Game Engine Marketing Models Compared

death00 writes: "GameDev has an interesting story about the success of Garage Games Torque engine (the engine behind Tribes 2). I especially find it interesting to see the number of developers working on high-quality games based on the Torque engine. The basic premise is that Garage Games gives a full license of the Torque engine to a team for a project for $100 USD per developer. The only caveat is that you must publish any finished works through Garage Games. Perhaps id software might consider doing this with the Quake III engine once the Doom III engine comes out. From my understanding, the Quake III engine currently licenses for significantly ($250,000 USD) more than that. Instead of waiting 2 more years and GPL'ing the full source, why not license it for cheap after Doom III comes out, then GPL later?"

Comments

Tribes 2 vs Quake III engine

[ShaggusMacHaggis]

Remember, the Torque engine is based on the Tribes 2 engine, but includes many more fixes and tweaks. IMHO, The Torque engine is right up there with Q3, and in some cases better. When is the last time you have seen the Q3 engine render true outdoor scenes, complete with terrian, and not enclosed in a "box"?

The torque engine also has amazing networking code. Even if you hated the Tribes games, they have always had the best networking code out of any multiplayer game out there.

GG have also been contracted out to finish the final Tribes 2 patch. Apparently they are getting something other than money in return for doing the patch. Perhaps rights to use certain code from the Tribes 2 engine (Sierra made them take out some code from Tribes 2).

Rumors are that GG has been contracted out to do the next Tribes PC game as well.

Bad Editorial

[DrVxD]

> From my understanding, the Quake III engine currently licenses for significantly ($250,000 USD) more than that
Either your understanding is incorrect, or you've misrepresented it. Unfortunatly, most of the posters here assumed you were correct. An overview of the license model can be found at id's website. It's actually a $250,000 gaurentee against 5% of wholesales. (You get much more than the license for that of course - you get all of id's developers for a day long Q&A session too). Alternatively, non-GPL projects can license Quake or Quake 2 for a flat fee of $10,000.