DEVOPSdigest

The results contained within the Perforce 2024 State of Game Technology Report demonstrate just how much the technology used to create games such as Call of Duty and Minecraft is entering other industries. Of the nearly 600 developers, artists, and managers surveyed worldwide, game engine use outside of gaming was close to 50%.

With a third of the survey's respondents working outside of game development, these statistics underline a trend that has been becoming more evident for some time: developers are incorporating game technology in their own markets and realizing the benefits. Game studios have long had to provide increasingly high-quality and immersive experiences. Other industries are incorporating those models and processes to meet a similar rise in consumer expectations in the fields of animation, automotive, and manufacturing.

Game development involves a wide variety of roles, and spans a wide variety of tools — each with their own specialized file types. The scope and depth of an open world game easily reaches into the terabytes. So, developers in the space have already tackled the challenges of complexity and massive scale with which other organization types are now dealing. Due to the nature of the industry, games studios are also long-term adopters of remote collaboration tools and processes, a challenge for many other modern businesses.

One sector game technology is impacting today, and also captured in the report, is automotive, which utilizes a range of digital twin use cases for hardware and human machine interfaces. Game engines are extending their capabilities and making them accessible to more users by combining visual graphic elements and data modeling based on the physical world. Test data or real-time data collected from IoT sensors can then be applied to check out the performance of a particular product function.

Collaboration Is Still a Challenge

Despite long being a hurdle known to game developers, collaboration is still a problem for 21% of the survey's respondents, only surpassed as an issue by lack of funding (36%). Digging deeper, people cited moving large files as the biggest hindrance to collaboration (38%), followed by reusing assets across teams and projects (29%) and issues caused by time zone differences and remote working (also 29%).

So why is this still the case?

The answer is multifaceted, but the use of systems with limited collaboration features does not help. For instance, version control — long-established in the game industry — is used on average by 69%, rising to 79% by game professionals. However, its usage is lower in some other markets, which in many cases still widely use shared online drives or even email to track and exchange content between team members.

Workforce Trends

Finally, as organizations enter an era of doing more with less and mass workforce consolidation for many industries, the report spotlighted workforce trends and values. The top attribute employers now look for when hiring game tech employees is the ability to learn new skills, outweighing general or cross-functional experience (93%) or specialized experience (86%).

This statistic might point towards a greater acceptance that the lack of skilled resources needs to be overcome by training existing or prospective employees and equipping them with new knowledge. Similarly, 79% are looking for formal continuing education or incentives. However, 90% quote access to senior leadership as the single biggest attribute job seekers want. With markets and industries at a pivotal point in their transformations, the workforce wants to know where leadership stands, so that they can align, support, and contribute to organizations' success.

The evolving workplace and how game tech is being used point towards an area of business technology that is experiencing considerable change. However, regardless of the challenges, game technology clearly plays a growing role in supporting software development in increasingly diverse applications and markets.