您安装了每个人都在谈论的新跑酷游戏，您的化身立即获得了一套新技能。在教程关卡几分钟后，爬上墙壁并越过障碍物，您就可以迎接更大的挑战了。您将自己传送到您最喜欢的游戏之一，侠盗猎车手：元界，跟随另一位玩家设置的课程，您很快就会穿过汽车引擎盖，从屋顶跳到屋顶。等一下……那个邮箱下面发出的光是什么？超进化的喷火龙！你从你的库存中取出一个精灵球，抓住它，然后继续你的路……
这种游戏场景不可能在今天发生，但在我看来，它会在我们的未来发生。我相信可组合性（回收、重用和重新组合基本构建块）和互操作性（让一个游戏的组件在另一个游戏中工作）的概念正在出现在游戏中，它们将彻底改变游戏的构建和播放方式。
游戏开发者的构建速度会更快，因为他们不必每次都从头开始。能够尝试新事物并承担新风险，他们会更有创意地建造。而且还会有更多，因为进入的门槛会更低。游戏的本质将扩展到包括这些新的“元体验”，就像前面提到的例子一样，它们会在其他游戏中和其他游戏中发挥作用。
当然，任何关于“元体验”的讨论也会引发围绕另一个备受关注的想法的讨论：元宇宙。确实，许多人将元宇宙视为精心制作的游戏，但它的潜力要高得多。最终，元宇宙代表了我们人类在未来如何在线互动和交流的全部内容。在我看来，基于游戏技术并遵循游戏制作流程的游戏创作者将是释放元宇宙潜力的关键。
为什么是游戏创作者？没有其他行业拥有如此丰富的构建大规模在线世界的经验，在这个世界中，数十万（有时是数千万！）的在线参与者经常同时进行互动。现代游戏已经不仅仅是“玩”——它们与“交易”、“工艺”、“流媒体”或“购买”同样重要。元节在该列表中添加了更多动词——想想“工作”或“爱”。正如微服务和云计算开启了科技行业的创新浪潮一样，我相信下一代游戏技术将迎来新一代游戏的创新和创造力。
这已经以有限的方式发生。现在许多游戏都支持用户生成内容 (UGC)，这允许玩家为现有游戏构建自己的扩展。一些游戏，如Roblox和Fortnite ，可扩展性非常强，以至于它们已经称自己为元节。但是当前这一代的游戏技术，仍然主要是为单人游戏构建的，只能让我们走这么远。
这场革命将需要整个技术堆栈的创新，从生产管道和创意工具，到游戏引擎和多人网络，再到分析和实时服务。
这篇文章概述了我对游戏变革阶段的愿景，然后分解了启动这个新时代所需的新创新领域。
即将到来的游戏进化
长期以来，游戏主要是单一的、固定的体验。开发人员将构建它们，发布它们，然后开始构建续集。玩家会购买它们，玩它们，然后在他们用完内容后继续前进——通常只需 10 到 20 小时的游戏时间。
我们现在处于游戏即服务时代，开发者在发布后不断更新他们的游戏。其中许多游戏还具有与虚拟世界相邻的 UGC，例如虚拟音乐会和教育内容。 Roblox 和 Minecraft 甚至还设有市场，玩家创造者可以通过他们的工作获得报酬。
然而，至关重要的是，这些游戏仍然（有目的地）彼此隔离。虽然它们各自的世界可能是巨大的，但它们是封闭的生态系统，它们之间没有任何东西可以转移——资源、技能、内容或朋友除外。
那么，我们如何摆脱围墙花园的遗产以释放元宇宙的潜力呢？随着可组合性和互操作性成为具有元宇宙意识的游戏开发者的重要概念，我们将需要重新考虑如何处理以下问题：
- 身份。在元宇宙中，玩家将需要一个可以在游戏之间和游戏平台之间随身携带的单一身份。今天的平台坚持要求玩家拥有自己的玩家档案，而玩家必须在他们玩的每款新游戏中从头开始繁琐地重建他们的档案和声誉。
- 朋友。同样，今天的游戏维护单独的朋友列表——或者充其量，使用 Facebook 作为事实上的事实来源。理想情况下，您的朋友网络也会从一个游戏到另一个游戏跟踪您，从而更容易找到朋友一起玩并分享竞争性排行榜信息。
- 财产。目前，您在一个游戏中获得的物品不能转移到另一个游戏或在另一个游戏中使用——这是有充分理由的。允许玩家将现代突击步枪引入中世纪时代的游戏可能会暂时令人满意，但会很快毁掉游戏。但是在适当的限制和限制下，跨游戏交换（一些）项目可以开辟新的创造力和紧急游戏。
- 游戏玩法。今天的游戏与游戏玩法密切相关。例如，“平台游戏”类型的全部乐趣，如超级马里奥奥德赛等游戏，正在实现对虚拟世界的掌握。但通过开放游戏并允许“重新混合”元素，玩家可以更轻松地“重新混合”新体验并探索他们自己的“假设”叙述。
我看到这些变化发生在游戏开发的三个清晰层次：技术层（游戏引擎）、创意层（内容制作）和体验层（现场运营）。在每一层，都有明显的创新机会，我将在下面进行介绍。
