Unreal Engine 6 has game developers nervous, and AI-phobia isn’t helping

Epic Games’ Unreal Engine is a bedrock part of modern game design for indies and smaller game companies. Unreal Engine 6 is coming, and with it a lot of unknowns. That’s worrying the developers and may be a very big change in too many ways for some.

The big issue is future direction. Epic Games is moving to the integration of Unreal Engine and Unreal Editor for Fortnite, as well as an undefined move towards the Verse programming language. Verse also just happens to be the scripting language for Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

That’s not the only issue triggering a lot of raw nerves. Introducing a new scripting method is one thing. Redefining established Unreal Engine core operations is another.

Unreal Engine features a particularly important built-in tool called Blueprint. The by now almost traditional Blueprint tool allows developers to create systems without coding. Blueprint’s future is now in question with no solid answers and a rather vague reference to continued support.

Epic Games issued an intro to UE6 with a lot of careful phraseology called the Road to Unreal Engine 6. It’s well worth reading.

It includes a specific point that isn’t being made or even noticeably addressed by critics. This quote says a lot:

“We’re enabling content, code, and economies to become portable and interoperable across games, ecosystems, and engines through open standards, to enable developer collaboration on much greater scales than ever before.”

The critical word is “enabling”. If the backroom of future gaming is reinventing itself by the hour and AI is lumbering over the horizon like Godzilla, what doesn’t need “enabling”? A bit of generic phraseology is a relative kindness.

Meanwhile, Epic Games’ ongoing integration of AI has been getting some very hostile responses. The use of AI in gaming art in particular is ruffling whole barnyards full of feathers despite Epic Games painstakingly and to their credit explaining how the AI is used.

The art is made by humans and processed by AI. The art is “organic”. The deeper conflict is at the coalface. It’s also a potentially irritating issue for all areas of production from top to bottom, raw product to final market distribution. Artists say they have to correct AI work right down to the colours. Yes, that does matter, because both RGB and CMYK colour schemes alone can require some serious and time-consuming nitpicking almost at literal pixel level. Other quality issues are also in this mix. You can’t blame the artists for disliking and distrusting disruption in the middle of their work.

This situation is actually typical of AI introduction into all forms of established creative media. The constant, almost anaphylactic reactions to AI in media are understandable, but so far not at all productive and often pretty myopic.

The usual problem with all creative art forms is territory and the financial value of that territory. AI is seen as infringing and taking over a lot of traditional creative territory, regardless of quality issues.

In this case, the issue is developing games, not ideologies. To make it work, the raw nerves must be addressed. The negativity is spectacularly useless, and a solution must be backed up with clear legal and financial parameters. Remove the doubt, and you remove most of the problems.

The bigger picture for gaming

Unreal Engine 6 is likely to become the reluctant testing lab for making this Irish stew of interests work in the marketplace. There are other issues that could shake up game design, too, and this is far from a done deal.

Also coming to the global gaming environment is The Sandbox Studio, a very different ballgame as a business model using native AI. This could have a major impact on the wider gaming design and business dynamics. This could be basic business for gaming from development to distribution tomorrow.

The Sandbox Studio approach includes developers at ground level and ironically, it’s not too different to UE6 in its role as a dedicated necessary prototyping tool. A sandbox is sometimes what you want to call a sandbox. Unreal Engine is one, whether it agrees or not.

It looks like UE6 is on something like the same page, or at least the same chapter in the same book. By default, UE6 will be set up to run tests, explore ideas, and let in creative workflows at all stages.

The previous Unreal Engines were actually famous for that. You could try anything on Unreal Engine, and many people did. Steam is crowded with a menagerie of very different Unreal Engine games that show its diversity.

NASA uses Unreal Engine for simulations. So do the US Army, FBI, and DHS. The bottom line here is that it’s highly unlikely that Epic Games will kill the golden goose with fiddly departures and diversions from its core business.

If you remember how games were made in the 1990s and how much the process has changed, this is just one more step forward.