Devs appear to assume that Epic Games’ whirlwind of pop cultural cross-pollination Fortnite is the game finest positioned to ship the imaginative and prescient of the metaverse to us, the Game Developers Conference have revealed. The outcomes of the GDC’s eleventh annual State Of The Industry survey had been launched this week. The survey checked in with greater than 2,300 builders to select their brains on contentious points going through gaming, starting from unionisation and harassment to, erm, blockchain.
Epic Games and Fortnite landed 14% of the vote when devs had been requested which firm and game are finest positioned to carry the idea of the metaverse to life. For those that are nonetheless a little bit fuzzy on what the metaverse truly is, it’s basically a giant interconnected, snazzily offered digital world that we are able to all fake we dwell in. Y’know, somewhat than the more and more awkward and polluted actual one. It’s like Love Island, however for nerds. Fortnite received out in opposition to Minecraft (7%), Meta’s Horizon Worlds (7%), Roblox (aww bless, 5%), and Google and Apple tied at 3% every. VRChat and Nvidia additionally received just a few nods.
The Fortnite 14% had been somewhat dramatically outvoted by one other 45% of respondents although, who simply thought the metaverse would by no means actually go anyplace. That’s up from 33% final 12 months. This 12 months’s sassy batch of sceptical builders reckoned that there is nonetheless just a few potential issues for the metaverse to beat, see. Among these had been the unclear idea – Nerd Island, natch – and technical considerations comparable to the shortage of actual interactivity, and costly {hardware}.
An enormous 91% of devs who stuffed within the survey felt that participant harassment and threatening behaviour in direction of them was a serious subject for the business. Confirming a horrible pattern that is been effervescent away for years, 40% of builders who answered the GDC survey stated they’d both been subjected to abuse from gamers or had witnessed it occurring to different devs. Women and non-binary devs had been extra seemingly than males to have been harassed or seen it happening, as had been individuals who recognized as LGBTQ+. All in all, it would not paint a really nice picture of the remedy that devs working within the business can count on from these outdoors it.
Other outcomes from the GDC 2023 survey famous a pattern in direction of hybrid work schedules, and the continued energy of make money working from home seen throughout 2020 and 2021. You can request a replica of the complete survey outcomes your self here, should you present your e mail and particulars.
This 12 months’s GDC takes place from March twentieth to twenty third on the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.