旁注：制作游戏是一个涉及许多步骤的复杂过程。甚至比其他艺术形式更是如此，它是高度非线性的，需要频繁的循环和迭代，因为无论在纸上听起来多么有趣，在你玩之前你都不知道它是否真的很有趣。从这个意义上说，它更像是编排一种新的舞蹈，真正的工作是在演播室里与舞者反复进行的。
下面的可扩展部分为那些可能不熟悉其独特复杂性的人概述了游戏制作过程。
技术层：重新构想游戏引擎
大多数现代游戏开发的核心是游戏引擎，它为玩家的体验提供动力，并使团队更容易构建新游戏。 Unity 或 Unreal 等流行引擎提供了可在游戏中重复使用的通用功能，从而让游戏创作者腾出时间来构建其游戏独有的作品。这不仅节省了时间和金钱，而且还创造了公平的竞争环境，允许较小的团队与较大的团队竞争。
也就是说，游戏引擎相对于游戏其他部分的基本作用在过去 20 年中并没有真正改变。虽然引擎已经增加了它们提供的服务数量——从仅仅图形渲染和音频播放扩展到多人和社交服务以及发布后分析和游戏内广告——但这些引擎仍然主要作为代码库提供，完全由每场比赛。
然而，在考虑元节时，引擎扮演着更重要的角色。为了打破将一款游戏或体验与另一款游戏或体验隔开的墙，游戏可能会被封装并托管在引擎中，而不是相反。在这个扩展的视图中，引擎变成了平台，这些引擎之间的通信将在很大程度上定义我所认为的共享元节。
以 Roblox 为例。 Roblox 平台提供与 Unity 或 Unreal 相同的关键服务，包括图形渲染、音频播放、物理和多人游戏。但是，它还提供其他独特的服务，例如可以在其游戏目录中共享的玩家头像和身份；扩展社交服务，包括共享好友列表；强大的安全功能，有助于保持社区安全；以及帮助玩家创建新游戏的工具和资产库。
然而，Roblox 作为一个元宇宙仍然不够，因为它是一个有围墙的花园。虽然 Roblox 平台上的游戏之间存在一些有限的共享，但 Roblox 与其他游戏引擎或游戏平台之间没有共享或互操作性。
为了完全解锁元宇宙，游戏引擎开发人员必须在 1) 互操作性和可组合性、2) 改进的多人游戏服务和 3) 自动化测试服务方面进行创新。
互操作性和可组合性
例如，为了解锁元宇宙并允许在侠盗猎车手宇宙中狩猎口袋妖怪，这些虚拟世界将需要前所未有的合作和互操作性。虽然有可能由一家公司来控制为全球元宇宙提供动力的通用平台，但这既不可取，也不太可能。相反，去中心化的游戏引擎平台更有可能出现。
当然，我不能在不提及 web3 的情况下谈论去中心化技术。 Web3 指的是一组基于区块链并使用智能合约的技术，通过将关键网络和服务的控制权转移给用户/开发人员来分散所有权。特别是， web3 中的可组合性和互操作性等概念有助于解决在迈向元界时面临的一些核心问题，特别是身份和财产，并且大量的研究和 开发正在进入核心 web3 基础设施。
尽管如此，虽然我相信 web3 将成为重新构想游戏引擎的关键组件，但它并不是灵丹妙药。
web3 技术在虚拟世界中最明显的应用可能是允许用户购买和拥有虚拟世界中的物品，例如虚拟房地产地块或数字化身的衣服。由于写入区块链的交易属于公共记录问题，因此购买物品作为不可替代代币 (NFT) 理论上可以拥有物品并在多个元界平台以及其他几个应用程序中使用它。
但是，在解决以下问题之前，我认为这不会在实践中发生：
- 单用户身份，其中玩家可以在具有单一一致身份的虚拟世界或游戏之间移动。这对于从匹配到内容所有权到阻止巨魔的一切都是必要的。试图解决此问题的一项服务是Hello 。他们是一个多方利益相关者合作组织，旨在通过以用户为中心的身份愿景来转变个人身份，主要基于 web3 集中式身份。还有其他人使用 web3 去中心化身份模型，例如Spruce ，它使用户能够通过钱包密钥控制他们的数字身份。同时， Sismo是一种模块化协议，它使用零知识证明来实现去中心化身份管理等。
- 通用内容格式，因此可以在引擎之间共享内容。今天，每个引擎都有自己的专有格式，这是性能所必需的。然而，为了在引擎之间交换内容，需要标准的开放格式。一种这样的标准格式是皮克斯的电影通用场景描述。另一个是NVIDIA 的 Omniverse 。但是，所有内容类型都需要标准。
- 基于云的内容存储，使一个游戏所需的内容可以被其他人定位和访问。今天，游戏所需的内容通常要么作为发行包的一部分与游戏一起打包，要么通过网络提供下载（并通过内容交付网络或 CDN 加速）。对于要在世界之间共享的内容，需要一种标准的方式来查找和检索此内容。
- 共享支付机制，因此元界所有者拥有允许资产在元界之间转移的经济激励。数字资产销售是平台所有者获得补偿的主要方式之一，尤其是在“免费游戏”商业模式下。因此，为了激励平台所有者放松控制，资产所有者可以为在平台中使用其资产的特权支付“开瓶费”。或者，如果所讨论的资产很有名，那么元界也可能愿意向资产所有者支付费用，以将他们的资产带入他们的世界。
