In an interview posted by GamesIndustry.biz today, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney discusses efforts to lower the barriers to entry to get more people making games, future trends in the industry, and the importance of open platforms.

From the interview:

Sweeney points to efforts to lower the barriers to entry, not only in games development, but across all forms of art. Consumers don't even have to go to specialised tools - they may already have sown the seeds of their game design career on their PC or console.

"Just like YouTube has made everyone a video creator and Instagram has made everyone a photographer," said Sweeney, "we need to empower users to create this stuff because future [game] worlds are going to be so large that we can't possibly expect any game developer to create everything.""Minecraft brought about 100m people in, initially as gamers but all of them became digital content creators designing and building 3D scenes. I think that's the future of the industry: make everyone a creator.

Equipping a wider range of people to build new games and digital experiences, he goes on to say, is something that will prove crucial to providing the software needed to drive virtual reality forward. The much hyped, heavily invested technology has left much of the industry divided over its potential, especially after last year's long-awaited launch of multiple commercial devices such as Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR struggled to deliver the sales momentum some expected.