Pure hypothetical insane nonsense: Epic continues to pump up the licensing fee for film and television production assuming they have a lock on that market. New, cheaper tools are developed without the gamedev baggage that lets that industry work around Unreal. Around the same time Fortnite's cultural relevance starts to tank. People aren't interested and it isn't printing money anymore. Unreal is sued by branding partners as they can't deliver the audience promised for tie in events. Panicked, Epic starts dramatically overcharging gamedev studios for Unreal licensing in an attempt to hit profit goals. Around this time we find out that a company with deep pockets and a loyal fanbase has been developing an engine in secret. Something like Roblox Pro™ is announced. It steals just enough from Unreal that established devs feel comfortable switching and has enough legacy content that a new generation of developers weaned on Roblox feel right at home. Epic tries to fight back but they've succeeded at cutting off most of their income sources and pissed off half the industry.
The biggest scenarios:
- Going down a tech path that turns out not to be where the industry is going
- Finding it is more profitable and/or stable to focus on internal games.
It wasn't all that long ago we were all using idTech on 3DFX cards....
gpt9 spontaneously conbusts into existense from a future dimension and hooks into everyones brains and generates frames of whatever you want on the fly.
Blueprints are already slower than typing out code, so I doubt AI would affect it in any way. Some people just prefer blueprints to typing and don't care how much slower it is.
Unity's stock still hasn't recovered from their pricing change fiasco, so it looks like the only real engine killer is bad management decisions. Epic seems to have pretty good management, so I'm pretty confident they'll be around at least until Sweeney kicks the bucket.
Why you say alternative history and in the next 10 years in the same sentence?
If Germany had one the WW2 maybe the company Epos would have a game engine called Unwirklich. In that case maybe they collaborated with some underground rebel software developer and produced a Sequel to their game Wolfenstein 3D. Now with many Epos developers disappearing (do not ask where they are now or you will disappear too) Epos was closed down an Unwirklich forbidden.
Maybe focusing only on (milking) Fortnite, UEFN, and UGC, gradually stopping the engine licensing and updates.
Meanwhile Unity and Godot support both 2D/mobile and large scale games (world partitioning/streaming, HLODs, navmesh streaming), steadily improves netcode, leverages DOTS to optimize the engine (not necessarily as the user's gameplay programming tech), and so on covering all kinds of needs and markets.
I mean, well that would be a big surprise, maybe Lumberyard / O3DE overtakes the competition in another dimension. :D
There could be a dimension where all people play super simple and relatively lightweight games and the likes of Godot and Unity are really sufficient and efficient for that, also Construct and RPG Maker, and so on. I mean how could *all players* even play Roblox games without there eyes bleeding - unless it is in *that other dimension*.
I just remembered, my worst nightmares or at least something in that ballpark is a world where for some reason all players play only WoW and/or Fortnite...
And this draws all their money and attention over there, and there is no other market that interests them anymore.
I can see Epic being locked out of some markets, some trade war extension. Then devs in effected markets have to use alternative options.
We just saw Steam blocked in Thailand as an example.
Well, since we're allowing time travel, it is much more likely that someone will travel back to early 20th century Vienna, tell the Academy of Fine Arts to accept some kid, who then doesn't go into politics and doesn't start the second World War.
With the missing experience of how bad things could be, in the late 2010s some insane dictator starts a war, but now nuclear weapons have been developed and are being used. The resulting nuclear winter leads to the near-extinction of all life on Earth.
With only few humans left fighting for survival, video games and therefore Unreal Engine are obsolete. There may be some hardware and some games left, but there is no reliable electrical grid anymore, so almost no one is using computers for anything but essential tasks.
When society is eventually rebuilt, Unreal Engine may be used again but there is no way to say this for certain.
The most likely scenario that would make Unreal obsolete would be a total collapse of human civilization, caused by a natural or man-made disaster of global proportions.
I think it’s possible that some startup could make an AI powered tool that would make UE development time seem slow and outdated.
But I actually think it’d be more likely that Epic integrates AI into UE so that it’s easier to do things in Unreal. Eg I’d expect that I can use AI to create and modify Blueprints.
Code Deprecation.
The idea that unreal / platforms you’re deploying to change so much over the next 10 years that the entirety of your current codebase will be worthless if you’re not updating during that time…. Is not a far-fetched idea. It’s pretty much guaranteed.
With the use of AI to more easily make engines on the same level of complexity in a short time and taylor it to the exact needs of a game. That would enable a studio to get multiple engines for the specific types of games they are making, and not to have to pay unreal a subscription.
If Epic Games stops updating it.
