Game Development

Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Unreal Engine Could Be Next-Gen’s Big Loser

unreal-engine-4-headerWhat do BioShock Infinite, the Mass Effect trilogy, the XCOM series, the Batman: Arkham series, Dishonored and Spec Ops: The Line all have in common? If you read the title of this column, you probably guessed that these are all games made in the Unreal Engine.

Many of this generation’s most popular and most critically acclaimed games were made on Unreal Engine 3. While the next generation of console gaming doesn’t start for another four months, early plans don’t seem to involve Unreal Engine 4 which was the first next-gen engine that was previewed.

While we might give Nintendo a hard time over poor Wii U sales and criticize Microsoft’s former DRM policies, they might not be the big losers of the next generation. When the industry moves on to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Unreal 4 could be the one who’s left behind.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Building a Successful Call of Duty Clone in Three Steps

call-of-duty-mw3-midnight-launchThe most successful video game on the market right now is the Call of Duty series. Say what you will about the game’s lack of innovation and utter disregard for the single-player campaign, this is the most commercially successful game on the market. The last couple of years have seen gross sales of over $1 billion and units sold well in excess of 10 million.

As such, you could understand why everybody is looking to CoD for cues for their upcoming efforts. Just look at the new all-brown colour palette and gritty art style of Dead Rising 3 and EA turning Battlefield into an annual franchise. The thing is that Call of Duty’s success isn’t about how it looks or how often it comes out. It may come as a shock but there’s a simple but largely undiscovered formula that makes CoD a massive success.

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