As I may have mentioned in previous posts, video games and 3D printing are made to go together, so, for me it is no surprise that the next evolution in 3D printing comes from a videogame called… Evolve. It’s nothing incredible or surprising, in fact it seems like the most natural of things. The developers of the game, Turtle Rock Studios, simply added a “3D printable file” button to the page describing each of the game’s characters on Evolve’s official marketing page.
They did not advertise it nor tried to get added exposure from it. All you have to do is choose a hunter or a monster, for example Goliath. It is just so simple and easy to do for both the games and the developers. They have tons of 3D files and they have exported them as STL’s for users to download and print them. Many say that 3D printing will come into its own when we no longer see it, when it becomes just a natural part of our lives. This operation by Turtle Rock is, in my opinion, just the beginning of this next phase and I am quite certain we are going to be seeing more and more “3D printable file” buttons around the web.
That said, it is not by chance that this next evolutionary step came from Turtle Rock, and it is not just because of the games’ name. The California based independent studio was behind another quite revolutionary game called Left 4 Dead, published by Valve (another company which has never hidden its interest for 3D printing).
Evolve is shaping up to be an interesting game even beyond its 3D printing support. While Left 4 Dead introduced both an interesting take on multiplayer and on FPS (with armies of zombies literally overrunning the player), Evolve is a 4 Vs 1 multiplayer game where four hunters have to chase a monster that evolves over the course of the match. You can 3D print both the hunters and the monsters, but after seeing this Goliath trailer there is little doubt in my mind about which one I would 3D print first.
