The current trend towards big middleware developers giving their engines away for free is only going to yield great things. With the intimidating financial up-frontery removed, people with wonderful ideas, a ton of untapped talent and no money will be able to create and publish games made in the likes of Unreal 3 and Unity; no doubt we'll be posting about many such projects here over the months and years to come.
Here's an interesting curveball, though: what if someone who isn't a game developer is let loose on tools this powerful? Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong, better known as the guy behind the splendid Unreal 3 mod (and soon to become commercial and standalone) The Ball, has been leading a Unreal Development Kit course at Stockholm's fascinating FutureGames Academy. The course lasted six weeks, all-in: three of tuition, and three spent creating games. The clincher? None of the students had any game design experience. Moreover, no programmers were allowed - only designers and artists. They couldn't possibly make a game on their own, could they? They bloody well could. Several, in fact.
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