- 标准化功能，因此元节可以知道给定项目的使用方式。如果我想把我的花哨的剑带入你的游戏，并用它来杀死怪物，你的游戏需要知道这是一把剑——而不仅仅是一根漂亮的棍子。解决此问题的一种方法是尝试创建标准对象接口的分类，每个元节都可以选择支持或不支持。类别可能包括武器、车辆、服装或家具。
- 协商的外观和感觉，因此内容资产可以改变他们的外观以匹配他们正在进入的世界。例如，如果我有一辆高科技跑车，我想开车进入你非常严格的蒸汽朋克主题世界，我的车可能必须变成蒸汽动力越野车才能被允许进入。这可能是我的资产知道该怎么做，或者我正在进入的元宇宙世界有责任提供替代的外观和感觉。
改进的多人游戏系统
一大焦点领域是多人游戏和社交功能的重要性。当今越来越多的游戏是多人游戏，因为具有社交功能的游戏大大优于单人游戏。因为从定义上讲，元宇宙将完全是社交的，所以它将受到在线体验特有的各种问题的影响。社交游戏必须担心骚扰和毒性；他们也更容易受到失去玩家的 DDoS 攻击，并且通常必须在世界各地的数据中心运行服务器，以最大限度地减少玩家延迟并提供最佳玩家体验。
考虑到多人游戏功能对现代游戏的重要性，仍然缺乏完全具有竞争力的现成解决方案。 Unreal 或 Roblox 等引擎以及 Photon 或 PlayFab 等解决方案提供了这些基础知识，但开发人员必须自行填补高级配对等漏洞。
多人游戏系统的创新可能包括：
- 无服务器多人游戏，开发人员可以实现权威的游戏逻辑，并在云中自动托管和扩展，而不必担心启动实际的游戏服务器。
- 高级匹配，帮助玩家快速找到其他相似级别的玩家进行对抗，包括帮助确定玩家技能和排名的人工智能工具。在元宇宙中，这变得更加重要，因为“配对”变得如此广泛（例如，“给我找另一个人一起练习西班牙语”，而不仅仅是“给我找一群玩家来突袭地牢。”）
- 反毒和反骚扰工具，帮助识别和淘汰有毒玩家。任何托管元宇宙的公司都需要主动担心这一点，因为在线公民不会将时间花在不安全的空间中——特别是如果他们可以在所有身份和财产完好无损的情况下跳到另一个世界。
- 公会或氏族，帮助玩家与其他玩家联合起来，或者与其他群体竞争，或者只是为了获得更多的社交共享体验。虚拟世界同样充满机会，让玩家与其他玩家联合起来追求共同目标，为创建或管理公会等服务创造机会，以及与 Discord 等外部社区工具同步。
自动化测试服务
在发布任何在线体验时，测试是一个代价高昂的瓶颈，因为一小群游戏测试人员必须反复进行体验，以确保一切都按预期工作，没有故障或漏洞。
跳过这一步的游戏这样做是有风险的。考虑一下最近推出的备受期待的游戏赛博朋克 2077 ，由于它推出的大量错误而受到玩家的强烈谴责。然而，因为元宇宙本质上是一个没有固定路线的“开放世界”游戏，所以测试可能会非常昂贵。缓解瓶颈的一种方法是开发自动化测试工具，例如可以像玩家一样玩游戏的 AI 代理，寻找故障、崩溃或错误。这项技术的一个附带好处将是可信的 AI 玩家，可以换成意外退出多人比赛的真实玩家，或者提供早期的多人“比赛流动性”，以减少玩家必须等待开始比赛的时间。
自动化测试服务的创新可能包括：
- 通过观察与世界互动的真实玩家，自动训练新代理。这样做的一个好处是，随着虚拟世界运行的时间越长，代理将继续变得更聪明、更可信。
- 自动识别故障或错误，以及直接跳转到错误点的深层链接，以便人工测试人员可以重现问题并努力解决问题。
- 将 AI 代理换成真实玩家，这样如果一个玩家突然退出多人游戏体验，其他玩家的体验就不会结束。这个功能也引出了一些有趣的问题，比如玩家是否可以随时“标记”到 AI 对手，或者甚至“训练”他们自己的替代者来代表他们竞争。 “人工智能辅助”会成为赛事的新品类吗？
创意层：重新想象内容制作
随着 3D 渲染技术变得越来越强大，创建游戏所需的数字内容数量不断增加。考虑最新的Forza Horizon 5赛车游戏——这是有史以来最大的Forza下载，需要超过 100Gb 的磁盘空间，而 Horizon 4需要 60Gb 。而这只是冰山一角。最初的“源艺术文件”，即由艺术家创建并用于创建最终游戏的文件，可能还要大很多倍。资产增长是因为这些虚拟世界的规模和质量都在不断增长，具有更高的细节水平和更高的保真度。
现在考虑元节。随着越来越多的体验从物理世界转移到数字世界，对高质量数字内容的需求将继续增加。
这已经在电影和电视界发生了。最近的 Disney+ 节目The Mandalorian通过在 Unreal 游戏引擎中运行的“虚拟场景”上进行拍摄开辟了新天地。这是革命性的，因为它减少了生产时间和成本，同时增加了成品的范围和质量。在未来，我希望越来越多的作品以这种方式拍摄。
