When anyone can make games, ‘soul’ will make some rise to the top

Forty years ago, making a video game used to require an engineering background — early developers had to invent tricks to display primitive objects and backgrounds on TVs. Today, anyone with a laptop can afford the software to create nearly photorealistic games, and within months, Sony’s Dreams will let PlayStation 4 owners create 2D, 3D, and VR games. By this time next year, creating a game will be easier for some people than writing a book.

As exciting as the democratization of game development may sound, it’s problematic in practice. When Apple’s App Store empowered virtually anyone to create iOS software, it quickly flooded with garbage — fart apps, tip calculators, and plenty of junky games. Less than 10 years after opening, the App Store today hosts over 800,000 games, and you can barely find the good ones beneath all the bad ones.