(Future of Game Development - 1)
What's the future of game development?
This is a pretty broad question because there are different types of games. Some games are only meant to be pieces of pure entertainment, while other games may be intended to convey some kind of artistic endeavors. There are so many niches up there in the videogame market and listing them all is nearly impossible.
If you are an independent game developer, choosing your game's category to maximize your chances of monetization will probably be one of your foremost concerns. In order to stay accurate in this sort of decision-making, we must be diligent in our efforts to predict the future of videogames.
As we probably all know, the gaming industry has been bloated with high-level game engines, online asset stores, and AI-assisted tools to quickly generate numerous gameplay features. We are living in an era where game development is easier and cheaper than ever.
However, it is this high affordability of game development that really undermines the potentials of true professional game developers, who have great skills to add all sorts of elaborate nuances to their games yet are not stupidly loud enough to market their inventive ideas in a way which appeals to the common interest of laymen.
The underlying cause behind this apparent uphill battle is this:
If it is the assumption of the general public that a game is supposed to be purely entertainment-oriented, the only people who are bound to succeed in developing a successful videogame are experts in manipulative psychology whose only concern is to short-circuit the audience's brain into that of a dopamine addict who never hesitates to pull out every single penny out of one's wallet for endless rounds of quasi-gambling. This is where the main discrepancy occurs between naive expectations of highly intellectual developers who desperately try to show something genuinely unique and sophisticated to random people, and the sad fact that the only product the vast majority of the population expect to see is just a slot machine optimally designed for those who belong to the left-half of the IQ spectrum who are willing to pay for shiny oversaturated gems which do not even exist in real life.