此外，与由于保存完好无损的高存储成本而通常在拍摄后销毁的物理胶片设置不同，数字设置可以轻松存储以供将来重复使用。事实上，因此投资更多而不是更少的钱并建立一个完全实现的世界是有意义的，以后可以重新使用它来产生完全互动的体验。希望在未来，我们将看到这些世界可供其他创作者使用，以在这些虚构的现实中创造新的内容，进一步推动元宇宙的发展。
现在考虑如何创建此内容。它越来越多地由分布在世界各地的艺术家创作。 Covid 的持久影响之一是对远程开发的永久推动，团队分布在世界各地，通常在家工作。远程开发的好处是显而易见的——能够在任何地方雇佣人才——但成本很高，包括创造性协作、同步构建现代游戏所需的大量资产以及维护知识产权安全方面的挑战。
鉴于这些挑战，我认为数字内容制作将出现三大创新领域：1) 人工智能辅助内容创建工具，2) 基于云的资产管理、构建和发布系统，以及 3) 协作内容生成。
人工智能辅助内容创作
今天，几乎所有的数字内容仍然是手工构建的，这增加了发布现代游戏所需的时间和成本。一些游戏已经尝试了“程序内容生成”，其中算法可以帮助生成新的地牢或世界，但构建这些算法本身可能非常困难。
然而，新一波人工智能辅助工具即将到来，它将能够帮助艺术家和非艺术家等更快、更高质量地创作内容，降低内容制作成本，并使游戏任务民主化生产。
这对于元宇宙尤其重要，因为几乎每个人都将被要求成为创造者——但并不是每个人都能创造出世界级的艺术。至于艺术，我指的是整个数字资产类别，包括虚拟世界、互动角色、音乐和音效等等。
人工智能辅助内容创建中的创新将包括可以将照片、视频和其他现实世界的人工制品转换为数字资产的转换工具，例如 3D 模型、纹理和动画。示例包括Kinetix ，它可以从视频创建动画； Luma Labs ，从照片创建 3D 模型；和COLMAP ，它可以从静态照片创建可导航的 3D 空间。
创意助理也会有创新，从艺术家那里获得指导，并迭代地创造新的资产。例如， Hypothetic可以从手绘草图生成 3D 模型。 Inworld.ai和Charisma.ai都使用 AI 来创建玩家可以与之互动的可信角色。 DALL -E可以从自然语言输入中生成图像。
在游戏创作中使用 AI 辅助内容创作的一个重要方面是可重复性。由于创作者必须经常返回并进行更改，因此仅存储 AI 工具的输出是不够的。游戏创建者必须存储创建该资产的整个指令集，以便艺术家可以稍后返回并进行更改，或者复制资产并修改它以用于新目的。
基于云的资产管理、构建和发布系统
游戏工作室在构建现代视频游戏时必须面临的最大挑战之一是管理创建引人入胜的体验所需的所有内容。今天，这是一个相对未解决的问题，没有标准化的解决方案；每个工作室都必须拼凑出自己的解决方案。
To give a sense for why this is such a hard problem, consider the sheer amount of data involved. A large game can require literally millions of files of all different types, including textures, models, characters, animations, levels, visual effects, sound effects, recorded dialogue, and music.
Each of these files will change repeatedly during production, and it’s necessary to keep copies of each of these variations, in case the creator needs to backtrack to an earlier version. Today, artists often cope with this need by simply renaming files (eg, “forest-ogre-2.2.1”), which results in a proliferation of files. And because of the nature of these files, this takes up a lot of storage space since they’re typically large