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Computer-animated films like The Animatrix suggest a new hybrid industry that combines elements of games and film is about to emerge.

THE FUTURE OF GAMES? Computer-animated films like The Animatrix and its game counterpart Enter The Matrix, both set in the world of The Matrix movies, suggest a hybrid industry that combines elements of games and film is about to emerge.

Experts: Games industry faces major change

Geartest.com Staff
Updated September 29, 2003.

The computer games industry is undergoing major shifts that will drastically change the way in which games are produced and consumed, a group of industry professionals who recently met in Toronto predict.

"The days of this being a technology industry are pretty much numbered," said Vancouver-based John Buchanan, director of advanced technology at $1.7 billion US games giant Electronic Arts. "We are now witnessing the birth of a content industry where the primary reason for being on a game team is to build the content, and the engineer's role is to build tools for the artist."

The shift that has started to occur is a stark contrast to the way things used to be, said Doug Masters, a former game developer who is now vice-president of operations at Toronto computer-generated images and effects company CORE Digital Pictures.

"It used to be really, really hard to do this stuff, and a small handful of people had the talent and ability. You used to have to be a good programmer and artist," Masters said. "Not too many people wanted to do it."

But that is changing due to advances in computers, said Robert Magee, customer experience specialist at Toronto three-dimensional (3D) graphics toolmaker Side Effects Software. "Most gamers have technology on their desks that is 10 times better than what the 3D artists had five years ago, or last year."

The combination of computing power and "middleware" - off-the-shelf software that game developers can use as the "engine" or core of their games - will make it increasingly possible for small, independent studios to produce games with a polished look and feel, Buchanan said. "You're not risking the two to three years of having some eggheads like myself try to build you some software and have the producer say 'that's not the look I wanted.'"

The impact of game development middleware is so great that "if five or six of us were to start a videogame company tonight, I can guarantee you within a week, we would have a running game demo," or prototype, Buchanan said.

But those advances come at a price, he said. "We now have a huge problem in our industry of engineers, who used to be the gods of gaming, now becoming subservient to the artists.

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