Re: the sourcing of models, etc – all it takes is a bunch of talented 3d artists to come up with equivalent of istockphoto, ie good products, sensible prices and open submissions.

Ideas include encouraging actual industrial, furniture and interior designers and architects to contribute projects and structures, and have the capability to translate between various design packages fairly painlessly, so an architect’s Autocad file is actually compatible with integrating into game engines. And encouraging a commons ownership system where someone can put up a wireframe, someone else can texture it, they both get rights for their own work and a split of the profits on any sales of the combined models. Someone want to take it to Dragon’s Den?</blockquote?

There already are quite a few websites selling freelance 3d models, although the URLs escape me at the moment….

ah, here’s one http://www.turbosquid.com/

Ideas include encouraging actual industrial, furniture and interior designers and architects to contribute projects and structures, and have the capability to translate between various design packages fairly painlessly, so an architect’s Autocad file is actually compatible with integrating into game engines. And encouraging a commons ownership system where someone can put up a wireframe, someone else can texture it, they both get rights for their own work and a split of the profits on any sales of the combined models. Someone want to take it to Dragon’s Den?

On the other hand, I think he’s on the right track about procedural generation. To bring up a previous debate, about whether or not a game can be considered “art,” I would argue that currently games are unable to take advantage of their unique position as a medium (player choice) because of simple economics: creating a vast amount of content at a high cost that a player won’t end up seeing because of choices he’s made makes no sense as a games developer. With methods for generating content procedurally, developers can offer real choices to their players and not have to worry as much about cost, allowing games to develop into the art form they ought to be. The tools argument (as a person who knows next to nothing about it) seems to reflect a frustration with this fact–that the tools for procedurally generating things simply don’t exist.

I also think that what James O is talking about is a great idea. While it sounds tacky, it’s basically clip-art for games developers, and it could cut costs tremendously in a world where everyone expects at least String-Bean Guy.

http://www.livescience.com/health/090329-game-vision.html

Also, any chance anybody recorded Barnett’s “performance” at GDC?

So apparently as gamers we can make safer drivers. I hope they never see me playing Burnout :P

So you want programmers, to maximize the size of the rules, so cool things are doable. And you want designers to fill the world with teh itneresting.

No programmers, and you haev teh linear. No designers if you have boxrooms.