The New Magic Word

Last week, Epic Games made a pretty big splash announcing the "UDK" or Unreal Development Kit. UDK is based on the *very expensive* Unreal Engine 3, the most dominant game engine in the big budget console games space. There's been a lot of hyperbolic talk about how this is an "end of days" development for Torque and our friendly Copenhagen competitors, Unity. I want to take a while here to talk about what I think this means for Torque and where we fit in the competitive landscape.

When the announcement showed up, of course I immediately wanted to dig in and find out what was up. I took some time and looked at the license on the UDK site. Many people here downloaded the UDK to play around with it and see what was what. It turns out that the UDK is basically an up to date set of editors for Unreal Engine 3. There's no source code provided. Instead, as with modding, you can do scripting with Epic's Unrealscript. You can package your project for Windows only. There are docs online, but otherwise no dedicated support. So let's be clear. This is NOT Unreal Engine 3. That would kill a huge source of revenue (supported, source code licensing for PC and consoles) for Epic. It *is* a well-tested, rich set of editors for making stuff based on UE3 games or projects.

What's the license like for this? Well, Epic is slapping up the word FREE everywhere and who doesn't love something for FREE right? It's a magic word. The UDK website grants you (for free) a license to make non-commercial works. If you want to make money, or benefit indirectly somehow from using the UDK (think making a demo to advertise or sell something else or a company who wants to train employees with a simulation), you have to pay. The terms of making something commercial with the UDK are actually a bit murky because Epic does not post the license on their site or allow you to purchase a commercial license on thier site. Instead, they give you an email address to hit up and describe the terms of the license structure.

Pretty straightforward options! It would be nice to see the license, but assuming it's reasonable, sounds like a pretty fair deal. So what's the catch? How does Epic make money from this? They don't. Not really. This is a loss leader and an evangelism play and it really doesn't cost them much of anything to do. For years you've been able to spend $60 on Unreal Tournament, Gears of War, or other Unreal titles and use the provided editors to modify the game. You can do a lot with mods and people have created really cool stuff. Epic never monetized this practice before. Instead, they used it as a way to create longer tail sales for their games and to recruit new talent from the modder community. By offering the "UDK," Epic is taking the next step by letting people distribute Unreal mods without requiring ownership of the modded Unreal game.

In addition to formalizing what they've always done with the mod communities built around Unreal, Epic is likely to heavily monetize the inevitable step from UDK --> UE3. This is no small step and it will cost small teams as much as Epic can wring out of them, in addition to the 25% royalties they are already on the hook for. My guess is that it will be case by case, but it's guaranteed that most teams will run into barriers not having access to the engine source, just as they do with other binary-only engines.

I'm not going to dismiss this move by Epic. It matters. Here's why...

#1: It's Epic (no pun intended). They are an absolute behemoth in the games industry. They've absolutely demolished all competitors in the AAA console engine space for the last 5 years, essentially since EA acquired Criterion, makers of Renderware, and stopped licensing it to 3rd parties. They have an established business selling very expensive (think 6-7 figures, depending on the royalty rate) licenses for big budget console games and now, they've decided they want indies, amateurs, and hobbyists to use their product too. That's a pretty decent market disturbance.

#2: It's validation. When I wrote about the hyper-competitive, well-served big budget AAA space while discussing the pricing and licensing of Torque 3D back in January, I noted that the AAA middleware market hasn't grown much in the last decade and it continues to be a pretty fixed size market. At the same time, the space Torque and Unity occupy (better accessibility and opportunity via lower licensing costs and more attractive platforms) has grown tremendously. This community here grows by hundreds of users every week. A larger portion of the games industry as a whole is moving away from stagnant AAA console games and targeting super-fast growing platforms like the iPhone, Facebook, and yes, even just regular PC online games. Clearly Epic must see something they like in these markets. They missed the boat on the Wii and they are probably struggling to maintain (let alone grow) revenues in the AAA console space. I'm not sure if this will be a long-lasting commitment on Epic's part, or simply a way to maximize the value of their current tech while the new stuff (UE4) is what they're going to start pushing to high-end clients, right around the corner. Regardless, validation is nice.

#3: Now everyone can see behind the "AAA" curtain. We've been telling you for years that Torque is top-notch technology. We've said "it's documented up to, and in many cases well beyond the industry standard." Without being able to look at engines like Unreal, that's been a hard claim for you guys to verify. Now you can. Have a look at UDK. Look at the tools. Look at the docs. Test out the support. We think you'll find that Torque 3D stacks up very well in comparison, and all without the licensing burden of big royalties or high-cost access to source. Putting aside source though, it's worth answering the question:

What does Torque currently do better than Unreal?

Now, UDK has some things not currently in Torque in it's favor as well. Nice features like nav meshes for AI, improved animation tools, etc. are all on our roadmap, but not yet in Torque 3D, so we've still got plenty of work ahead of us to keep up and stay competitive.

We want to take Torque much further, allowing developers to unlock opportunities on the best emerging platforms. That's going to take continued work and investment in the product by us, but we run a pretty lean operation, we reinvest nearly every dollar you spend with us back into product development, and we are moving *super* fast.

'FREE' might just be the new SSAO

We realize that staying ahead of the curve on technology is just part of the equation. The licensing model we choose is important and we're paying attention to all this FREE stuff as much as the rest of you. We want to offer something at a very accessible price, or perhaps for FREE as a good entry to learning and using Torque 3D. Currently, our free option is a demo, limited by the number of objects you can place in your scene. This obviously isn't useful to create an entire game, but it does give you a good feel for what Torque 3D's tool set can do, given that it's not feature limited in any way other than not including the source code.

By comparison, UDK also gives you everything for free, no features limited by the free version other than the source code, but you cannot use it to make anything commercial without payment. The cost, at minimum, is $99 + 25% of your revenues (after $5k total). Unity strips a great deal of their features out of their free version. These can drastically handicap development for some teams, but there's no reason why you couldn't finish some games with it either. The license is liberal, so it's a good stepping stone to make your first game, solo, if you're willing to live with some of the feature limitations.




So where does Torque 3D fit in all of this? Our "Professional" version, which includes source code, access to beta builds, private forums, etc is just $1000 / seat. We don't currently have an option between this and our free demo, but we want one. I think the recent developments by Unity and Epic and all the new developers trying their hand at 3D games warrants a low-priced option for Torque 3D, as well.

At the end of September, when we released Torque 3D 1.0, I included a poll contemplating an full-featured, binary-only version of Torque 3D to go for $500 / seat. Though the results were overwhelmingly in favor of this option, I think we can do better. In the past, I've been really happy with the feedback you've given us making decisions like this, so I want to enlist your help again.

What should we do?
What would you be happy with?
What do you think would be best for the community the future of the product?
Do we want a more elite, experienced community of programmers here?
Do we want to create a more balanced mix of great artists too?

I have my instincts on these questions, and we've discussed them a great deal internally, but I've always come back to this community as one of the big reasons to choose Torque for a new developer. It's one of kind and I want to keep it together and help it grow as much as possible. That won't happen if we don't have a competitive offering in Torque. This means we need enough income to feed the developers and keep the product blazing ahead full speed. But at the same time, if every new beginner cuts their teeth on UDK or Unity because they have viable free option and Torque doesn't, well, I don't like the position that puts us in for the long run either.

So please, let us know what you think! I promise I'll listen and weigh all feedback carefully. I hope to make a decision on this by the end of the month, so let fly with the suggestions and opinions. It's all welcome.