NEWS: "WRITERS, ARTISTS, POETS, ARCHITECTS SHOULD BE MAKING GAMES": ON THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF GAME DESIGN

Quartz’ contributor Nicolas Rivero hails the beginning of a new era for artsy, weird, and experimental indie video games.

In an email discussion with Ken Wong, founder of the indie game developer Mountains, Rivero writes that off-the shelf engines like Unity have democratized game-making and lowered the barrier of entry for a more diverse range of developers. According to Wong:

The less time you have to spend building things that already exist, the more you can spend expressing yourself or trying things that might not necessarily work. Writers, artists, poets, architects should be making games. Kids, older people, and people who don’t speak English should all be able to make games.”

Rivero cites interesting data. For instance, in 2017,

7,696 games were released on Steam almost doubling the 4207 released the year before. And nearly half of all new games—and 70% of the interactive art displayed at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier—are built using Unity.

Currently Steam holds more than 30,000 games.

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