I use this example: as a non-developer, it’s pretty easy to mock up a quick prototype idea in the BGE. Performance won’t be all that great, but you can get a sense of the gameplay and even a bit of the overall aesthetic. With such a rough prototype in-hand, it’s much easier to approach a developer-type person (or a business-type) and pitch with something along the lines of, “This is a rough idea of the game I want to make. Please lend me your time/money/resources to bring it to its full potential in a ‘real’ engine with good performance.”
BGE games look graphically at the level of 2004. Someone should implement real Phisically Based Shading
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3H_QfoaeNys
It would be coolThat is one nonsense I keep reading about BGE - why would one prototype in BGE and then scrap it all and move to actual engine? This is how not to make video games, unless you are planning on releasing BGE-based video game.
We are beating a dead horse here. Ton’s proposal to make BGE into real-time viz part of Blender is a very good idea. Making BGE into Unity competitor is nonsense (not to mention UE4 competitor). For once, BGE will never get to be deployed to Win/Mac/Linux/SteamOS/HTML5/consoles/mobiles. BGE is limited to PC/Mac, forever.
Sure, and it caught up with major 3D apps because those 3D apps stagnated over the years, and Blender has been developed actively during those 10 years that passed.
Game engines out in the world evolve annually, and BGE hasn’t been in active development for a long time. Being tied to Blender limits what can be done to the the GE internally to make it faster and more robust, compliant with industry standards.
BGE already works in Linux, and since SteamOS is literally Linux, a BGE SteamOS game is not far-fetched at all.
That would qualify under “PC” 
Plus, there are not enough devs to deal with yet another OS.
I hope the blender game engine gets a lot of improvements because of this recent news.But i am not holding my breath.But there
is nothing wrong with dreaming.Maybe someone will get up the muster to make a software like blender that can produce AAA title videogames.Like other big companies do.
I don’t believe that the Bitsquid engine is going to have a significant impact on the BGE or Blender. There is no reason to react in my opinion. The idea to migrate the BGE towards something like an “interaction mode” still makes a lot of sense in my opinion.
I think it’s been done already. Maybe not for AAA games, but a lot of indie games use assets made in Blender.
…But it’s not another OS. SteamOS is Debian-based Linux platform. The two are so similar that on the Steam store, the games for Linux and SteamOS are Bundled into a single category.
It’s not the same as compiling on stock Linux. It shouldn’t take much effort to get it running there, but it’s not the same as normal Linux.
For those like Fahr who talk about the lack of resources for the BGE, this is why I brought up the patch review crisis.
With all of the patches sitting in the tracker, does anyone have any idea as to how many potential contributors we have lost because they couldn’t get someone with commit access to review it?
This loss of potential contributors (who might’ve become active later) doesn’t just apply to the BGE, but also to the modifier system, the old internal render engine, the UI system, and so on. In this case, it’s an example of a BGE development issue also being a general Blender development issue. Sure, the GPL can also be seen as a BGE issue, but there’s been many threads suggesting that this is an issue for Blender in general as well. One might conclude here that Blender and the BGE are in the same boat in cases so it can’t be said that one is second class to the other.
Patches sit in the tracker, people get frustrated from waiting, and the core team wonders why they struggle to obtain more volunteer help at times, ever think the dots could be connected here?
What makes you think the code quality and design of the features that dev was committing were any good/worthy of merging into Blender ?
There are plenty of examples when inexperienced (or claimed to be experienced) software developers commit horrible code and poor solutions to otherwise better engineered software making a mess out of it. This isn’t reference to Blender, but to many FOSS projects, iD Software engines in particular.
That’s not the issue being raised here, the issue with the patch review process in the Blender scene is that some patches aren’t even being reviewed to begin with. How would you know that the code is not fit to be committed if there’s no indication that anyone has looked at it?
Why didn’t you create a thread named “Blender is potentially losing lots of developers due to a lack of code reviews” if that is the actual topic you want to talk about?
So if BF looked into it, and for whatever reason didn’t feel it was worthy, but also for whatever reason didn’t give any feedback, how would you know the patch was or wasn’t looked at ? (just curious if there is a way to tell)
Because the topic of the lack of resources on behalf of the BF is an underlying theme to nearly every discussion that highlights issues in Blender’s ability to penetrate into certain markets, issues in Blender’s ability to respond to a changing CG industry landscape, usability issues that don’t seem to get addressed, lack of or under-performing functionality that don’t seem to get addressed ect…
One of the main things that permeates that point likewise is the lack of resources and time the BF sets aside for patch review, which means potential contributors going away and increasing the chance that some areas will see a lack of attention in development.
This is on par with the GPL license as one of the core points brought up in nearly all discussion on where Blender is headed, should head, what is planned, issues it has now, issues it faces in the future ect…
Anyway, I’ve already made much of my point so far on how Blender could respond to a possible impending game engine product from Autodesk. The BGE has potential, the BGE has developer interest, it’s possible to make some complex projects with the BGE, the BF should take this into account and capitalize on it, they’re sitting on a potential game-dev gold mine (without spending a ton of resources futzing around with completely-closed .fbx code in the hopes they’re at least getting somewhere), but it’s not certain whether they’re even seeing it.
And just to note, in terms of the perspectives of others, the BF has apparently dropped the ball before (missed targets and unfinished work during the 2.5x days for instance that they’re now using the 2.7x series to catch up on).
What good is a GPL game engine? The license limits its use to people who want to give away their games for free. Pray tell how you believe this “gold mine” could be profitable?
Not true at all (not talking about “gold mine with BGE”). GPL engine has certain limits. The biggest comes from inability to integrate majority of middleware solutions that are not GPL friendly, and inability to release on consoles (although this is arguable depending on the composition of GPL licensed code and willingness of the copyright holders to re-issue it under non-GPL license for specific case).
As for giving away a game - a game consists of engine and assets. While engine is GPL, assets are not. So, you don’t give the game away. People can share the engine, but not the assets.
As for “gold mine” referencing to BGE, I have to agree with you 
The BGE code base is reportedly not really clean. I have the impression that you believe it is easier to improve the BGE than implementing fbx support, though I might be wrong on that. Making the BGE production ready is a huge undertaking, huge like almost not doable without a decently sized team of fulltime developers. As it is not the main focus in Blender, it makes a lot of sense in my opinion to either drop it or to get it on track in a different way. The idea seems to be to take a different path with it. You most likely already know that:
Making something like an “Interaction mode” sounds like a realistic plan to me. Like that, the code base is hopefully being cleaned up over time and due to Blender and the “Interaction mode” getting closer together, there is a realistic chance that improvements made in various areas in Blender will also help the “Interaction mode”.