foreword

In the development of modern commercial games, the "game engine" is almost the foundation. For the sake of efficient and convenient game development, many developers will choose to use mature commercial engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine.

According to reports from netizens on the Reddit forum, Russia is currently facing sanctions from the West in various aspects, including the cultural field. Practitioners in the Russian IT industry believe that video games are currently one of the cultural carriers that young people are most willing to accept. It is impossible for Russia to abandon this cultural highland.

to report

But recently, the Russian "Kommersant" published a report, saying that due to the current objective situation, in order to avoid being unable to use commercial engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine in the future, Russian IT developers have begun to discuss self-development with the Ministry of Digital Development. engine possibility.

According to reports, this discussion was supervised by the deputy minister of the Ministry of Digital Development of Russia, Максим Паршин, and has reached a preliminary conclusion that the project may require years of development and billions of rubles in investment, but it does exist.

The reason why self-developed engines are developed imminently is directly related to the difficulty of game engine development.

At present, a mature game engine can basically be said to be a set of development tools with a large number of interfaces and rich components. It requires developers to have certain attainments in project architecture, software development, database management, and graphics science.

interpret

The Russian version of the game engine: an important and urgent task

Affected by rounds of economic sanctions from the West, in addition to the disconnection of the international payment system and the resulting financial problems, many game development-related software vendors have announced a cutoff of supply, which has also profoundly affected the normal operation of the Russian game industry.

On March 7, Unity CEO John Riccitiello said that it would suspend cooperation with some developers, advertisers and publishers with ties to Russia. At almost the same time, Epic also announced on Twitter that it would stop business dealings with Russia.

Under tremendous pressure from the U.S. government and public opinion, these two mainstream engine manufacturers have successively announced the cessation of business ties with Russia, which obviously touched the lifeline of the local game industry and dealt a serious blow to Russian game developers.

Citing a previous report from Russian media: About 65.3% of practitioners in Russia use the Unity engine, 8.3% use Unreal Engine 4, and 6.3% use both, which also means that nearly 80% of Russians use the Unity engine. of developers use both engines.

In the self-developed engine evaluation, it is expected to receive support of 6 billion rubles

As we all know, Russia's plan to strengthen "digital sovereignty" has a long history. And the idea of a state-backed game development engine has moved apace since it was floated in late May.

On May 18, the need to develop a Russian game engine was first raised during a closed-door meeting between officials of the presidential palace and game industry representatives. Relevant persons emphasized that currently game practitioners mainly develop on Unreal Engine and Unity abroad, but with the escalation of sanctions in the future, developers' access to them may be restricted.

In June, Russian Duma MP Anton Gorelkin wrote on his Telegram channel that he had sent a proposal to the Ministry of Digital Development to discuss the creation of game engine mechanisms with relevant market players.

However, sources close to the discussions on the new initiative said it had been difficult to evaluate the project so far. "We are planning to bring the developers together and gather a rough terms of reference from them to understand the scope and duration of the work."

Another source close to the government said the possibility of using RFRIT funding to support the project was being considered. But the fund revealed that, so far, no applications have been received to support such projects.

In this regard, Dina Gaizatullina, deputy general manager of Innotech, has confirmed that "through valid application documents, and taking into account the requirements of the grant competition", it is possible to obtain national support for the development of self-developed game engines from RFRIT and similar funds.

But he also pointed out that the RFRIT allocation "for the development of domestic IT solutions" is usually 200-500 million rubles (about 23 million-59 million yuan), and only for particularly important projects can it get up to 6 billion Ruble (about 700 million yuan). Therefore, at present, it is necessary to prove that the self-developed game engine meets the priority of support in order to obtain high funding.

Making an engine is not just a matter of spending money.

It should be pointed out that even with the support of the state, the participation of local giants, and the investment of massive funds, it is still not easy to build a Russian version of the game development engine from scratch.

Local experts said that the development of game engines requires cooperation with graphics card manufacturers for optimization and adaptation. However, it is still unknown whether the two mainstream manufacturers Nvidia and AMD, which have officially left Russia, are willing to cooperate. Especially in the case of global economic sanctions, they obviously cannot support the adaptation of the new engine to the greatest extent.

Taking a step back, the reason why Unity and Unreal Engine are favored by developers around the world is largely due to their strong background of years of development, that is, they have a huge ecological industry and a mature and complete tool chain. From this point of view, the Russian self-developed game engine developed from scratch will inevitably encounter huge difficulties in the future.

A producer at a major game studio admits: "Despite the long time and high cost, it is still possible to create your own engine." But no matter how much money is invested, it is impossible to build a Russian game engine from scratch in a short time. Keep pace with the two mainstream engines that have accumulated for many years. "So the main question for the government is: is it prepared to invest billions of rubles over many years in developing and improving the ecosystem?"

In addition, Sergei Matusevich, director of network technology development of Artezio, specifically mentioned the difficulty of training relevant engine technical personnel in the future.

In his view, since many games on the market are developed based on Unreal Engine and Unity, the value of such developers is often relatively high. Therefore, a key question needs to be considered. After the new engine appears, how many developers are willing to abandon mainstream tools and spend extra time learning.

In any case, the birth of Russia's self-developed game engine and its real growth to compete with the two giants are obviously not a trivial matter. Especially with severe sanctions and isolation from other external partners, the process will become more difficult.

But what is certain is that the Russian game industry will have to face these difficult challenges in order to survive the long night.

other voices

The Polish game website XGP stated that even though this proposal has the support of the government, there are still many difficulties in the actual implementation process. First, game developers need to build a game engine from scratch. In stark contrast, Unity and Unreal have formed a highly mature ecosystem, providing a wealth of modules and integrations that meet production needs.

Some experts said that the game engine needs to cooperate with graphics card manufacturers to optimize and adapt. It is still unknown whether Nvidia and AMD are willing to cooperate. In addition, Unity and Unreal Engine have been developed for many years and have a huge ecological industry and tool chain. If the engine independently developed by Russia starts from scratch Research and development may encounter many difficulties.

Interpretation of "Russia discusses self-developed game engine"