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Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says new multiplayer games are failing because players have no reason to leave their friend groups, touts Unreal Engine 6’s cross-game features as a solution (automaton-media.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Epic shared plans for “portable content, codes and economies” between UE-developed games, with Fortnite slated to be the first real proof of concept. In Fortnite’s case, portability will allow cosmetics obtained or purchased in-game to be used in other UE games and vice versa. Additionally, UE6’s cross-game social link feature will allow players to be connected to one game, but voice chat with people playing another.

The first part seems like a new concept we haven't seen in other games. Buy one skin, use it everywhere. I bet they're going to fuck it up with their greed somehow, but it's a neat concept and provides more value to people who buy skins.

The second part, and last sentence, is basically just discord, team speak, etc. I don't buy or use Epic's stuff, but if I understand it correctly, some dumbass thought it was a good idea to only allow voice channels for people playing the same game 🤣🤣🤣

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    Buy one skin, use it everywhere.

    That's how they tried to sell NFTs in games to us iirc. Buy a gun skin or obtain a specific gun in CoD and use it in another game. I dunno how that was supposed to work, but I remember that marketing spin when they were trying to make them a thing.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    It's a technical nightmare. It requires exponential levels of labor for every cosmetic and legal agreements with disparate game owners. Sure, I make an asset in my game for a skin the player bought in your game, who keeps the money?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    It requires exponential levels of labor for every cosmetic

    Unless all games use the same models and shit so the cosmetics actually are directly transferable because we're only getting "generic variant of the One Game every game is now a generic variant of for the sake of content portability". If you get too creative with your designs, you can't participate in the universal cosmetic sharing and mutual marketing thing all the cool kids do.

    I wonder whether the engine will actually lock down your range of options to prevent that problem? Or maybe just heavily discourage developers from not implementing the "One Game" stuff. I'm both put off and curious to see how it'll develop.

    legal agreements with disparate game owners

    Actually, the "stamp all your stuff from the same mould, and because we own all the things you stamp from that mould, we can freely share them between games and also hold your work hostage" approach would solve that too. If it all becomes too generic to copyright individually, whoever holds the rights to the One Game has freedom to do with his games whatever he wants.

    Sure, I make an asset in my game for a skin the player bought in your game, who keeps the money?

    The longer I think about this, the more I worry that my One Game joke is the only way to actually make this work, and also very desirable for Epic. That would make it less of a joke and more of a foreshadowing.

    Because I'm pretty sure the answer to that question is gonna be "the owner of the One Game". Whoever first published that skin will get a cut of the sales, but since they're so easily transferable across the standard objects you're expected to have used, you don't need to do much to have it transfer anyway. Besides, your skins also get shared with other games, making for free advertisement!

    Unfortunately, one game made Nazi uniforms, Epic refuses to ban them because they make good money off it and now you've either got Nazis running around your game or you need to somehow get out of the asset sharing thing.

    Okay, now I'm horrified at the prospect of how this might develop.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    It's probably my lack of understanding of UR, but how do you have the same skin in multiple games for different character or items models? Are they going to update every game when there is a new skin released or is this somehow done dynamically?

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I will start by saying that I have no idea what their plans are and I am not a game or game engine dev.

    how do you have the same skin in multiple games for different character or items models?

    I think what we'll see is the model and mesh of the skins will be loadable by the game via the engine. I'm assuming they'll have a standard that contains the hitbox and model/mesh to put on the character. Then the game dev could tweak gobally the scaling (as an example) to make all skins fit nicely into their game. Same for guns and such. But game devs who want to opt in[1] to this will have to use the engine API to make it work.

    Are they going to update every game when there is a new skin released

    I would assume that the game itself won't need to be recompiled or updated but rather the engine will download the newest skins in some common and reusable place. And then the engine swaps one model for another.

    [1] my suspicion is that the tech will be licensed to the game makers. Especially if they plan on allowing copyright characters (like Marvel characters).

    And again, please take everything I said with some salty grains or something as I am only speculating.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    All of that sounds like it makes sense. I'm wondering how do you say buy a fortnite skin for a specific shaped character, then use it in a game where the character model is wildly different. I know very little about game game dev and even less so about how character art is made and turned into a 3d model. It just seems like the skins would have to be individually created for each game. That may not be too bad at first, but the bigger the game catalog, the more maintenance.

    I'm very much not the demo for this kind of thing, but the tech behind it sounds interesting. I'm just waiting for them to say they're doing it with AI to take my distaste for Epic and multiplying it tenfold.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    There were automation demos by ue If I remember correctly showing different size and types of bodies wearing the same outfits, mightve been reallusion or something else, either way AAA devs would have access to the tools/knowledge to remodel the clothes to fit manually for their game.

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