Video Game Physics – Practices, Trends and the Future
Over the past six decades the video game industry and grown at an incredible rate, going from isolated play by a few “geeks” in the academic setting to today where “in the United States and many Asian and Western countries, there are now more video game players than non-video game players.” [Juul p 8] For the first time in 2007, revenues for the video game industry topped both the film and music industry. Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had the most successful product launch across all entertainment industries, earning $310 M in sell-through in the US and the UK alone during it’s first 24 hours of release. (PR Release). By comparison, James Cameron’s Avatar earned $104 M domestically during its opening weekend screenings.
In part videos games have become more popular due to increasing photo-realism, better game play and increasingly realistic behavior of characters and objects within the game world – which is driven by game physics engines. In a paper co-authored by myself, Matthew Franco, Chelsey Glasson and Shane Sherwood,we discuss the history of video games and video game physics, provide a review of current trends and practices in video game physics, and look into the future of game physics engines.
Below you can find the paper we wrote (I was specifically responsible for the “current trends” section), as well 3 videos we developed to support the paper.
I would love to hear any comments you have on our paper or any additional insights you care to offer.
Citation:
Juul, Jesper. A Casual Revolution. ; Reinventing Video Games and Their Players. MIT, 2009. Print.
