As Unreal slowly moves ever-forward to being a full suite development system it’s going to go the same way a lot of technical systems have.
People who are experts now will become “pilots” later, meaning they’ll be driving but not understanding.
I had the great experience of working for a small Airline in the past and the knowledge of the pilots there was amazing, and just by interacting with them I learned a lot.
One thing that stuck out was the use of an Autopilot.
And as I’m getting on a bit now time has dulled the memory but from what I recall there was some discussion around how much AP can be used and how limiting that makes the whole process of flying a commercial plane.
So, how long before the process is simplified?
I mean it’s a bit of a rubbish example, passenger safety and all that, but how about another example? Scan and shop?
I can now go to the supermarket and scan products as I go, paying at the end.
Does this require the supermarket to charge me more? Well no…..not really. Of course there’s a setup cost in the technology but, I assume, it means fewer staff need to be employed.
(side bar) I’ve been saying this for a while, shops may eventually be completely unmanned except for security on the front door, sad, but that’s progress I guess.
Broadly then, as technology streamlines processes, one of the popular ways it can do that is to shift the manual work elsewhere.
Scan as you go in shops through to Autopilot in planes (to varying safeguarding degrees of course!)
Back to Unreal, and this streamlining does several things, but one of them is the process of making things less expert-oriented.
You see, back in the stone age if was customary for all users of a computer to be able to insert the starter crank, write the operating system and solder the HT lines into the grid before you could boot it up.
Ok, a bit OTT there, but you get the idea.
Now computer users don’t need to learn majority of operational functions, they just switch it on and do what they need to do.
You can see this move away from a more skilled use in a very stark way in education, teachers are constantly being provided new technology, but less often the training on how to use it.
So where does this come into in the Games Industry?
Well, if you watch the linked video by the ever-excellent Moidawg you’ll see where I’m coming from.
In a nutshell players of a popular game created community content for that game (for competitive matches) and in so doing managed to implement quite sophisticated cheating mechanics into it.
This, to me, points to a problem. The people administering that game did not have the same technical skill as those that created the community content and thus, missed the exploits.
This is a double edged issue – first off, fair play to the community, what an incredible set of collective balls they had – if you ignore the obvious limitations on the ticket counts totally exposing them. But also the lack of internal skill to notice until some time later.
And this is my bone of contention here with Unreal and other game engines that seek to become killer apps.
Eventually there will be a significantly lower number of product experts, as amateurs will gain enough skill to drive, but not to truly understand.
We’re seeing this now as there’s a proliferation of very similar looking titles being touted.
And lets get one thing straight here – I am not against the idea of solo and indie developers being able to create much larger projects internally – but I do worry with a lack of deep understanding a lot of them will be suboptimal.
Mind you that might get them noticed and secure help and guidance.
I think players are very supportive of much smaller developments these days, possibly always have been. And if I think about the games I’ve played lately, some of the very best have been delivered by small teams.
So the future might be a bit more janky, but it is also, hopefully, bright!