Video games have been a huge part of my life growing up. As an introvert from Elementary to high school, gaming was a way to escape from the pressures of social interactions and school to a safe place of fun and entertainment. I remember one of the first games I picked up was Super Mario for the Gameboy color. As a kid I was entranced with how a full scale game at the time could fit in the palm of my hands so easily. Over the years, I have seen how video games have evolved. From the Gameboy to the Playstation 5, gaming has come a very long way. Now we even have virtual reality, the new frontier of video games.
I mention video games, because before I had no idea how much programming and development were involved in making a game. Especially with video games today and triple A titles, most video games made are open world ,large scale multiplayer games, or a combination of both. After learning more about software development and programming from my Computer Science major, I can see how video games can involve many layers of programming. For instance, in an open world game for characters in the game to behave the way they do or how certain objectives/quests are spawned and completed, they have to programmed to function the way they do. Graphics and game engines such as Unity and Unreal use languages such as C++ and C# in order to create such experiences and behaviors. Furthermore, with how large the scale for some games are nowadays it’s baffling to think how many lines of code are involved in creating intricate behavior patterns and interactions associated in playing a video game. Definitely there is a huge jump from programming a game like Super Mario compared to a game like Skyrim.
With how large scale video games are becoming, and the new tools constantly arising to help developers make better games, I am excited to see where the video game industry ends up at in a few years. Who knows maybe in the next few years we’ll get closer and closer to an experience similar to being in the Matrix, depending on how people feel about that of course.
