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However, a game still costs millions to make and a bunch of time. Vaporizing the funding source for that kills the industry.

This seems unfortunately true so I wonder if there is "another way." I don't know much about this, but don't many companies "reinvent the wheel" by creating their own engine for their game? Isn't that a significant cost that every company could offload to one or two sources; engine developers. If there were companies to create the underlying engine, than other companies could focus on creative elements of the game; maps, voice acting, models, etc. Sure, game developers would have to license the engine, but maybe it could reduce the cost to create a game and increase the resource allocation to creativity, thus producing better games.

But wait, we don't want another Microsoft situation, where the entire industry (ie: software industry) is relying on the product of a single company (ie: Windows). What if there were at least two quality engine developers. That may produce an Intel / AMD situation: two somewhat different products providing the same underlying function, each company working as hard as they possibly can to outperform the other. That may be healthy for the game designers; price wars between engine developers drive licensing fees down, etc.

My point in mentioning this is, in conjunction with the bypassing of game publishers, then small creative companies wouldn't need to hire programmers to recreate physics if they had a cool game idea. It could give opportunity to more than just the big game companies, sort of like indie / underground music. Sure, you'll get crap like the stuff thrown together by current mod writers <correct term?>, but if their products suck, they won't sell and their more creative competitors will.

But then again, this is coming from a guy who like simplicity and doesn't care (too much) how a game looks as long as it has a good plot and playability. Sid Meyers Civilization 1 forever!!
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FireFox31
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