In fact, 10 years is also a short period of time for engine development, and it is one and a half generations to replace the host. I don't think anyone will buy an engine for the sake of buying an engine, all for content production. Then, to discuss the development trend of engine technology 10 years later, it is better to discuss the content production trend 10 years later.
Whether it is the game industry, or the film, construction, medical and other industries that are currently being expanded by various engines, a common problem currently encountered is that the production cost of 3D interaction is too high and the cycle is too long.
Therefore, an important development trend of game engine technology in the future is to further improve production efficiency and reduce the production cost of unit content.
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The production of modern games can be roughly divided into the concept phase, the gameplay verification phase, the production phase, and the polishing and finishing (release) phase. The production stage can be divided into the production of materials and data outside the game engine, and the integration of the game engine.
I have to say that although we already have so many well-made games, most of the current game engines still have many unsatisfactory problems in terms of the fit with the production pipeline outside the engine. Various formats and compatibility issues require experience and mature workflow to fill.
In this piece, I personally hope that the game engine can do better in the future. This piece of work is actually what machines are good at but people are not good at. It should be a place where AI technology can make great progress. Then, mechanical process work such as high-modulus baking and low-modulus knitting should be more and more automated. The latest version of Maya, although not a game engine, has made a new attempt in this regard.
Today's large and medium-sized game development involves teams of hundreds of thousands of people. In terms of multi-person real-time collaboration, most of the current game engines can be said to be blank. As far as I know, an entrepreneurial team from EA's frostbit team tried this a few years ago, but the version I saw at the time was still naive.
In terms of performance analysis and evaluation, the built-in functions provided by most current engines are still weak, and they still need to rely on external third-party tools. If you can have real-time evaluation and feedback on performance during scene editing and script writing, this will greatly help improve production efficiency.
The WYSIWYG function of most game engines only supports the PC platform. If you can provide the corresponding functions for the page game platform, it is also very good. In terms of products, current game engine companies mainly focus on the single software product of game engines. If it can be further expanded to include software, hardware, and technical services, the entire production line solution will help to further reduce the threshold of content production, thereby releasing more ideas to the market. (Yes, in my concept, in the future, the game will be like a film and television drama production, a set of professional equipment, instead of a machine to install software, you have to install each one)