A "time of both crisis and opportunity" is nigh
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, overseer of a company which fired over 1000 staff just a few months ago, has laid out his vision for the games industry's future during a "time of both crisis and opportunity". As Epic revealed an Unreal Engine 6 packed with generative AI model support designed to "reduce the tedious work" that goes into making games, Sweeney painted a picture of a future in which the threat of Roblox eating the world is combatted by a bunch of game makers working with Epic to create a massive integrated everythingverse that's somehow totally different to Roblox's massive integrated everythingverse.
"The biggest games like Fortnite are once again growing and thriving, but underneath this there's a serious challenge to AAA developers," the Sweens, whose company-wide letter about Epic's layoffs this March cited a downturn in engagement with Fortnite, said while on stage at this year's State of Unreal showcase. "That's that a huge number of the new releases of major games are failing now. We're seeing often hundreds of millions of dollars of dev costs followed by tens of millions of dollars of revenue. The dev costs are continuing to grow. It feels to many like a tidal wave is sweeping over the AAA game business."
The exec highlighted a few key trends he thinks have contributed to this status quo - starting off with people playing games socially with their mates and that "the economy is shifting from buying games to things in games". "This is another thing that reinforces the success of very large ecosystems in games and makes it ever harder for new entrants to get in. If you've been playing a game for a long time and it has a huge player base you can buy with confidence knowing that things you purchase will be useful to you days, weeks or years later. If a new game comes out it's more difficult to spend not knowing if you're going to play next day, next month," he said of the latter. Finally, there's the battle for folks' attention, which the exec reckons is more competitive than ever.
So, what plan does Sweeney have to ensure Epic has a place in the future of an industry he acknowledges could end up being gobbled up by Roblox's ever-growing maw? Basically, do the same sort of integrated gameverse thing Roblox does, with content, communities, and economies all linked together into one blob with different offshoots, so players see games not as "isolated products", but as "a global ecosystem that all game developers participate in together".
How is that "a very different future" to the Roblox eating the world eventuality, aside from Epic potentially avoiding being gobbled up? Sweeney's answer seems to be rooted in some unshakeable idea that Epic are somehow fundamentally exempt from being the sort of powerful overlord that every other massive company which holds the keys to a huge platform is, because they plan to adopt "open standards". "Our aim at Epic is to work with all developers in the city to build this system together as peers," he said. "We wanted a system with no overlord. We've been spending some time fighting against overlords in the industry with some amount of success. We don't want to be the next one, rather we want to be a partner to every company in the industry, including all game developers and other makers of technology and services in order to build the best stuff and connect it all up together."
Aww, they just want to be everyone's friend and happen to amass a boatload of money and influence over the industry doing it. They're not like those other massive corps, who amass similar boatloads of money and influence by means that aren't as pure and praiseworthy.
Oh, and as far as Unreal Engine 6 is concerned, one of the big selling points they're emphasising is that it'll come with generative AI model integration. "AI assisted game creation will tighten iteration loops and reduce time consuming manual setup of levels, character rigs, particle systems, skinning, bone weights, adjusting lighting." Unreal Engine development lead Marcus Wassmer said while showing off these tools during the showcase. "All the manual work required to translate professional creative intent into interactive, performant, and cross-platform games." So, the LLMs and AI models are being brought in with the aim of speeding up the development process and to "to greatly reduce the tedious work" that goes into making games. As has become the norm when companies roll out such tech, Wassmer was keen to stress that devs will retain overall creative control.
To my ears, that sounds like a lot of bandwagon boarding for a company who're trying to position themselves as some sort of alternative. I'm certainly not sure trying to out-Roblox Roblox while pretending you're just a plucky little guy who wouldn't dream of telling people what to do will work out any better going forwards than it has thus far.