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Game engine companies?
There are several that specialise in making game engines but few that JUST make them. This is mainly because the best was to sell a game engine (probably the ONLY way) is to show people what it can do by making a game. Most of the top engines are sold by companies that make games as well (Q3 engine, UT, Criterion etc etc).
Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
I believe that NDL only makes the Netimmerse Engine, and doesn''t actually develop games for it. There was some good coverage of this engine in the last print issue of game developer magazine.
www.ndl.com
R.
www.ndl.com
R.
The economics of creating "development tools" like game engines is such that most companies eventually give it up.
If a game engine is marketed "after the fact" by a company who has already shipped a game with it (Quake, Unreal), then they are not basing their revenue stream solely on the sales of the engine. Instead, they are recouping development costs for something they had to create anyway. How successful this is depends a lot on the success of the original game, the "showcase" for the engine.
The problem is that some people see the multi-$100K licensing fees of engines like Quake and Unreal and mistakenly think that there is a real, large market for this kind of product.
The overall market for development tools is, obviously, developers. This is a large enough market to target quite well. Most Windows development tools, Visual Studio, Delphi, etc., do quite well because the market is (comparatively) large.
Game engines, however, can only target a very small segment of the developer market. After all, most developers do not actively make games. The largest segment by far is business-oriented development. The number of professional game developers probably numbers at most a few tens of thousands. And most of those are part of a team. One team per engine, even with a few multi-seat licenses doesn''t add up to a potentially large number of sales.
To make it worse, most teams aren''t interested in a "general purpose" engine. They have a particular type of game they are producing, and that is best served by a particular type of engine. And so the niche gets even smaller.
In fact, it looks pretty dismal.
So, to make money from selling an engine, you have to charge a fairly stiff licensing fee. But to actually get paid that stiff fee, you have to demonstrate the superiority of your solution versus one they could whip up in-house.
Catch-22? Probably. Unless, as I said before, you created the engine, not as something to sell by itself, but as something you needed anyway--and which your own success will cause other people to want it.
My thoughts on it, anyway.
DavidRM
Samu Games
If a game engine is marketed "after the fact" by a company who has already shipped a game with it (Quake, Unreal), then they are not basing their revenue stream solely on the sales of the engine. Instead, they are recouping development costs for something they had to create anyway. How successful this is depends a lot on the success of the original game, the "showcase" for the engine.
The problem is that some people see the multi-$100K licensing fees of engines like Quake and Unreal and mistakenly think that there is a real, large market for this kind of product.
The overall market for development tools is, obviously, developers. This is a large enough market to target quite well. Most Windows development tools, Visual Studio, Delphi, etc., do quite well because the market is (comparatively) large.
Game engines, however, can only target a very small segment of the developer market. After all, most developers do not actively make games. The largest segment by far is business-oriented development. The number of professional game developers probably numbers at most a few tens of thousands. And most of those are part of a team. One team per engine, even with a few multi-seat licenses doesn''t add up to a potentially large number of sales.
To make it worse, most teams aren''t interested in a "general purpose" engine. They have a particular type of game they are producing, and that is best served by a particular type of engine. And so the niche gets even smaller.
In fact, it looks pretty dismal.
So, to make money from selling an engine, you have to charge a fairly stiff licensing fee. But to actually get paid that stiff fee, you have to demonstrate the superiority of your solution versus one they could whip up in-house.
Catch-22? Probably. Unless, as I said before, you created the engine, not as something to sell by itself, but as something you needed anyway--and which your own success will cause other people to want it.
My thoughts on it, anyway.
DavidRM
Samu Games
Game engines are often used in non-entertainment applications as well, for example military, scientific modelling, architectural/engineering, etc.
quote: Original post by Tacit
Game engines are often used in non-entertainment applications as well, for example military, scientific modelling, architectural/engineering, etc.
Those aren''t game engines. Point to a notable architectural/engineering application that uses a game engine. Go on, I dare you.
Depends on how narrowly you want to define "architectural/engineering application", but the Unreal engine has been used to do architectural walkthrough apps. I don't know of any game engine being used for architectural design work but I know they've been used for visualization of existing work.
Just found a link:
http://www.unrealengine.com/engine/unrealty/
Edited by - Diragor on December 3, 2001 3:10:45 PM
Just found a link:
http://www.unrealengine.com/engine/unrealty/
Edited by - Diragor on December 3, 2001 3:10:45 PM
Jesus Crydee...relax! What are you an architect or something, insulted that someone might use something other than a CAD program to create a 3D virtual building?
All I meant was that game engines are often used for non-entertainment purposes. For example, the link that Diragor posted, while not a ''pure'' architectural app. shows one way in which the Unreal engine was used to help people visualize a 3D space. I know of other companies that have used it in this way as well.
Game engines can also be used for educational purposes. There is a project (I suppose you could _loosely_ refer to it as a game) I know of where the developer is using the Unreal engine as a medium to teach people about Kung Fu. I also know some architecture students who used a game engine (it might have been Quake 2) to recreate a Romanesque cathedral. They created the architecture in QEdit and used the engine to power a character moving around, to illustrate what it might have been like to actually walk through that cathedral in the late middle ages.
R.
All I meant was that game engines are often used for non-entertainment purposes. For example, the link that Diragor posted, while not a ''pure'' architectural app. shows one way in which the Unreal engine was used to help people visualize a 3D space. I know of other companies that have used it in this way as well.
Game engines can also be used for educational purposes. There is a project (I suppose you could _loosely_ refer to it as a game) I know of where the developer is using the Unreal engine as a medium to teach people about Kung Fu. I also know some architecture students who used a game engine (it might have been Quake 2) to recreate a Romanesque cathedral. They created the architecture in QEdit and used the engine to power a character moving around, to illustrate what it might have been like to actually walk through that cathedral in the late middle ages.
R.
Oh, and another thing, NDL (developers of the NetImmerse engine) lists this company among their clients.
http://www.eccic.com/home.html
And we''ve all heard of ''VR Quake'' and Rogue Spear being used for military training.
R.
http://www.eccic.com/home.html
And we''ve all heard of ''VR Quake'' and Rogue Spear being used for military training.
R.
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