Developing games is a notably complicated process, which involves thousands if not millions of things to get right. The demand for ever greater worlds and experiences is exhausting and can become critically taxing in no time. Fantasy wolds of our time are larger, more complex and rich in variety and features. Even with the best of intentions, nicest tools or brightest of ideas, there are guidelines and best practices upon which development takes place. A constant battle between performance and possibilities endures, which can be crucial for a project’s viability.

In our approach towards a high fidelity, prosperous world and ambitious goal of making the end user product game ready on all major platforms including mobiles, we have been walking a thin line of quality and art direction vs optimization and repetitiveness. The complications can arise quickly and unnoticed, especially if something is unfinished, untested or falsely calculated. Creating worlds that are too huge, too densely populated or poorly optimized might seem irrelevant at first not causing any signs of troubles, but have the potential to swiftly damage the project in the long run by accumulating garbage and overload when more things and functions come together.

Anyone active in game development most likely has experienced the need to scale things down and reduce as much as possible. the terms of our project have been pushing us into the same restrictive frame along the entire way. Despite using Unreal® Engine already, which has allowed us to break most of the limitations and continuously keeps pushing in same fashion, we did hit our first larger limit with the open world oriented first production ready landscape. It did seem as if it had great performance on itself, but combined with the latest assets, effects and processes it did show a noticeable frames per second reduction. So noticeable in fact, that we decided to bite the bullet and further reduce complexity of the landscape to suit the future needs of cross platform compatibility until the hardware could catch up.

For the moment we would include a basic map setup, which is modular and can customized with similar plateau modules later. Even most of the design, UI, and code has been modular and dynamic. Large parts are still entirely procedural, getting better by the day. We needed to streamline a lot of areas in order to get the best results and performance possible, without sacrificing too much on quality or concept. Procedural tools are some of the helpers without which such a small team could never been able to create all of this. Eventually in front to us we could see the image of a mighty framework forming, the most difficult areas done first. Economy is not to be underestimated as it is the significant part and most complicated feature that could have been addressed in first place.

Everything had to be colossal, something worthy of carrying its weight. The intense everyday challenge of the unreal learning curve over the years has rewarded us with quick progression and success in the long run. We did not call it yet, but we knew we have built a force.

Meanwhile we still had to make our rounds while the project began to dry up the already tiny well hastily. In other words, we needed to start generating revenue. For the full reach of the roadmap, we still had a long way to go so we had to figure out something. It’s obviously the 21 century and there is a large pool of potential revenue sources like kickstarter, indiegogo, private investment or similar. Despite having this variety of sources available, we have put a lot of effort towards maintaining the minimal dependency whilst reducing distraction as much as possible.

We have seen royalty share business models of all types and colors. We have also seen primitive source codes of game projects traded like trinkets. What would come next we did not expect or anticipate, but following Epic Games’s lead of trying new ways, we finally arrived at one solution: Making it larger, better and superior to anything before of its era. One step at a time as we go and share the whole progress. How many accessible enterprise level turnkey gaming projects have you seen recently? Thought so.

Of course this whole idea was risky, at the moment of writing this it still has to be proven. Further more, everybody is being highly protective about their intellectual property, and for good reason. It sure did feel strange to consider opening up to the whole world, as if this would have required gigantic additional efforts, time, abilities and risks. Overall, this felt very different. In order for this plan to work in the best case scenario, everything would have to change, the developers, gamers, companies even the entire industry eventually. With something of this magnitude and potential we considered this a risk worthy of our efforts. It would sure sound a bit cliche, but it was indeed just something that it evolved into naturally and progressively continued to become: Genesis Network – The massive turnkey project infrastructure, offering to you the first of its kind, your own high-end game development opportunity now. Of which game dev would not even be the last frontier of.

After a good while the final plan was simple: Making it as good as possible, offering a real chance to everyone who would be brave and smart enough to use it. Allowing it to be affordable and fair with the revenue share structuring at its root. Simultaneously continuing gaining traction with the introduction of pricing tiers tailored according to actual studio capacity and needs throughout every user case scenario.

Calculating this with the highest possible revenue tier percentage of 15%, assuming one reaches game ready and publishes through Epic Games Store available options, the amount spent would be 27% royalty total. The ultimate game engine, distribution and the entire project to build on top of included. A whopping 3% below the bare minimum developers have to pay towards the common major distribution platforms alone. Let that sink in for a second.

There are many good reasons why someone should at least look into Genesis. It can be very educational and unexpected at times. It has a plentiful arsenal of actually usable assets and systems to overthrow anything thrown in its direction. The balance and interconnection is marvelous and gets better by the day. The sensational breakthrough of usable options opens up equally spectacular possibilities.

We strongly sense this is a time of change and it has always been up to us all to make the change we want to see. Together anything seems possible and in reach. Continuing the search for answers in shape of many interesting opportunities still to be made, this would transform into a new beginning at its natural cause to make a difference. At the end we would look at something capable of connecting and enabling, unlike anything the world has ever seen.