ferratilis
Magister
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2019
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Every big game engine has an interesting origin story behind it: Ron Gilbert wrote SCUMM because he thought it would be a waste of time to make an engine for only one game so he made a modular one that could be expanded based on needs which was revolutionary at the time (and we know how many classics LucasArts released thanks to this, not to mention how revolutionary iMuse was at the time), 90% of Unreal was written by Tim Sweeney in an attempt to rival Doom and resulted in a game and engine that were way ahead of its time, so impressive in fact that even before it released a bunch of other projects were already using (Deus Ex being one of them). Doom and Quake engines have an entire book written about them, they spawned a genre and a subculture around it (with a bunch of interesting anecdotes along with it) while being installed on more computers than Windows. Some guys who worked on Windows 3.1 and left Microsoft licensed Quake engine to build their own, again revolutionizing gaming industry (for good or bad, depending on what you think about Half-Life). Infinity Engine shaped cRPGs in such a way that even 20 years later it's still being imitated, and two of the games made on IE are still the greatest RPGs ever made. The list goes on.
The lore behind Unity:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/17/how-unity-built-the-worlds-most-popular-game-engine/
The lore behind Unity:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/17/how-unity-built-the-worlds-most-popular-game-engine/
I couldn't copy the rest because it's a paid article, but you get the picture. It's a shitty origin story. I feel the only reason behind Unity's success is that it's free. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.Unity was founded in Copenhagen by Nicholas Francis, Joachim Ante, and David Helgason. Its story began on an OpenGL forum in May 2002, where Francis posted a call for collaborators on an open source shader-compiler (graphics tool) for the niche population of Mac-based game developers like himself. It was Ante, then a high school student in Berlin, who responded.
Ante complemented Francis’ focus on graphics and gameplay with an intuitive sense for back-end architecture. Because the game he was working on with another team wasn’t going anywhere, they collaborated on the shader part-time while each pursued their own game engine projects, but decided to combine forces upon meeting in-person. In a sprint to merge the codebases of their engines, they camped out in Helgason’s apartment for several days while he was out of town. The plan was to start a game studio grounded in robust tech infrastructure that could be licensed as well.
Helgason and Francis had worked together since high school, working on various web development ventures and even short-lived attempts at film production. Helgason dropped in and out of the University of Copenhagen while working as a freelance web developer. He provided help where he could and joined full-time after several months, selling his small stake in a web development firm to his partners.
According to Ante, Helgason was “good with people” and more business-oriented, so he took the CEO title after the trio failed to find a more experienced person for the role. (It would be two years before Ante and Francis extended the co-founder title and a corresponding amount of equity to Helgason.)
They recruited a rotating cast to help them for free while prototyping a wide range of ideas. The diversity of ideas they pursued resulted in an engine that could handle a broad range of use cases. Commercializing the engine became a focus, as was coming up with a hit game that would show the engine off to its best advantage; for indie developers, having to reconstruct an engine with every new game idea was a pain point that, if solved, would enable more creative output.
Supported by their savings, a €25,000 investment from Ante’s father, and Helgason’s part-time job at a café, they pressed on for three years, incorporating in the second year (2004) with the name Over The Edge Entertainment.