and hard to compress, and each revision must be stored separately. This is unlike source code, where it’s possible to store just the changes for every revision themselves, which is very efficient. This is because with many content files, like artwork, changing even a small part of the image can change virtually the entire file.
Furthermore, these files do not exist in isolation. They are part of an overall process typically called the content pipeline, which describes how all of these individual content files come together to create the playable game. During this process, the “source art” files, which are created by artists, are converted and assembled through a series of intermediate files into the “game assets,” which are then used by the game engine.
Today’s pipelines are not very smart and are not generally aware of the dependencies that exist between assets. The pipeline typically doesn’t know, for example, the particular texture of a 3D basket that is held by a specific farmer character, who lives within that level. As a result, whenever any asset is changed, the entire pipeline must be rebuilt to ensure that all changes are swept up and incorporated. This is a time-consuming process, and can take several hours or more, slowing down the pace of creative iteration.
The needs of the metaverse will exacerbate these existing issues, and create some new ones. For example, the metaverse is going to be large—larger than the largest games today—so all the existing content storage issues apply. Additionally, the “always-on” nature of the metaverse means that new content will need to be streamed directly into the game engine; it won’t be possible to “stop” the metaverse to create a new build. The metaverse will need to be able to update itself on the fly. And to realize composability goals, remote and distributed creators will need ways to access source assets, create their own derivatives, and then share them with others.
