[ryandrake]

(not in the game industry, but a graphics programmer)

Are there really no games out there that program their own graphics anymore and don’t rely on “middleware” engines? This seems shocking to me. Then again I was shocked the first time I learned that most games don’t hand-code assembly anymore. Things move so fast.

[pjmlp]

AAA studios always use middleware, if it isn't bought, it is done in-house.

The actual set of 3D API is a tiny portion of everything that a game engine requires, among scene management, materials handling, graphical editor, plugins, sound, physics,....

So one always ends up with a pluggable rendering layer, where adding a new API is relatively simple.

Now what has been happening is that with production costs skyrocketing, most studios are increasable adopting external middleware that they just adapt to their purposes than writing everything from scratch.

For example, you can get Unreal and get support for NVidia's raytracing features out of the box, or invest the money to develop the same features from scratch in-house.

The culture in the games industry is that what matters is the story, gameplay, taking advantage of hardware features and getting the game out there, tech comes and goes.