.
I’m not too worried about the lack of innovation from the AAA games, as an indie game enthusiast. For the moment, there doesn’t seem to be any threat of corporatocracy wiping out the indie scene. When you look back at the innovation in the 90s, while it wasn’t indie by our current standards, the “wild west” nature of it all meant that the work the innovators were doing at the time was quite analogous to the typical small scale passion projects done by modern indie. The craze hasn’t died off, it’s just mingled with big studio stuff now.
And while those big studio things are less inherently innovative, we do still see things like Half Life Alyx now and then. I don’t think it’s a bad time to be into gaming.
Yes, you are right. It matured. The mainstream publishers were definately similar to today’s indie gaming scene. That’s where I gravitated to as well.
I think the tooling is probably the greatest innovation of the current generation. For the first time you can download incredibly powerful frameworks like Unreal engine and godot down to Pico 8 that put professional quality production tools in the hands of anybody with imagination to create, plus the communities and the platforms to publish. There’s never been an easier time to make stuff and put it out there than there is today.
Godot is so enticing to me. I was heavily into RPG maker in the early oughts, not so much out of any love of the jrpg genre but just because it was mind blowing to be able to generate any kind of game so easily. Of course, now I have a “job” and “kids” and I probably won’t be able to play seriously with godot until the latter grows up and possible until I retire from the former, but it’s always there… beckoning…
Ha same! One day I’ll remake that 8bit title in pico8… or watch the kids do it! It’s a long ways from figuring stuff out from magazines, and complex technical manuals. It kind of got much harder during the 16bit era where the machine got harder to fully understand, like the Amiga compared to bbc micro or spectrum. 68k assembly was hard by yourself. But for sure, godot, gamemaker etc have made it accessible again, and programming is still a useful skill to have on your resume. It’s fed me long after my uni certificates expired!