Wow it's been a very long time since my last blog post, almost 10 years!

So much has happened in my life and in the gaming world, and have so much to talk about in general. :)

So back in the early 2010's and late 2000's i used to do a lot of gaming ideas, predictions and wishlists, and to this day i still do them! I also have an account on IMDB where i make my own fanlists for movie ideas too.

As for personal life, i manage to eventually get a degree in game design and also learned how to make games with Unreal Engine, Unity and using tools such as 3DSMax, ZBrush etc. I have experience in 3D Modelling, and currently learning how to use Maya now as i have been more profietient in 3DSMax more. Unreal Engine 5 has also been released 2 Years ago which is a huge game changer in every aspect of games. Also for modding and creations, i managed to develop my own Super Mario Bros. levels and full world maps using different fan-made Mario games such as Mario Builder, Super Mario Bros X and more! I am also making a new world and levels of the newer Super Mario Bros X2, since the original one was made by the same guy that made Terraria so he moved on to that.

I also used to make a lot of Warcraft 3 maps back in the day with my own Zombie RPG Survival series called Zombie Madness and Crazy Madness, experimented in making a Silent Hill survival map and some other fun ones. Blizzard also released a remaster of Warcraft 3 called Warcraft 3: Reforged with at launch was not recieved well as it had a lot of missing features but in 2024 they have added and improved it a lot better now, eventually i will convert my old Warcraft 3 maps and host them to play again in the future!

I am also been using the newer Windows 11 which i find really nice and refreshing, it reminds me of Windows Vista with the futuristic and modern feel but feels very smooth and fast, there are rumors of the next Windows 12 which might get released in Late 2024 which could be AI Focused.

Talking about AI - Artificial Intelligence! AI has also been a huge new technology leap in the past years which chatbots, self learning and ai generation becoming a reality now, so you can use ChatGDP (I promise this blog wasn't made in ChatGDP!) which allows you to type anything you want it to create or generate, or even answer questions, it uses the internet to find the answer but there are times where it is not accurate or has the wrong information. So you can type 'give me an idea for Dungeon Keeper remaster game' and it would actually make close to realistic take on what a Dungeon Keeper remaster would have in features, graphics etc. in a very nice format.

There is also AI Generations now, which people can type prompts (which is essensially like keywords in your text) that can generate art (images), music and eventually video. There has even been some rumors of AI Game Generators which will eventually create games for you (most likely at small indie scales at the beggining). The leading AI Generators for images is OpenAI DALL-E, Midjourney and Bing AI which all have their pro's and cons, i find Midjourney to be more accessible because of the ability to customise the generated images like different variants, remastering, zooming in and out and even changing specific parts of using a marquette tool.

Music and Voice Generators are also a thing too, so you can write prompts to create music using different sites and tools, voice generators allows you to use a text to speech like tools and uses AI to create synthesis of that voice - for example you can get Roger L Jackson Ghostface voice and write words and the it will generate Ghostface speaking those words as if it was real life, and it's becoming way less robotic and realistic now, there is also voice cloning which allows you to clone voices but it will likely get relagated as it is very controvorsial and people can clone without consent etc. As for videos there are some video ai generators but it's still early days.

As for the rest of AI, it's been used in games also especially in the modding community, someone managed to make NPC's in Skyrim act like real life human because they added a ChatGDP AI to to it and also used Voice Cloning and Generation which is is more intergrated into gameplay, for example, you can actually make conversation using your microphone with NPC and it will understand commands like 'be quiet theres someone here' (the NPC will then start to sneak with you and whisper and still make small conversations). It's actually insane how realistic it makes the game become. I do feel games in general will utilise AI in these ways like the future The Elder Scrolls VI which could feature full AI Conversations as a groundbreaking feature, and AI will very likely become a great tool to assist developers and artists.

Lets now talk about video games in general now!

Since the last blog there has been hundreds of different games including sequels, new IP's, remasters, remakes and so much more. Some of the games i wanted in the past has also happened like Age of Empire IV, Alan Wake 2, Dead Space Remake (Not 4 but still a very good game), The Sims 3 and 4 and so much much more.

GTA 5 also released in 2013 and was unexpectely the longest GTA game to released as it's 2024 and hasn't been another installment but Rockstar announced GTA 6 only last month for a 2025 release (may get pushed to 2026), same thing for The Sims 4 which has been getting expansions and content every year with a recent announcement of the next Sims game with no release date. GTA 5 had an online component with added content over time too.

RTS has also made a comeback in a massive way, all Age of Empires games have been remastered and a new entry Age of Empire IV released, they also announced Age of Mythologies remaster last year or two too. Commadn and Conquer and Red Alert both got a remastered into one package, the KKND (Krush, Kill' N' Destroy) IP has been bought and revived onto Steam and the new IP owners (Beam Software) teased a new game may be developed, Age of Empires Online returned in 2017/2018 with a huge fan modding community was allowed to take over with the blessing of Microsoft, Warcraft 3 got a remastered, Starcraft 3 has recently been leaked, new RTS games has released and new ones such as 9-Bit Armies are on the horizon and many more!

There has also been an new genre called MOBA which came a custom map called DOTA (Defence of the Ancients) in OG Warcraft 3 which had spawned DOTA 2 (Valve) League of Legends and others. There are other new genres such as Battle Royale which means you fight with a huge maps filled with hundreds of players, Looter Shooter like Borderlands and Destiny which is like a first person shooter Diablo experience, and new shooters inspired from old school days like Apex Legends, Overwatch etc.

There is even a survival genre where you are put into a vast open world, you gather your own resources, build your home/base and more.

There is also something called Games as a Service now, which is hugely inspired by Netflix (which allows you to stream movies without having to download it to you computer and uses your internet) but is for games instead, and the notable one that is used today is Xbox Game Pass which released around mid to late 2010's and it offers hundreds of titles with a monthly subscription and is even tied to the Xbox Live Sub now. In the past people used to have to pay somewhere from £30-£50 ($40-$50) to even play games but had some chance of playing it in some forms from demos and free trials. Now you can download full games if you are subscribed to these GAAS providers. There are also other ones such as PlayStation Now/Plus, EA Play, Ubisoft, Nvidia Now and more. Although these exist there are still games, mostly the big ones which are not features on GAAS at launch (except all of Microsoft first party and some third party games which are alwasy available at launch), like GTA 6 at this time may not release on Game Pass (it might do in the future or may do if Microsoft and Rockstar makes some deal together before hand). Also to note it was revealed in the last year that Microsoft has to pay millions of dollars to get games to Game Pass to the developers which is insane, but the option to buy the game fully is still there.

The other huge thing that has happened is the transition from physical to digital, during the time around my last blog, the Xbox 360 was still the current gen, you could go into shop, purchase a game, insert the disk and play right away, there was xbox online store around 2012 which allowed you to download games at that time, but then in 2013 when the next-gen consoles released (Xbox One and PS4), things has started to change. One of the first thing that was notable was you could no longer insert a new game disk and play right away, you would now have to install the game onto your internal or external harddrive for the console, wait for the game to fully install and play, this is the same process of th downloading games of the past but you had to do it with physical disks - it was pretty painful at the time because it could take some time to install (even up to 1 Hour for big games), the second thing was that games felts easier to get through digitial storefront for consoles now as the installing the game process is very similar to downloading game, however installing the game from the disk is faster than downloading depending on your internet speed.

That's it for the this blog for now! I will do another Part 2 to this return and retrospective blog, thank you for reading and can't wait to share more things that happened! I will also be following this blog with other topics too :)