The modern era

The frontier and its sobering-up. After 2018 — the cloud, VR/AR, AI in production, ray tracing and upscaling, and in parallel the contraction of the industry (mergers, layoffs, unionization). The core skill of the era is telling a real shift from hype: where a technology actually changes the rules, and where it is a solution looking for a problem.

0 / 0 read

2018–2026

The frontier: cloud, VR/AR, industry

A sober look at the modern frontier: what actually changed the rules, and what stayed hype or a niche. We start with the clearest "cool ≠ needed" case.

VR/AR: the 2026 reality~16 min

The Vision Pro flop, Quest as the only market, presence vs comfort, the pivot to smart glasses. When a cool technology is not the answer.✦ open

Cloud and streaming~16 min

The cloud is a feature, not a product: latency (you can't hide it), a GPU per player, why Stadia died and Game Pass survived.✦ open

The economics of the industry~17 min

A contraction of ~45k jobs (the capital cycle), consolidation (MS-Activision, Saudi PIF), unionization, GenAI, hype cycles.✦ open

Module 7 follows the course concept (see CONCEPT.md + ROADMAP.md). The full source text is 07-modern-era-2018-present.md (including "2025–2026 update — what actually shipped"). The AI-in-games frontier in depth is Module 11.