Have we considered, frankly, the cost of a AAA title these days? IMDB Estimates the budget of Skyrim at $100m (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1814884/). That isn't an unreasonable number – there have been a number of recent games which hit that as well. Grand Theft Auto IV had a budget estimated at $100m as well.
This points to the fact that the engine and the tools available are but a small part of what is needed. Granted, a big start would be getting publishers to donate their game engines to development teams for learning environments.
But... what makes these games incredible is the millions of dollars that goes into voice acting, motion capture (as I recall much of the model rendering is informed via mocap. Look at things like the woodcutting animations in Skyrim to see where this benefits), model rendering, textures, etc.
What's needed is to figure out how to reduce the cost of these things, or get collaboration from professional teams/publishers willing to donate time and/or resources to projects.
Otherwise, you'll end up with a bunch of learning environments using the same game engine as skyrim but with none of the magic.
This points to the fact that the engine and the tools available are but a small part of what is needed. Granted, a big start would be getting publishers to donate their game engines to development teams for learning environments.
But... what makes these games incredible is the millions of dollars that goes into voice acting, motion capture (as I recall much of the model rendering is informed via mocap. Look at things like the woodcutting animations in Skyrim to see where this benefits), model rendering, textures, etc.
What's needed is to figure out how to reduce the cost of these things, or get collaboration from professional teams/publishers willing to donate time and/or resources to projects.
Otherwise, you'll end up with a bunch of learning environments using the same game engine as skyrim but with none of the magic.