Hey everyone! For a while now I’ve been pondering the opportunity for these two industries to connect. I’m currently a Design Technology Manager at an architecture firm and was previously a designer. I’m new to game design and am trying to learn unreal. I likely have very unrealistic ambitions so I don’t know where it will go, but I am still going to try. That being said, as a designer myself, it’s easy to see that there is a huge opportunity for both these industries to work together.
Most Architecture firms are filled with unused talent. The combination of very thin budgets, regulations, and scale of projects means so many architects will never really get to use their talents. In many creative industries this is the case. Game design however seems like an interesting beast. Games are getting bigger and denser, however, in many games I wonder , “what if Architdcts got involved”. I’ve seen so many concept city’s, and communities and buildings that would be absolutely stunning in video games. Additionally, most game design teams are already crunched for time and some may be excellent designers but not really into architecture.
So I wonder, how much involvement has there been in the past by architecture firms? Do game design companies hire anyone with architectural backgrounds for helping design buildings or cities? If I ever get to a point where I can make the games I want, I’d want to get architecture firms involved and have them unleash their creativity. (Also the tools for making buildings in unreal or other l game design tools suck for ease of use but I’m not sure if that’s because I’m used to software designed specifically for architecture). What do you think? I feel like open world games could really benefit from this. I’m not sure if it contributes but I have been wondering if the lack of modern open world games in denser areas is partially due to the fact it would take a lot of work to make them feel real and I wonder if architecture being done by experts would help. If nothing else, it would give architecture firms more opportunity to utilize talent, and games more interesting architecture and denser areas.