I have been speaking at the Apply serious games event occuring in London this week, this included chairing a panel addressing the technical challenges being faced by the industry (both fun and serious games).

One of the consistent themes expressed by industry representatives was the lack of interoperability that currently exisits between tools, middleware and the various development platforms.My read on this is that this is indicative of a change in mindshift in the industry, no doubt prompted by the huge costs now incurred by developers in working on new (console) platforms such as the xbox360 or Playstation 3.

I would never have predicted that this would be the case as developers have historically guarded their tools and IPR vehemently resisiting all attempts to share their technology. In the new development environment this seems to have been recognised as unsustainable.

Lets hope the industry adopts a lightwieght touch to speifications to achieve interoperability which should help smaller developers remain competitive in thsee difficult tmes or will “the big gorillas “in the room prevail.