First it was mods, then level editors, then third-party engines, and as the development world seemed to have reached the zenith of its democratization, games and game creation platforms arrived.
Much has come from proposals such as Net Yaroze , KUDO or Project Spark, but the intention has always been the same as in projects such as Roblox or the creative mode of Fortnite, to bring the creation of video games to more people. Core hits the Epic Games Store today to take the next step.
Make the difficult even easier
The platform, launched last year in a closed alpha after a four-year development process, was born by Manticore Games as a completely different project. The studio wanted to create a game, yes, but by adding customization tools and mods they soon understood that it was more interesting to take another path.
The game they were developing in Unreal Engine passed away and in its place began the life of Core , a platform designed for inexperienced people to create, share and play their own video games and those of the community.
An idea similar to that experienced with the success of Roblox , but pointing to a visual style much closer to what we could find in Fortnite . Quite a success, if you ask me, for the spectacular postcards to which the graphics of some of their games give way.
We have already seen how far proposals such as Dreams are capable of reaching, both visually and creatively, but the differences between the gargantuan editor of Media Molecule and the platform of Manticore Games are obvious. Core’s main asset is how completely simple it is to create a basic game.
Unity para dummies
Among the objects created by the platform, the mechanics published by other creators and how much they have continued to add since launch, the possibility of creating your own Counter Strike ends up being as simple as placing four buildings on the map and adding the FPS pack that adds weapons, physics, death rankings and all the paraphernalia that any game of the genre can include.
Going to the basics and hitting the publish button to share it with the community is, indeed, downright simple. One of those ideas that seem like a thing of magic and with which, before a possible success that we do not even know if it will arrive, it is easy to imagine a future in which creations on the platform can become successes outside of it .
That illusion of the YouTube of games, and the successful youtubers behind it, is precisely what Core is using as a claim. More creators, more and better games, and if that list continues to rise, it is inevitable that little by little new players will arrive to keep the platform alive.
Monetizing the experience based on skins, mounts and other paraphernalia with which to customize your avatar, Core’s great claim regarding competing platforms is to offer a 50-50 agreement regarding the benefits that your game can achieve on the platform .
Very useful, but not miraculous
For those who are already clapping their ears imagining a future in which the house of jelly beans is taken away from Notch, it must be said that the possibility of creating something in Core easily and quickly is really there, but you have a good chance of ending with another clone game that no one cares about.
Going further to join churras with merino in order to create something innovative is much more complicated and requires a lot of work. If you are lucky, all you have to do is deal with a handful of tutorials and rummage through a library of assets and options that could use a generous review.
If not, chances are that to end up giving shape to your idea you will have to deal with Lua, the programming language used by the Core engine. Or go to the community to shape a collective project in which someone can help you.
In any case, and despite the need to land a little hard-to-fulfill dreams, what I undeniably do see in Core is the perfect excuse to train new developers thanks to its tutorials, its free Core Academy, and the ongoing Game Jam with prize money that they organize.
My time at Core has been limited to skipping from content to content without finding anything that invites me to stay, but it has served to see ideas and games that no company would have agreed to develop otherwise.
That, after all, is the really important thing about such a platform. And whether or not it is part of your audience, any proposal aimed at opening doors to the world of development, rather than closing the gap between college tuition and elite master’s degrees, will be well received.
