Part I. The Video Games Software Industry
5. Software Layers
5.3 The middleware
5.3.3 middleware and platforms
These middleware components offer the developer the most important feature allowing hardware abstraction: by referring to the intermediary layer of modulised middleware, interoperability and portability among platforms (at least among some of them, or among different hardware devices in the same platform) are guaranteed. This provides the final users with a wider selection of games for their favourite hardware, but gives the studios an incomparable advantage in terms of cost reduction and opportunity to enter different markets. In this perspective, the evolution of third party middleware can be taken into account when changes in the boundaries of platforms are analysed (Ballon 2009).
110 Other genres of games deal rather with realism on a large scale: e.g. flight simulators, and real time strategy games (RTSs).
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It must be underlined that the third party middleware producer environment is still changing fast. Successful companies, usually founded by a few brilliant young developers, which licence the core middleware portion of their software, are often bought by big studios or platform producers. Then they are either integrated into the buyer’s company structure to work in-house (as a first-party development entity) or kept as satellites dedicated to second party development. In general, survival as third-party independent development companies is directly connected to the success of the games their modules are built in.
In terms of the business model behind game engines distribution, it is worth mentioning that game engines are distributed under different types of licences. Basically engines divide into: i) free open source engines, generally distributed under a licence of the GPL (General Public Licence111) type together with the source code (along with the open source approach), ii) freeware engines, distributed freely but without the source code, and iii) commercial engines, which are proprietary engines distributed under
111 Please refer to the GNU organisation for detailed explanation about GPL licences: www.gnu.org/licenses/
gpl.html (last accessed: 12 December 2009).
the payment of a royalties or similar commercial contracts.
It is quite difficult to maintain an updated list of all the available middleware products for video games, due to the variety of tools and the rapidity with which new versions are released and need change, quickly making very well known tools obsolete.112
Moreover, although it is not useful to address the different platforms separately, as one of the most relevant characteristic of the middleware software layer is that it can be used across platforms, it could be useful to grasp the coverage of middleware solutions among platforms. Figure 19 shows the percentage of coverage by each platform for 212 middleware applications listed by GameMiddleWare.Org.
Of the 212 game middleware modules taken into account, 182 are portable on PC, and 154 on Xbox, Wii and PS consoles. The level of coverage is much lower for mobile applications (only
112 Among the attempts to maintain updated lists of game middleware, refer for example to the organization GameMiddleware.Org, available online at: http://
www.gamemiddleware.org/middleware (last accessed:
12 December 2009). Wikipedia also proposes a quite complete list of game engines, available online at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines (last accessed: 12 December 2009).
Figure 19: Platform coverage of middleware software models
Source: IPTS elaboration on information provided by GameMiddleWare.org (accessible online at: http://www.gamemiddleware.org/
(last accessed: 17 December 2009).
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Figure 20: Geographical distribution of middleware producers
Source: IPTS elaboration on information provided by GameMiddleWare.org (accessible online at: http://www.gamemiddleware.org/
(last accessed: 17 December 2009).
Table 10: Most common commercial core game engines
Company Name Product Name Country, year of foundation
Crytek GmbH CryENGINE Germany, 1999
Digital Extremes Evolution Engine US, 1993
Emergent Game Technologies Gamebryo US, 2002
Epic Games Unreal Engine US, 1991
Garage Games Torque US, 2000
Id Software idTech US, 1991
Terminal Reality Infernal Engine US, 1994
Trinigy Vision Germany
Unity Technologies Unity US
Valve Corporation Source Engine US, 1996
Vicious Cycle Software Vicious Engine US, 2000
Source: Elaboration on the list provided by DeLoura, 2009, available online at: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/
MarkDeLoura/20090302/581/The_Engine_Survey_General_results.php (last accessed: 12 December 2009).
14 modules work in the mobile environment, based on iPhone, Symbian, Palm, Brew), and for handheld consoles (24 modules serve for PSP and Nintendo DS handhelds). Figures confirm a major portability across PC and console platforms.
Though the landscape of third party development companies changes fast, a brief mention of the nationalities of the companies producing the selected 212 middleware
modules seems worthwhile. Figure 20 shows the distribution of companies among European Union countries, other countries and the United States.
Most middleware modules are produced in the United States, which provides 93 of the 212 analysed items, 43.9% of the total. The figure shows that 39.6% of modules are produced by companies based in one of the European
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Union countries. Of these 84 products, 22 were developed by companies in the UK, 19 by companies in France, 12 in Germany, 5 in the Netherlands, 4 in Ireland and 4 in Sweden.
35 items, or 16.5% of the total, come from other countries. 14 of these have been developed by firms in Canada.
The diffusion of middleware among studios is shown by a recent survey (DeLoura, 2009a and 2009b) of the top 11 middleware commercial products, most of which are in the core game engine segment, see Table 10.
The survey revealed that more than 80%
of the respondents were aware of 5 of the most common products listed (namely, Unreal, cryEngine, Torque, Gamebryo, Source). 60% of the respondents declared they had used Unreal.
Two German companies, Crytek and Trinigy appear behind the most popular core game engines.