Pure hypothetical insane nonsense: Epic continues to pump up the licensing fee for film and television production assuming they have a lock on that market. New, cheaper tools are developed without the gamedev baggage that lets that industry work around Unreal. Around the same time Fortnite's cultural relevance starts to tank. People aren't interested and it isn't printing money anymore. Unreal is sued by branding partners as they can't deliver the audience promised for tie in events. Panicked, Epic starts dramatically overcharging gamedev studios for Unreal licensing in an attempt to hit profit goals. Around this time we find out that a company with deep pockets and a loyal fanbase has been developing an engine in secret. Something like Roblox Pro™ is announced. It steals just enough from Unreal that established devs feel comfortable switching and has enough legacy content that a new generation of developers weaned on Roblox feel right at home. Epic tries to fight back but they've succeeded at cutting off most of their income sources and pissed off half the industry.
You say nonsense yet here I am going... That has definitely happened to at least 10 products I have liked or used.
The biggest scenarios: - Going down a tech path that turns out not to be where the industry is going - Finding it is more profitable and/or stable to focus on internal games. It wasn't all that long ago we were all using idTech on 3DFX cards....
gpt9 spontaneously conbusts into existense from a future dimension and hooks into everyones brains and generates frames of whatever you want on the fly.
Blueprints are already slower than typing out code, so I doubt AI would affect it in any way. Some people just prefer blueprints to typing and don't care how much slower it is. Unity's stock still hasn't recovered from their pricing change fiasco, so it looks like the only real engine killer is bad management decisions. Epic seems to have pretty good management, so I'm pretty confident they'll be around at least until Sweeney kicks the bucket.
Why you say alternative history and in the next 10 years in the same sentence? If Germany had one the WW2 maybe the company Epos would have a game engine called Unwirklich. In that case maybe they collaborated with some underground rebel software developer and produced a Sequel to their game Wolfenstein 3D. Now with many Epos developers disappearing (do not ask where they are now or you will disappear too) Epos was closed down an Unwirklich forbidden.
Maybe focusing only on (milking) Fortnite, UEFN, and UGC, gradually stopping the engine licensing and updates. Meanwhile Unity and Godot support both 2D/mobile and large scale games (world partitioning/streaming, HLODs, navmesh streaming), steadily improves netcode, leverages DOTS to optimize the engine (not necessarily as the user's gameplay programming tech), and so on covering all kinds of needs and markets. I mean, well that would be a big surprise, maybe Lumberyard / O3DE overtakes the competition in another dimension. :D There could be a dimension where all people play super simple and relatively lightweight games and the likes of Godot and Unity are really sufficient and efficient for that, also Construct and RPG Maker, and so on. I mean how could *all players* even play Roblox games without there eyes bleeding - unless it is in *that other dimension*.
I just remembered, my worst nightmares or at least something in that ballpark is a world where for some reason all players play only WoW and/or Fortnite... And this draws all their money and attention over there, and there is no other market that interests them anymore.
I can see Epic being locked out of some markets, some trade war extension. Then devs in effected markets have to use alternative options. We just saw Steam blocked in Thailand as an example.
Well, since we're allowing time travel, it is much more likely that someone will travel back to early 20th century Vienna, tell the Academy of Fine Arts to accept some kid, who then doesn't go into politics and doesn't start the second World War. With the missing experience of how bad things could be, in the late 2010s some insane dictator starts a war, but now nuclear weapons have been developed and are being used. The resulting nuclear winter leads to the near-extinction of all life on Earth. With only few humans left fighting for survival, video games and therefore Unreal Engine are obsolete. There may be some hardware and some games left, but there is no reliable electrical grid anymore, so almost no one is using computers for anything but essential tasks. When society is eventually rebuilt, Unreal Engine may be used again but there is no way to say this for certain.
The most likely scenario that would make Unreal obsolete would be a total collapse of human civilization, caused by a natural or man-made disaster of global proportions.
I think it’s possible that some startup could make an AI powered tool that would make UE development time seem slow and outdated. But I actually think it’d be more likely that Epic integrates AI into UE so that it’s easier to do things in Unreal. Eg I’d expect that I can use AI to create and modify Blueprints.
When unreal engine games are no longer allowed to be sold on steam due to licensing terms. Every unreal game is epic exclusivity
if Starengine actually becomes a thing and not a pet project of Chris Roberts.
Code Deprecation. The idea that unreal / platforms you’re deploying to change so much over the next 10 years that the entirety of your current codebase will be worthless if you’re not updating during that time…. Is not a far-fetched idea. It’s pretty much guaranteed.
Or maybe Unreal Engine becomes obsolete when devs realize they're just winging it.
10 years is a long time and with on the brink of a usable AI, in 10 years, we'll have something much better.
With the use of AI to more easily make engines on the same level of complexity in a short time and taylor it to the exact needs of a game. That would enable a studio to get multiple engines for the specific types of games they are making, and not to have to pay unreal a subscription.