Addressing these needs for the metaverse will create two main opportunities for innovation. First, artists need an Github-like, easy-to-use asset management system that will give them the same level of version control and collaborative tools that developers currently enjoy. Such a system would need to integrate with all of the popular creator tools, such as Photoshop, Blender, and Sound Forge. Mudstack is one example of a company looking at this space today.
Secondly, there is much to be done with content pipeline automation, which can modernize and standardize the art pipeline. This includes exporting source assets to intermediate formats and building those intermediate formats into game-ready assets. An intelligent pipeline would know the dependency graph and would be capable of incremental builds, such that when an asset is changed, only those files with downstream dependencies would be rebuilt—dramatically reducing the time it takes to see the new content in-game.
Improved collaboration tools
Despite the distributed, collaborative nature of modern game studios, many of the professional tools used in the game production process are still centralized, single-creator tools. For example, by default, both the Unity and Unreal level editors only support a single designer editing a level at a time. This slows down the creative process, since teams cannot work together in parallel on a single world.
On the other hand, both Minecraft and Roblox support collaborative editing; this is one of the reasons why these consumer platforms have become so popular, despite their lack of other professional features. Once you’ve watched a group of kids building a city together in Minecraft, it’s impossible to imagine wanting to do it any other way. I believe collaboration will be an essential feature of the metaverse, allowing creators to come together online to build and test their work.
Overall, collaboration on game development will become real-time across almost all aspects of the game creation process. Some of the ways in which collaboration may evolve in order be unlocked in the metaverse include:
- Real-time collaborative world building , so multiple level designers or “world builders,” can edit the same physical environment at the same time and see each other’s changes in real time, with full versioning and change tracking. Ideally a level designer should be able to seamlessly toggle between playing and editing for the most rapid iteration. Some studios are experimenting with this using proprietary tools, such as Ubisoft’s AnvilNext game engine , and Unreal has experimented with real-time collaboration as a beta-feature that was originally built to support TV and film production .
- Real-time content review and approval , so teams can experience and discuss their work together. Group discussion has always been a critical part of the creative process. Movies have long had “dailies” during which production teams can review each day’s work together. Most game studios have a large room with a big screen for group discussion. But the tools for remote development are far weaker. Screen-sharing in tools like Zoom just aren’t high fidelity enough for an accurate review of digital worlds. One solution for games may be a form of “spectator mode” in which a whole team can login and see through the eyes of a single player. Another is to improve the quality of screen-sharing, trading off less compression for higher fidelity, including faster frame rates, stereo sound, more accurate color matching, and the ability to pause and annotate. Such tools should also be integrated with task tracking and assignment. Companies trying to solve this for film include frame.io and sohonet .
- Real-time world tuning , so designers can adjust any of the thousands of parameters that define a modern game or virtual world and experience the results immediately. This process of tuning is critical to creating a fun, well-balanced experience, but typically these numbers are hidden away in spreadsheets or configuration files that are hard to edit and impossible to adjust in real time. Some game studios have tried using Google Sheets for this purpose , whereby changes made to configuration values can be immediately pushed out to a game server to update how the game behaves, but the metaverse is going to require something more robust. A side benefit of this feature is that these same parameters can also be modified for the purpose of a live event, or a new content update, making it easier for non-programmers to create new content. For example, a designer could create a special event dungeon and stock it with monsters that are twice as hard to defeat as usual, but who drop unusually good rewards.
- A virtual game studio that lives entirely in the cloud, whereby members of the game creator team (artists, programmers, designers, etc.) can login from anywhere, on any sort of device (including a low-end PC or tablet), and have instant access to a high-end game development platform along with the full library of game assets. Remote desktop tools like Parsec may play a role in making this possible, but this goes beyond just remote desktop capabilities to include how creative tools are licensed and how assets are managed.
The Experience Layer: Re-imagining Operating Live Services
The final layer of retooling for the metaverse involves creating the necessary tools and services to actually operate a metaverse itself, which is arguably the hardest part. It’s one thing to build an immersive world, and it’s quite another thing to run it 24/7, with millions of players across the globe.
Developers must contend with:
- The social challenges of operating any large-scale municipality, which may be filled with citizens who won’t always get along and who will need disputes adjudicated.
- The economic challenges of effectively running a central bank, with its ability to mint new currencies and monitor currency sources and sinks in order to keep inflation and deflation in check.
