Introduction

W hen I got my first game console in 1979—a way-cool Intellivision system by Mattel—the term “game engine” did not exist. Back then, video and arcade games were considered by most adults to be nothing more than toys, and the software that made them tick was highly specialized to both the game in question and the hardware on which it ran. Today, games are a multi-billion-dollar mainstream industry rivaling Hollywood in size and popularity. And the software that drives these now-ubiquitous three-dimensional worlds— game engines like Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5, Valve's Source 2 engine, Crytek's CRYENGINE® 3, Electronic Arts DICE's Frostbite™ engine, and the Unity game engine—have become fully featured reusable software development kits that can be licensed and used to build almost any game imaginable.