It’s been a couple months since the 2015 Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco, and we’re just beginning to feel the repercussions of some major changes in game-development tech that were announced at the show. With engines simultaneously becoming faster and cheaper and virtual reality hitting the retail market in a big way later this year, it’s an exciting time to study the way games are made — and an even better time to get started making your own.

Nick and Aaron dissect the news from GDC and make some projections about what the broader impact on the established games industry will be. How does proprietary tech (like Bethesda’s id Tech, EA’s Frostbite Engine, etc.) stay competitive with the accessible and popular Unreal and Unity engines?

Nobody really knows, but it couldn’t hurt to make an educated guess.

"Start Your Engines" - The Ludonist Podcast, Episode 2

Here at The Ludonist, we do our best to bring you a fresh, topical episode every week. We think we’ve got a pretty good system down that accounts for unexpected changes to a story, but there’s always the risk that a topic will become irrelevant within 24 hours of a recording.

What can I say? We sure didn’t expect that Valve would pull the plug on its brand-new paid mod support just days after launching it. And Skyrim’s thriving and well-established modding scene seemed like it had real promise for community investment!

But what can you do? That’s what happened, and we’ll just have to roll with it.

So here you have it: 35 minutes of discussion examining the flaws, pitfalls and promises of a brand-new means of monetization within the gaming world. Consider it a time capsule from a more-optimistic period when anything seemed possible.

Rest in peace, paid mods. You never got the chance you deserved.