2024 may not be kind for game developers.

eastmen said:
I was born in 81 so I don't remember too much. I remember having like 40 intellivsion games and a bunch of atari games.
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'66 for me so I have had the great privilege of seeing video games develop since Pong. It's weird to me to realize that most people who game haven't been at it quite as long as me.

It's been a fantastic time to be alive for me and I'm grateful for it and I still can't wait to see what comes next!
 
iroboto said:
I gotta ask the question, since I wasn't old enough to really know or understand it, I was only born at the time. I suppose I could just Google it, but I'm looking for anecdotal first hand account of what it felt like. What happened during the great recession of games in the 80s? Did anyone experience it? Was it slow moving death like this?
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The home gaming industry wasn't as huge as it is today and neither was as prevalent or as important in people's daily lives. People werent spending as much time in front of screens as they are today. People found things to do. Tangible toys, board games and activities were very prevalent. When people were losing interest in home video games as they were expensive and had no quality controls, they experienced video games at arcades and Luna Parks which was part of the experience of going out. The games there were unmatchable by any home console. The labor involved in home videogame production was too small compared to today's hugely complex projects. Therefore the economic impact felt by everyday people was miniscule. The impact was felt by some retailers and the few companies involved.

But people really felt a difference when Nintendo joined. That was a tremendous shift in experience and perception of home video gaming. The impact was transformative.
 
I'd say it wasn't that noticeable in the U.K while things like the Atari died, we also had the home micro explosion zx-81, zx-spectrum, commodore 64, Vic-20, Amstrad CPC464, BBC model B
while Atari cartridges sold for £30 games for home micros were supplied on cassette tape and usually sold for £4.99
digitalwanderer said:
most people who game haven't been at it quite as long as me.
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Digi you old bugger I remember Pong
 
Davros said:
I'd say it wasn't that noticeable in the U.K while things like the Atari died, we also had the home micro explosion zx-81, zx-spectrum, commodore 64, Vic-20, Amstrad CPC464, BBC model B
while Atari cartridges sold for £30 games for home micros were supplied on cassette tape and usually sold for £4.99
Digi you old bugger I remember Pong
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I first played Pong in a bowling alley in the early 70s. First video game I ever saw and I spent a lot of quarters on it!

Remembering how I felt like I was hot shit when I got the datasette for my VIC and could save my programs, then freaked out when I made a copy of a friends cassette and we both had the game! Back when DRM was, "What is the first word of the second sentence on page 8 of the manual?", so we'd make photo copies of the manuals. Happy memories, thanks! :love:
 
Davros said:
Back in the day computer magazines would give away free games, not on cassette but as source code in basic printed in the magazine that you had to type in. That resulted in creating a lot of game programmers in the U.K
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Not just games programmers but programmers in general. I wrote and sold games for the BBC Micro in the late 80's, then wrote and sold graphics applications for the Acorn Archimedes in the 90s which helped fund me through University and PhD. I'm still a programmer.

I learned a lot from the printed source code. More than I did from playing the games.
 
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Davros said:
Back in the day computer magazines would give away free games, not on cassette but as source code in basic printed in the magazine that you had to type in. That resulted in creating a lot of game programmers in the U.K
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Debugging the games I typed in from Compute magazine pretty much ended up teaching me how to program on it, LOTS of fun!
 
digitalwanderer said:
Debugging the games I typed in from Compute magazine pretty much ended up teaching me how to program on it, LOTS of fun!
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Indeed, they weren't QA'd and needed patching. It was a very organic education, that naturally fell at those who had a natural interest and aptitude. Some people have tried to recreate that, inventing things like the MicroBIT for kids to learn on, but kids these days aren't going to get involved as there's too much other stuff to 'do' (watch endless hours of Tiktok).
 
And of course the interpreters of the day offered no help with debugging no nice error messages "syntax error line 50" it just wouldn't work you had to go through the code comparing it to the magazine and if you were lucky it was a typing error.
 
Davros said:
OMG it's David Braben - "I'm not worthy" "I'm not worthy"
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Unfortunately not :) I wasn't smart enough to get in to Cambridge and even if I was I wouldn't want to go there. I'm glad it worked out for him.

Davros said:
I has a BBC emulator maybe I can find some of your games
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I don't have any copies myself right now. I'll see if I can find any sites that host them.

I managed to find and download copies about 15 years ago, but they will be on my 15 year-old hard drive which is now baked bean cans on the shelves at Tesco.

Don't know if the sites still exist.
 
I'm assuming companies like Cisco rely heavily still on the sale and maintenance of premises physical hardware, which after COVID has reduced significantly
 
So a lot of the hype the past couple of years have been around AI. Most of it is about LLM but also there's been some touting of image and video generation.

Has there been greater use of similar image generation tools in games development in the last few years? Back a couple of generations ago, MS was touting procedural rendering. But are AI tools being used to create game assets, including 3D models?
 
wco81 said:
Has there been greater use of similar image generation tools in games development in the last few years? Back a couple of generations ago, MS was touting procedural rendering. But are AI tools being used to create game assets, including 3D models?
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Yes. Two threads on that matter:

Using AI to improve games.​

forum.beyond3d.com

Using AI to improve games.

As of recently I read the news about this Resident Evil HD Remaster mod which uses AI to enhance the game's 2500 backgrounds and is already a must-have for fans. https://www.nexusmods.com/residentevilbiohazardhdremaster/mods/102?tab=description This new mod that is essential for all the fans...
forum.beyond3d.com forum.beyond3d.com

Realtime AI content generation *spawn​

forum.beyond3d.com

Realtime AI content generation *spawn

The "nVidia ACE" demo was built with UE5 and RTXDI: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-ace-for-games-generative-ai-npcs/ Thats what I expect from "proper" next gen games. And I expect it to still stake some years for an actual shipping title to get all the pieces of the puzzle...
forum.beyond3d.com forum.beyond3d.com
 
Some positive news for once ...
www.kitguru.net

Original Risk of Rain devs move to Valve, possibly to work on new Half-Life game - KitGuru

It is rare for Valve to make any big acquisitions, with its last being the acquisition of Campo Sant
www.kitguru.net www.kitguru.net
Interestingly, this move comes immediately after dataminers discovered that Valve is working on a new single-player Half-Life game. The situation is all very similar to Valve's acquisition of Campo Santo back in 2018, after those developers moved into Valve's office, they scrapped their plans for their announced game, Valley of the Gods, and instead began working on Half-Life: Alyx. It is entirely possible that the Hopoo Games team will now be helping out on the new, unannounced Half-Life game.
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