Will the citizen gamer of the future have a tool that allows the gamer to make his own game? A comprehensive system for the end user to create the game he dreams up, and then post for others to use?

Press the gadget there to expand on the good and bad, fantasy or feasibility of this idea!

You have everything from 3D engines (Big World, Unity, Unreal) to entire turnkey systems (Explorations RPG, Realm Crafter).

There are scores of options. Take your pick.

CryEngine is completely available for free.  If you wish to profit from your game you would have to license the engine.  I found CryEngine to be relatively easy to use and pretty straightforward.

There's also 10billion games being made on RPG Creator or whatever it is called.

Originally posted by ignore_me
I guess I was thinking of something that anyone could use. There are a lot of game engones and tools out there but the job is a gigantic one that involves a lot of technical knowledge as well as the hardware to house the thing.

You don't really need crazy hardware to design a game with a lot of the tools currently available. Sure it helps, but isn't mandatory. Something like Unity will run on almost anything.

But you will likely never be able to sidestep the learning curves involved. I wish things were super easy too!

Originally posted by ignore_me
I guess I was thinking of something that anyone could use. There are a lot of game engones and tools out there but the job is a gigantic one that involves a lot of technical knowledge as well as the hardware to house the thing.

Anyone can use Realm Crafter, RPG Maker, Platinum Sandbox, Exploration RPG, StoryBricks.

The limitation isn't the 3D engine or the modern day Klik-n-Play, it's the user's ability and talent that is.

There are some tools out there that require very little to no experience on programming or modelling

But most likely than not you will only be able to produce mediocrity or use assets that OTHER people do, making your game to become not so ''yours''

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by ignore_me
I guess I was thinking of something that anyone could use. There are a lot of game engones and tools out there but the job is a gigantic one that involves a lot of technical knowledge as well as the hardware to house the thing.

Anyone can use Realm Crafter, RPG Maker, Platinum Sandbox, Exploration RPG, StoryBricks.

The limitation isn't the 3D engine or the modern day Kilk-n-Play, it's the user's ability and talent that is.

I may actually agree with you here.

When I imagine a world where making your most favorite, bestest, mostest, ostest (yes, those are made up words) game is easy as click click, I begin to wonder, who is left to play them when everyone has their own?

The person that banks in on that is the one that then makes the master multiverse that connects them all into a lobby setting for joining. Sort of the Facebook scheme. They make NO content, they just offer you what you offer them and make it searchable.

I've never met a design kit I liked - they're always far too much effort for far too little outcome.

What I expect will eventually occur will be a wave of games blurring of the line between what's design and what's play.  Think the creature editor in Spore - is that tool for designing content to share or for playing a minigame?  That's what I think will eventually happen in MMOs.

Originally posted by DaezAster
Game design isn't as easy as some of us might think. I remeber a few years ago I tried to get into 3d graphics being an artist and found it to be very challenging and an extreme amount of work. Forget about talking code, have you ever dabbled in flash action script or java. Things that seem like simple functions can be very complex to code and have working properly. One might make a cool little game to be proud of but I doubt many would have the capacity to actually create something others would want to play by there lonesome. Like most things it's something better left to the professionals. But do give it a go, you might be one of the few who can pull it off or at least get a better understanding and respect for what goes into the games we take for granted.

The idea here is to make better tools than are currently available. This really should be a natual progression. A past example would be how Photoshop was extremely difficult to use a decade or so ago and was used exclusely by highly paid professionsals. Now it has been made simple and many people use it along with highly intuitive wacom tablets. The same evolutionary process could very well happen with 3d modeling and animation.

SoEmote was a breakthough with this concept but it can be taken much further. We have the technology to bring do it at home motion capture with Xbox Kinect and other motion sensors. Nobody has yet built the tools translates this into 3D design outside of a major studio. This can be done and it WILL be done at some point in the future. Expect 3 to 5 years.