The greatest 'feature' of Unreal Engine 5 = cutting costs?

[Adam Beckett]

Now, that it has been officially released, I read and hear a lot about the 'new' engine.

On the YouTube channels and user forum end one thing does not get mentioned enough - or at all.

The main thing about UE5 (or any Unreal engine iteration) is that it helps a lot cutting costs.

I am talking about professional game development of course. Professional studios. Big and small, who already have published games successfully on all kind of platforms.

That's why CD Project Red Witchers or Chrystal Dynamics are really switching to Unreal from their own engine.

It is much cheaper to 'just focus' on gameplay, design and assets, instead of having a whole 'engine team' of expensive senior engine programmers (which are more and more rare to find and expensive to keep around) having to build their own engine, maintain it, find new rookie programmers to teach them the specialties, so the 'old' programmers can retire eventually.

On top, many studios are having to build their own tools and that also means teach everyone using those.

Instead, since the "Unreal Engine" has become 'free', it is something literally everyone can download and learn to use. Universities teach it. Any CV you show to another game company having "Unreal Engine Experience" helps you to get hired - as a designer, asset creator, even programmer.

It has become a 'common language' with it's increased popularity.

But leaving the low-level code to the Unreal people also means depending on THEM to do the 'innovations' (Lumen, Nanite, etc ...) instead innovating yourself.

Studios are happily giving up on their 'freedom', working inside the limitations of Epic's sandbox, instead creating your own, for the simplicity it brings to the process.

It is easier to calculate the amount of work and length, when everyone is using the same - established framework. Using the same tools across all internal departments, studios (even 3rd party outsourced contractors) helps reducing complications, conversions between tools, failures..

Luckily, the UE engine and ecosystem is growing. Epic is buying companies to add more and more tools to it's SDK portfolio. Their realaitvely 'open' structure, allows independent devs to create and share own code and creations in their asset shop.

And the least talked about aspect - UI/UX workflow optimization - even the smallest, tiny change the Unreal UI/UX developers are implementing in the SDK can help reduce hundreds of manhours on any given project.

There is also a transparency to developing with the same tools. A developer gets sick. A colleague or contractor gets to step in. S/he can 'keep working' on any particular project with the least amount of additional training or hand-holding. Invaluable time saved.

On the non-professional or 'first-timers' user end, UE5 is more and more an 'all-in-one' SDK for smaller and Indie studios or solo devs to create things in much faster time, focusing on making the game, instead making assets for the game ... and then running out of steam, eventually.

Speaking of Steam, I truly hope, we - as consumers - are not getting flooded with more and more 'asset-swap' titles, since it has become even easier to buy pre-made modules, alter a tiny bit, and then 'publish' it on Steam. (Yes, I am afraid having to browse past 1000+ new 'multiplayer FPS' LYRA clones, based on Unreal's integrated playable mp fps example)

Seeing Unreal, Unity and other (free) game engines, competing in an open market, being accessible to everyone - professionals and non-professionals - is to me the single greatest development of the past decades in 'video games'. The 'democratization' of tools.

I remember when you had to pay for your text-editor, C/C++ Compiler, etc. Trying to create a 'video game' in the 1980s, you had to invest - a lot, even for the simplest things - as a solo dev. It was impossible to make a "PC Game' on your own. Trying to make a commercial game in the early 2000s, studios had to pay incredible amounts upfront for licenses alone.* You had to pay id and Epic 500k USD for a license to user their Quake3 or Unreal engines, on top of other licenses (Autodesk, Adobe, Macromedia, Visual Studio, Borland, Havok, etc, etc.) for 3D modelling, rigging, animation, painting, etc, etc.

{Crytek's Yerli brothers probably have a fun story to tell you about licensing software during the creation of Far Cry (1).]

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

the downside to that is a lot's of games tend to have the same feeling to them when they're made under the same engine.

there is a lot's of time where you can almost guess when a game is under the unreal engine just by looking at how colors are shadeds , how lights and shadows are drawn , how physics work.

a lot's of the games visual style partially come from their game engines.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Adam Beckett:

...
The main thing about UE5 (or any Unreal engine iteration) is that it helps a lot cutting costs.

I am talking about professional game development of course. Professional studios. Big and small, who already have published games successfully on all kind of platforms.
..

I can understand your enthusiasm, but that's really been a "thing" since UE1, Cryengine, and Unity first came out. (They were all listed on Steam for a very short while, too. Well, two out of three, IIRC. I don't think Cryengine made it.)

I'm eager to get a look at UE5.

A couple of highlights - It's got a heck of a lot more focus on team development stuffs. It's also got reported easier migration of UE4 projects to UE5. There's some more integration with online asset marketplaces and the like, too, which I'm not too sure about. (And, yeah, all the visual and design goodies and the like.)

[Fake]

CDPR's Red Engine is gorgeous, Cyberpunk 2077, Night City looks photorealistic.

Night City at night, right after a rain, will pull you in with how good it looks.