Just a few years ago, prior to the emergence and broad proliferation of Web3 and generative AI tools, game creation was the purview of a few major companies that, for avid video game players, were essentially household names. Smaller companies or independent creators faced significant pain points, making it challenging or nearly impossible to bring their offerings to market.
Many of these obstacles still exist: The game creation process, as a whole, is incredibly time- and labor-intensive. The legacy route for game creation involves going through a lot of different software. Many people are involved—2D concept designers and 3D asset modelers, plus those involved in game engine implementation. The final step involves using SDK to wrap it into a package and then publishing the game, say, in the app store. This whole process is not only time-consuming but also incredibly expensive. And it means that your average layperson (that is, someone who is not a professional game developer affiliated with a big game company) is far less likely to create a game or an experience, resulting in the collective loss of these individuals’ creative visions and a far more limited array of options.
But the industry is now poised for transformative (and long overdue) change—in part due to the advent of generative AI and decentralized technologies, and the democratizing solutions they offer for user-generated content (UGC) and game development as a whole.