News

By: Nick Evanson Aug 21, 2007

Licenced game engines - developer heaven?

Every decision a developer has to make ultimately works its way down to the end gamer, even decisions as fundamental as "do I go with a licenced engine or make my own?" A packed auditorium at this year's Leipzig GC Developer Conference were treated to a 4 person panel of industry experts who discussed this very question.

Chaired by Götz Klingelhöfer, the views and thoughts (plus the occasional sales pitch) came from:

Mark Rein - Epic Games
John O'Neill - Vicious Cycle
Doug Binks - Crytek
Bruce Rogers - Cryptic Studios

Epic are, of course, famous for their Unreal Engine - currently at version 3.0, it has been used to create dozens of successful (and some not-so successful) titles over the years. Compared to the other studios, Crytek are the newbies to this game - despite their fame, they have only recently entered the licencing market. Cryptic are big developers in the MMO scene, having churned out the likes of City of Heroes / Villains, whereas Vicious Cycle have created titles for just about every modern platform around.

Not surprisingly, given that the panel was aimed at developers, much of the talk concerned the pros and cons of choosing a licenced engine, what kind of support one can expect, and what level of technological understanding is needed to use them. The panelists generally agreed that what made one engine more popular than another was the degree of training required to use it, the level of documentation and the ease of use, especially across multiple platforms.

The first question from the audience was about whether licencing engines leads to having similar looking games. Rein was particularly vocal in denying that this was the case, but others pointed out that if developers are aiming for a similar goal (for example photorealism) then sometimes things will look familiar. The responsibility, though, was very much pointed at game designers, not engine developers.

There was a wholehearted agreement from the board that in-game editors and mods were a great way to learn and build up experience, which is encouraging news for budding game developers. Both Crytek and Epic were especially keen to point out such capabilities with their forthcoming releases, Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 respectively.

Licenced game engines are very much here to stay - in fact, the market will expand thanks to the growth of smaller pieces of middleware, such as physics, audio or animation. In theory, as voiced by the panel, this should offer developers more freedom to concentrate on making games, not technology, but I'm sure we all know of cases where neither has been true!

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