1Up asked the following question to 17 various Game Developers:
“if you could, at the wave of a magic wand, overcome some technological hurdle in game development, what would it be? And more important, what would it allow you to do that you can’t do today? Ultimately, this is about you making the games you want to make. You can make one wish, or you can make three.”
The ones relating to Maxis caught my eye, as we have Will Wright along with Soren Johnson:
Will Wright:
Good pathfinding. It’s surprising. You’d think that pathfinding’s a solved problem, yet even to this day, with incredibly powerful computers and software, pathfinding still ends up being the biggest pain in the ass imaginable. That’s where many, many games have the worst bugs and the biggest frustrations. Aside from that, I think general A.I., which is probably even more solvable than pathfinding.
Soren Johnson:
A self-service digital distribution network. Digital distribution is key to a bright future for PC gaming. First, it tilts the economics strongly in favor of both the developer and — once retail is challenged — the consumer. Further, with services like Steam or TotalGaming, digital rights management is a bonus, not a penalty, as players can download their games to any PC in the world with an Internet connection.
As for myself, I share my wish with Josh Mosqueira, Design Director for Company of Heroes with a nonintrusive, unhackable copy protection for PC games. He goes on saying that Piracy hurts the PC gaming industry and forces the publishers to add intrusive copy-protection schemes that seem to do more to annoy legitimate buyers than stop people from downloading cracked bit torrents.
If only there was a software that could not be hacked or cracked, no limitations on activations or installations and doesn’t involve installing unknown programs on my computer, I’d support it.
Three Wishes: Game genie grants developers their hearts’ desires.
