Game engine can be understood as the SaaS cloud service of the game industry. If you want to do games, you can directly use the existing written application to do a lot of programming work such as image scenes, animation and sound effects. Of course, you can also develop it yourself. This application is the game engine.

The choice of cloud service or self-research has both advantages and disadvantages. First of all, the use of existing engines can save resources for self-development, but it also takes time to learn existing engines, and some personalized settings may not be realized; but self-research will certainly best meet your own needs, but development requires manpower and material resources. Therefore, for the sake of cost saving, shortening cycle and reducing risk, many small and medium-sized game developers will choose to use the existing engines for development.

Game engine business model can be similar to the current fast-growing cloud services, your company wants human resources management software, but do not want to develop, then you can directly use Kingdee or Saifu. But human resource management software may not make much sense to some small companies, but game engines are crucial to game development.

First, why game engines are important

Game engines usually include: rendering engines, such as whether your game is 2D or 3D, need to choose the corresponding image engine; while physics engine, simply copy the real "Apple Inc to fall to the ground" in the game, rather than fly to the sky. The FIFA series produced by EA was famous for physical collision engines at that time. Of course, it also includes: collision detection system, sound effects, script engine, computer animation, artificial intelligence, network engine, scene management and so on.

In fact, the game engine aggregates all the resources in the game, which is simpler: game = engine (program code) + resources (image, sound, etc.). The whole process of game developers, just like DJ, uses the engine-mixer to mix all kinds of resources-all kinds of songs together.

Therefore, the game engine is very important in the development process.

Second, the first-generation engine is a masterpiece, which leads the development of the industry.

In fact, the earliest game development is not a game engine, but with the accumulation of time, we found that a lot of work is repetitive, if developers copy and paste these work, then the work is very easy to produce Bug, greatly reducing the efficiency of development. So they specially extracted this part of the repetitive work and gathered the code into a project library, similar to the modular production of the manufacturing industry. with the accumulation of code and the increase of modules, the game engine was born.

Therefore, many game engines are accompanied by a well-known work, and the whole game world, some well-known engines may directly create an era.

1. The indisputable illusory engine

Unreal, Unreal engine, developed by Epic funded by Tencent, is the most famous game engine in the world and the most widely licensed game engine, accounting for 80% of the global market share of commercial game engines. It can be seen that Tencent's investment vision is very ruthless.

The illusory engine is characterized by easy to understand and extremely easy to use. The well-known masterpieces such as PUBG, War Machine and biochemical Raiders are all built with illusory engines, and he has played a key role in promoting this game console and 3D games. At present, the latest Unreal 5 has been demonstrated on a real machine, introducing two new technologies: one is the rendering technology Nanite, which can directly display ultra-high-precision models at the film and television level in the game, and the other is dynamic global illumination technology Lumen, which is similar to ray tracing.

Illusory 5 can be said to show how powerful the game screen can evolve, and it may lead the development direction of the next era when a new generation of mainframe is about to come out.

2. Squeeze dry performance Cry Engine to teach you what picture quality is.

When it comes to this engine, we have to mention the "isolated island crisis" series, which is a transcendental work of the engine, known as the "graphics card crisis". It is precisely because of the emergence of Cry Engine that the hardware performance is drained directly, and it is its emergence that the gaming industry knows what is meant by "picture quality". Fine graphics and texture technology, top-notch lighting technology. At that time, I could run the "isolated island crisis", and that was a good computer.

3. Surpass the Frost engine of Special effects

Frost engine is a 3D game engine designed by Sweden's DICE Game Studio for the famous "Battlefield" series. It is characterized by that it is difficult to control, but the effect produced is absolutely top-notch, with super-large maps, destructive effects, HDR sound effects, beyond the quality of blockbusters, "Need for Speed", "Longteng Century" and so on.

4. The legendary warrior of doom

Then there is the landmark Doom engine, which is made by game legend, father of FPS and now obsessed with rockets. Its predecessor "Q1 engine" was first written by John Carmack, then upgraded to "id Tech 2 engine" and then upgraded to "id Tech 3 engine" and "id Tech 4 engine". After the release of the game, he made the engine code public, and later manufacturers chose to disclose the code in the same way one after another, thus creating a colorful game world.

Of course, there is also a well-known game engine, and that is the Unity engine, which will be listed on the US stock market soon.

Third, the first game engine on the market

The Unity engine is famous for developing mobile games. "Arena of Valor", "Bao Ke Meng" and "tomorrow's Ark" are all developed through Unity, including this year's popular "Sugar Pea Man" and the "original God" under public trial. In 2019, more than half of the mobile, PC and console games were produced by Unity, while 53% of the top 1000 games of Apple Inc Mall and the Google Play platform also used the engine; as of the first half of this year, the Unity engine had 1.5 million active creators, more than 8000 games and applications were developed every month, and it was used on more than 20 platforms, with an average daily stock of more than 15000 projects.

And Unity can not only be used in game development, such as 3D model building for industrial design, VR/AR equipment content creation and film and television special effects production can also be used.

1. It can be used not only in game development, but also in industry and film industry.

60% of all VR and AR content in the world are driven by Unity, and its real-time rendering technology can be applied to automobile design, manufacturing personnel training, actual operation of manufacturing lines, self-driving simulation training, marketing and other aspects. Its customers include: Volvo, BMW, Rexa and so on.

Walt Disney Company's latest version of "the Lion King" is rendered in real time by Unity, and its development platform can provide filmmakers with modeling, layout, animation, lighting, visual effects, rendering, compositing, etc., from scene layout, picture post-processing, to the final video export, workers can complete the production of the film in the whole process in Unity.

It can be said that as long as the creation, interaction and operation of 3D content, including game development, art, architecture, car design, film and television production, can be realized by Unity.

2. A large amount of research and development is still at a loss.

At present, the revenue source of Unity mainly comes from two aspects: operation plan and development plan, the former is realized through advertising, and the latter relies on subscription to earn revenue. To put it simply, the revenue from the operating solution provides developers to develop with Unity free of charge, and their works, whether games or APP, will be realized through advertising or built-in fees. For example, Epic's Unreal engine used to share 5% of the total revenue of more than US $3000 per quarter, while the development solution is that Unity provides professional or enterprise versions of various engines, which are charged directly through customers' subscriptions. A small portion of the remaining revenue comes from strategic partners such as hardware manufacturers and mainframe manufacturers.

The company's revenue in 2018 and 2019 was $380 million and $540 million respectively, but due to a large amount of R & D and marketing investment, the company is still at a loss, with net losses of $130 million and $163 million in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

3. Mobile and VR will become a broader market

The shareholders of the company have famous Sequoia Capital, Silver Lake Capital and so on.

With the rapid development of current mobile PC games, especially in the next 10 to 15 years, AR, VR and MR will gradually land, providing a broader market space for Unity. It is expected that the company's business space will reach 16 billion US dollars by 2025. And industrial design, film and television production, education and other non-tourism areas of demand, will also provide impetus for the company's development, when the overall business space of Unity will exceed 29 billion US dollars, the market prospect is worth looking forward to.

Conclusion

Game engine can be said to be an important tool for game developers, and in the 3D era, game engine can not only do one thing of game development, but also open its development space in the field of film, television and VR.

With Unity's IPO,Epic illusory engine may not sit still, and if Epic once listed, Tencent may become the biggest winner.