DICE: Game technology build or buy

[KnackChap]

Representatives from Insomniac, Epic Games and Ubisoft gathered at the DICE Summit on Friday afternoon to discuss the question of whether it's wiser for developers to build their own game tech or to buy middleware instead.

 

insomniac

 

Developers who prefer to go the middleware route say that it allows them to reduce the risk and cost of creating games while speeding up the development process. Those on the opposite side of the debate argues that using someone else's technology actually increases the risk that a game will run into unexpected costs and potentially devastating delays.

 

Mike Acton and Andy Burke from Insomniac clearly feel strongly that it's in a company's best interests to build, not buy. Acton took the stage first to argue passionately against buying middleware. He began by explaining that "people say a lot of things about why they should use engine middleware," such as that it allows them to concentrate more on their core gameplay.

 

"That's a complete crock of sh*t," said Acton, who argued that what happens far more often is that instead of concentrating on the core gameplay, "you end up concentrating on figuring out how to use someone else's tech."

 

Using middleware also isn't the savings that many believe it to be, said Acton. It comes with hidden costs, such as the cost of delays if the tech doesn't quite do what you need it to and the cost of missed opportunities on platforms that don't get a great deal of support for that particular middleware.

 

Creating your own tech comes with a price, of course, but ultimately, the control it provides is well worth it."Who will be blamed if your game sucks?" asked Acton. "You will, because it's your responsibility to get a good game out."

 

Burke echoed Acton's comments, though he seemed to take a more practical view. Developers often purchase middleware hoping it will just drop in and perfectly suit their needs, he explained. "The problem is that off the shelf things never just drop in. It will always take far more investment than you think it will," he said.

 

He advised attendees considering buying middleware to think about how much work it will take them to get the technology to work the way they need it to. "In the end, it's your ship date that matters," said Burke.

 

 

EPIC

Mike Capps, unsurprisingly, came out to support the use of middleware. His company, Epic Games, licenses its Unreal engine to countless developers, including Activision, BioWare, Atari, and Midway. Taking the stage after Insomniac's passionate argument against buying tech, Capps joked "I'm clearly never going to license middleware again."

 

Standing in front of a slide that cheekily proclaimed "Licensing middleware is totally awesome!" Capps described the many ways in which middleware can make a developer's job easier. Cost is part of it -- "You can license tech for less than it costs to build"-- but more importantly, a developer that uses middleware can "just write to a spec and let the middle ware do the legwork," instead of worrying about how to code for different platforms.

 

Letting a purchased engine do the heavy lifting also gives developers the freedom to get started on the content immediately, "and we all know that in next-gen, content is king."

 

Capps also argued that middleware such as the Unreal engine, which has already been used time and again by a host of different companies in a wide variety of games, has been "battle tested" in a way that a company's in-house tech simply never could be.

 

Ubisoft

 

Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat opted not to vouch for either internally-made or licensed engines.

 

After showing a clip of Bambi set to music by Sarah McLachlan (and causing some head-scratching in the audience), he said his point was that even a 66-year-old movie, with its archaic technology, is still capable of eliciting emotion.

 

“Emotion isn’t directly linked to technology,” he said. “…Technology alone doesn’t sell. … Tech is important indeed, but its main role is to serve our creative talent.”

[Hot-Drake-Pixel]

BUILD FTW. It's gonna being freshness and satiate the creativity. Dev. cycles would be long to doubt but good things take time to come out.

 

For sequels with predecessors already availing middleware, it makes sense to go for it again.

[KnackChap]

sony requires all their first/second party teams to write game engines in C++ so they can share it between all thier worldwide studios, they also share a lot of other things

eg naughty dog was at insomniac studios helping them with some mo-cap and animation work for R2

insomniac has sent a few of their guys to media molecule to work at LBP

their cambridge studios has done nothing but help other studios getting the game run smoothly (HS) and half of the guys are working at Guerilla on killzone 2

(you can bet thaat whatever game cambridge makes next it going to look OMGWTFBBQ)

 

on UE3 tell me one game outside bioshock and epic's own productions(which itself had its share of problems btw) play smoothly without any problems

honestly if someone makes a montage video of gears, UT3, turok, army of 2 etc can an average casual gamer say that these clips are from 4-5 different games?? they all look so fcking similar

small game developers using middleware is not the problem but when EA and ubisoft use middleware engines instead of developing their own then you know its a sad day for gaming, ubisoft infact are still using UE2.5 for R6V2 and SC: conviction.