- The monetization challenges of running a modern ecommerce website, with thousands or even millions of items for sale, and the adjacent need for offers, promotions, and in-world marketing tools.
- The analytic challenges of understanding what’s happening across their sprawling world, in real time, so they can be alerted to problems quickly before they escalate out of hand.
- The communication challenges of engaging with their digital constituents, either singly or en masse, and in any language, since a metaverse is (in principle) global.
- The content challenges of making frequent updates, to keep their metaverse constantly growing and evolving.
To deal with all of these challenges, companies need well-equipped teams that have access to an extensive level of backend infrastructure and the necessary dashboards and tools to allow them to operate these services at scale. Two areas in particular that are ripe for innovation are LiveOps services and in-game commerce.
LiveOps as a field is still in its infancy. Commercial tools such as PlayFab , Dive , Beamable , and Lootlocker implement only portions of a full LiveOps solution. As a result, most games still feel forced to implement their own LiveOps stack. An ideal solution would include: a live events calendar , with the ability to schedule events, forecast events, and create event templates or clone previous events; personalization , including player segmentation, targeted promotions, and offers; messaging , including push notifications, email, and an in-game inbox, and translation tools to communicate with users in their own language; notification authoring tools , so non-programmers can author in-game pop-ups and notifications; and testing to simulate upcoming events or new content updates, including a mechanism to roll back changes if there are problems.
More developed but still in need of innovation is in-game commerce. Considering that nearly 80% of digital game revenue comes from selling items or other microtransactions in games that are otherwise free-to-play, it’s remarkable that there aren’t better off-the-shelf solutions for managing an in-game economy—a Shopify for the metaverse .
The solutions that exist today each solve just part of the problem. An ideal solution needs to include item catalogs , including arbitrary metadata per item; app store interfaces for real-money sales; offers and promotions , including limited time offers and targeted offers; reporting and analytics , with targeted reports and graphs; user-generated content , such that games can sell content created by their own players, and pay a certain percentage of that revenue back to those players; advanced economy systems , such as item crafting (combining two items to create a third), auction houses (so players can sell items to each other), trading, and gifting; and full integration with the world of web3 and the blockchain .
What’s Next: Transforming Game Development Teams
In this article, I have shared a vision for how games will transform as new technologies open up composability and interoperability between games. It is my hope that others within the game community share my excitement for the potential that is yet to come, and that they are inspired to join me in building the new companies needed to unleash this revolution.
This coming wave of change will do more than provide opportunities for new software tools and protocols. It will change the very nature of game studios, as the industry moves away from monolithic single studios and towards increased specialization across new horizontal layers.
In fact, I think that in the future, we will see greater specialization in the game-production process. I also think we will see the emergence of:
- World builders who specialize in creating playable worlds, both believable and fantastic, that are populated with creatures and characters appropriate for that world. Consider the incredibly detailed version of the Wild West as built for Red Dead Redemption . Instead of investing so much in that world for a single game, why not re-use that world to host many games? And why not continue investing in that world so it grows and evolves, shaping itself over time to the needs of those games?
- Narrative designers who craft compelling interactive narratives set within these worlds, filled with story arcs, puzzles, and quests for players to discover and enjoy.
- Experience creators who build world-spanning playable experiences that are focused on gameplay, reward mechanisms, and control schemes. Creators who can bridge between the real world and the virtual world will be especially valuable in the coming years as more and more companies try to bring portions of their existing operations into the metaverse.
- Platform builders who provide the underlying technology used by the specialists listed above to do their work.
***
The team at a16z Games and I are excited to be investing in this future, and I can’t wait to see the incredible levels of creativity and innovation that will be unleashed by these changes transforming our industry. Games are already the single largest sector of the entertainment industry, and yet are poised to grow even larger as more and more sectors of the economy move online and into the metaverse.
And we haven’t even touched on some of the other exciting new advances that are coming, such as Apple’s new augmented reality headset or Meta’s recently announced new VR prototypes or the introduction of 3D technology into the web browser with WebGPU ,
There has truly never been a better time to be a creator.
The post Unlocking the Metaverse: New Opportunities in Games Infrastructure appeared first on Future .
原文： https://future.com/metaverse-infrastructure-technology-games/