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...
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!
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!