I used to work at epic on UE3 and can say that there's a LOT of engineering and considerations that go into keeping the engine flexible and usable for so many different types of games.<p>As a programmer on UE3, part of my job was spent responding to licensee questions on mailing lists (usually within a fixed timeframe), looking into bugs that held up QA'd releases (once a month code drops to licensees). Epic really does take the concerns of its licensees seriously. The idea is that helping licensees ship successful games using UE3 can only help Epic's business and image.<p>Also, one of UE3's biggest sell points was the tools. The tools are what helps get UE3 in the door over other tech. UnrealEd was designed to be WYSWIG and to help artists create as much content as possible with programmer intervention. Massive parallelization of teams is what helps save cash and ship games quickly this gen. However it's really up to the licensee to use the tech to its fullest. Many teams just take our demo tech and modify it a bit to meet their needs. The business reasons for doing this are obvious (ship fast!), but it's not really indicative of what the engine is fully capable of.
Great comment. Instantly reminded me of Lewis CK's “Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy” video (<a href="http://www.hulu.com/watch/60634/late-night-with-conan-obrien-everythings-amazing-nobodys-happy" rel="nofollow">http://www.hulu.com/watch/60634/late-night-with-conan-obrien...</a>).
Great comment and speaks highly of HN for highlighting it as something worthy of note.<p>I think all comments, everywhere, deserve their own proper URL. Any takers?