A-Kon 2009 Takeaway

[clown_spawn]

At A-Kon this year, I attended a panel given by one of the father's of 3d technology, John Carmack.


At this talk, he basically gave a brain dump on where the industry is now, and where he sees the industry going, and it was fascinating to be given an opportunity to peek into his thoughts. This post will be less about what he said, and more about takeaways from the talk.

He felt that hardware is beginning to plateau, and that it will be a while before we see any innovations that lead to the type of growth and change in hardware that we've been seeing over the past two decades. Numerous opportunities abound, including new distribution models and portals like the iPhone. While many studios push technical boundaries (and he included his own studio), he felt that technology for its own sake failed to meet the purpose of games.

Takeaways:

1. There is still room in the engine market. Many of the dominant engines were written in a period before the advent of parallelism. Many of the dominant engines were also written before the standardization of good programming design (having worked in several engines, I can attest to the growth in cruft and workarounds needed to keep engines up-to-date). I believe there is room on the market for an engine built around multi-threading different systems (I believe Unreal only uses two threads), and engineered from the ground up for maintainability. Sure, there are other engines out there, but the fact that teams consider Unreal on the high end, and Torque on the low end, indicates there is room in the market for an engine with a strong differentiating factor.
   
2. The iPhone may not be a gold rush, but it definitely holds greater opportunities than any other platform out there. No, you are not guaranteed to make money off the iPhone. Yes, a lot of apps sell poorly on the iTunes store. No, you can't rely strictly on iTunes to get the word out about your game. Is this really any worse than the other platforms out there? The iTunes store lowers barriers to entry to such a degree, and asks for such a low cut, that you really can't compare it to any other platform out there for independent developers. The only comparable platform out there is Xbox Live Community Games, and that has a low audience, and is pigeonholed as a platform with crappy games.
   
3. Take a break, and observe the environment around you. John Carmack broke down all the different factors he sees influencing games. It'd be a good idea to stop, and just do research for yourself on what changes and trends you think will affect gaming. This can be a good way to take stock of where you think opportunity will occur.
   
4. What drives you? Each of us has our own answer to that question, and in this talk, it became clear what drove him - pushing boundaries. His talk stood in stark contrast to other gaming gods, many of whom seem preoccupied with what's cool. Because what's cool can change, it sometimes leads to them just drifting away from the industry. For me, it's always been about opportunities. Will this next step lead to personal growth? Will this next step lead to career growth? Will this next step keep me at the forefront of changes in the industry? At times, I mistake opportunity for money. While money is a good way to quantify opportunity, it is not the same thing and typically, whenever I've made decisions for money, I wind up unhappy, even if the decision increases cash flow. Dead ends lead to depression.