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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

Epic does what Facebook couldn't. The Metaverse is real

I bet Zuck never ever played an actual video game in his whole life https://compote.slate.com/images/760b74a3-7156-4dbe-90bd-b02...

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Also, game dev is hard. Engine dev is really hard.

There is a growing graveyard of games/devs suffering from bespoke engine woes instead of just using Unreal...

> There is a growing graveyard of games/devs suffering from bespoke engine woes instead of just using Unreal...

Is there? I can't think of any examples that come to mind. Most indie devs I know that roll their own engine have no regrets. I am curious who comes to mind that says otherwise publicly?

In recent memory, the biggest two that come to mind:

- Halo Infinite's slipstream engine turned into spaghetti code due to 343's terrible employee cycling, most of the directors left around the same week, and now they're rehiring a brand new team made up of devs with Unreal Engine experience because the old engine would take too long to fix.

- The terrible console performance and engine woes of CD Project Red's Cyberpunk 2077 that almost led to the company being sued into hell led to them abandoning their own engine and switching to Unreal Engine for their next game.

Also, Mass Effect Andromeda.

Bethesda Game Studios is getting there.

I don't know about indie games as much, but I know Distant Worlds 2 got bit by its exotic engine.

Rolling your own engine seems to become troublesome when you're moving into AA territory (Cyberpunk/RED, FFXIV/Luminous, etc).

I guess at the low end (indies), you can design something lean that fits one specific use-case, and at the high-end (AAA) you really can afford to build/maintain something competitive. The middle-ground might be dangerous.

That being said, there are literally dozens of abandoned game engines out there from solo "game devs" who never actually got around to making the game.

Epic never did the metaverse. Sweeney talked about doing it, but they never shipped. Unreal Engine heavily preprocesses content in Unreal Editor, then trusts that content. For a metaverse, you need to do more of that server-side. Back when Sweeney was talking that up, I was expecting metaverse-in-a-box in Unreal Engine 7. That seems less and less likely.

The metaverse is real, and it's called Second Life. Which is a niche. It is a profitable niche. A "cash machine", one of the owners has said. So it stays around. Everybody else in the metaverse space lost money. Now that zero interest rates are over, and there's no more free money, this is even more true. Heavy Disney investment in a general-purpose metaverse seems unlikely. It doesn't fit their IP-based business model.

>Epic never did the metaverse

Already exists and it's called Fortnite

A bland corporate version maybe.

Fortnite's "creative mode" is a game level loader, not a metaverse. One creator makes a mini-game and uploads it, then others can visit. It's not a shared-world metaverse. Other game level loaders include Sinespace, Breakroom,and Sansar. Decentraland is in between - each user uploads their own parcel, but it's part of a shared world, where you can see multiple parcels at once.

In a real metaverse, you have neighbors. A very large number of people can each contribute to building a big world. Such systems are very rare.

That's not in line with Disney's business model. "The media giant will work with the Fortnite studio to create new games and an entertainment universe where consumers can “play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more,” Disney said in a press release." Think of this as an expansion pack for the Marvel Overextended Universe.

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