i dont think gaming and game development have a future in its current form. the current AAA game engines definietly dont have. for example, the revenues of my game engines ( http://Maker3D.tk ) and game related tools are a magnitude lower than in previous years. of course, as time elapses, they are becoming obsolote, and people are moving into different solutions.

but the statistics are also showing the end of the gaming era everywhere. almost every game genre have a steady -10% per year, including the popularity, the downloads, the interest, the search, and the revenues too. in such economic condition, what a game engine in 2018 should offer? good question. but its clear that its not something the unreal engine, the unity, crysis, or anything else can offer.

10 years ago, it was sugoi to play fps games with friends. nowdays people just buy some airsoft, and shot at each other in a forest. people feel that the virtual things are worthless, and they going back to real games, real sports. game engines of todays cant adapt to this, such type of things are coming in that they cant react. the era of computer games is ending, of course a different type of gaming and entertainment replaces it. not necessary on computers. i carried out serious changes in my businesses, in fact almost 90% of my money was directly/indirectly from gaming in ~2013, now its barely reaches 5%.

5 hours ago, Geri said:

but the statistics are also showing the end of the gaming era everywhere. almost every game genre have a steady -10%

Well this isn't the full story. AAA games market is in decline, every other game market is growing. We have seen the indie market double in size from 2015 - 2017.

Professional in the game industry is now earning more from indie games than from there AAA contracts.

We could be witnessing the fall of AAA games and the rise of a new giants.

5 hours ago, Geri said:

and they going back to real games, real sports.

Interest in sport has declined a lot over the world, with most of the new generations not watching TV and having much better entertainment.

5 hours ago, Geri said:

game engines of todays cant adapt to this, such type of things are coming in that they cant react.

AR is leaping forward. Soon we could mark game zones in parks and create clear visual content in the real world. I have been able to track way-points with my mobile. Planing to steer a virtual tank soon. (I Used Unreal 4)

6 hours ago, Geri said:

the era of computer games is ending, of course a different type of gaming and entertainment replaces it.

That is progress. Good thing development skills work on all formats.  

I am hoping for AR to rise as the new gaming platform. It's sad that with the decline in AAA games, board games didn't make a comeback.

Scouting Ninja: imagine if there is a gokart fan. one and a half decade this gokart fan required a software, namely gokart games to fulfill all of his gokart fanatism. now there is the age of informations where we living in. you can search gokart videos. you can google gokart designs. you can register to 200 gokart communities to speak about gokarts. you can design your own gokart from 10$ garbages from ebay and other sites. can buy a crappy gokart for 500 usd from some secondhand only shop. you can write and sell a book from gokarts online. you can organize gokart race for others and reach all the possible people to be part of it. you can manufacture gokarts for other gokart fans. you can chat with the best gokart drivers.

in the 2000s you were not able of doing this. your factor of entertainment were limited to watch a gokart race once per year, maybe attend 1-2 in your life as a driver, and of course to play gokart games on your computer. but now here is the age of information, where playing a gokart game just lost almost all value. maybe someone will play it, however in very small quantities, as the experience is just not comparable with the whole of the benefits of the new era information exchange, where you can make something to be part of your reality, of your own life.

now 99% (i just slapped my belly and this is the number it generated) of the game dev industry are unaware of this, as techie people are usually tend to strictly focus on developing on a practicular field, and they are usually unable to see the things as a whole, and they dont recognize if they field just disappearing, only after its gone, and then they go nuts on forums after they lost their jobs/profits/projects, and start attack everybody with envious hatered. autisming around a practicular topic is extremely profitable in the first 1 or 2 year, who doing it, likes to think that he is usually some extremely smart snowflake,  but then suddenly the whole thing disappears, and the person in it must restart his life. i have witnessed this in gamedev probably almost in the case of every developer i even met, they didnt even bothered watching or creating a statistics or even investigating user behaviors or trying to understand how a market works, they were just I AM THE SHADERGOD or BLENDERKING everybody is dumber than me whyiamloosingmyjob.

of course we in this topic are aware of this, thats why we discussing it, but we are probably in the final moments to carry out a survival strategy to have protection against this transition, but as there are just this topic with 4-5 people in it, of course this will just be another cretaceous paleogene extinction event that usually happens in every computer-related industry once in every 10-15 years, and hey, the dinos are just dinoing.

3 hours ago, Geri said:

imagine if there is a gokart fan. one and a half decade this gokart fan required a software...

Yes true building go-karts and  other hobby interest has risen. Peoples access to them has also improved. All this means is that people have more options of entertainment.

It is also true that the new generation consist of kids who had complex games from the moment they could hold a device. For this reason they accept games as part of there lives instead of building communities around the games they play.

However none of this is going to be the end of digital games.

Games will change, we all know that. It has done so many times before. Digital games has adapted and now while you wait for a reply on the go-kart forum you can play some mobile games.

As long as digital games remain more accessible and affordable people will keep playing them.

3 hours ago, Geri said:

the game dev industry are unaware of this, as techie people are usually tend to strictly focus on developing on a practicular field,

The industry isn't blind. AAA developers stopped making realistic go-kart games a long time ago, now they only make kart games that have power-ups and stuff you don't get in real live. These days it's only hobby developers who make realistic go-kart games.

I hope that AR will allow us to merge digital games with real ones. It would be great to race real go-karts while collecting coins and power ups in real live.