Computer Graphics World

January/February 2015

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j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 5 c g w 1 9 he video game industry has reached the global mass-market, thanks in large part to the ubiquity of the Internet, mobile phones, and portable devices. In 2014, the total market for video games worldwide reached ap- proximately $82 billion, making it larger than either the film or music industry. The growth of game develop- ment can be directly linked to the adoption of game engines. Game engines and middleware have played an integral part of the development process for the past 10 years. Back in 2003, the total worldwide game revenue for the year was $18.7 billion, and the total number of games released for the entire year was under 2,500, which included all PC and console games. At that time, M2 Research estimated that approximately 8 percent of all titles in development used some form of off-the-shelf game engine, or less than 200 titles. Compare that to 2014, with mobile and online games dominating the market growth. Pocket Gamer, a website that focuses on portable gaming, estimates there are more than 309,500 active games available on the App Store alone, with 2,400-plus new games submit- ted monthly. In the same token, Steam saw incredible growth in 2014, with 1,300 new games added to the site, up from the 300 games added in 2013. Steam also had 24 million new users set up accounts in 2014, bringing the total number of ac- tive Steam users to 100 million. T H E R I S E O F G A M E E N G I N E S Game engines were first devel- oped for some of the biggest titles in the early 1990s. Quake and Doom developed propri- etary game engines used for first-person shooters (FPSs). Studios developing proprietary engines was the norm for these large-scale games through the early to mid-'90s. There have been many game engines during the past 20 years. Originally developed in conjunction with a specific title, engines were viewed as highly proprietary technology. Many companies viewed their game engine as the key differentiator, spending millions of dollars to create the engines themselves. The general benefit of an engine is that it enables developers ultimately to focus more on the gameplay, characters, story, imagery, and landscapes. Given that, the first engines were not shared with other third-party studios. One of the first successful commercial game engines started appearing in the mid- '90s when Criterion came on the scene with RenderWare. Launched in 1997, RenderWare was one of the first engines focused on building third-party support. Developed by Crite- rion Studio, RenderWare was a 3D API and graphics ren- dering engine tuned for early cross-platform development projects and supported by Sony for PlayStation 2 development. RenderWare was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2004 for an undisclosed sum. Three years later, Electronic Arts announced it had moved development over to Epic's Unreal 3 game engine. By 2006, there were roughly 20 different game engines available on the market, cov- ering console, PC, and MMO development. Today's game engines are substantially different from the past engines, which were extremely technical, difficult to manage, and expensive, with large back-end royalty clauses. Presently, engines fall into one of two categories: SaaS (soware as a service) or open source. Unity was first to launch its subscription model in 2013 and now offers a subscription service to the Pro version of Unity at $75 per month (with a 12-month commitment). At GDC 2014, Epic and Crytek both announced their SaaS models, with Epic releasing the Unreal Engine 4 for $19 a month, along with a flat 5 percent royalty fee payable on any sales of prod- ucts powered by the engine. Crytek's subscription-based model runs $9.90 per month. When deciding which game engine to use, there are several key factors a developer should consider: the programming lan- guage, the type of graphics, the platforms, and the type of game or application being developed. UNITY Unity Technologies was found- ed by David Helgason, Nicholas Francis, and Joachim Ante in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2004. The company made its mark by directing initially on mobile game developers when mobile devices were just starting to gain momentum. With the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Unity focused its initial efforts on supporting that device and mobile development. This was a huge success given the boom in mobile phone penetration, and the company soon made it its mission to democratize game development. Over the years, Unity has continued building up the Unity platform, establishing its Asset Store and creating a global community. Today, Unity is used by more than 3.3 million registered developers in a wide range of industries, including architectural, product design, visualization, and education (see "A House with History," page 34). T

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