RenderWare: The Engine that Powered an Era | Retrohistories

One of the first reusable game engines came from an unexpected quarter: a group of British software engineers working in the research arm of a Japanese camera company. You've probably seen their work without knowing it, and if it weren't for their engine, the PS2's game library would look a lot more barren.

 Footage:

Evolution of PlayStation

Unreal Engine 2004 tech demo
uploaded by alecTHElion

Chinese Paladin 5 Prequel Gameplay - boss Battle Dragon (HD)
uploaded by Rangris

Criterion Games new IP! - EA Conference - E3 2014 - Eurogamer

Working in Games: YGD visits EA Criterion Games
BAFTA Kids & Teens

Just The Job – Video Game Sound Designer
Criterion Games

Working in Games: Environment Artist, EA and Criterion Games
BAFTA Kids & Teens

How to Make Games: EA Criterion (#3)
BAFTA Kids & Teens

Photo of RenderWare founders courtesy of Mel Slater at UCL

Music from these game OSTs:

Burnout by Steve Emney and Stephen Root
Sub Culture by Versatile
Airblade by Steve Emney and Stephen Root

[ebrahimkakhi]

Whenever something dies in the gaming industry, EA is somehow always behind it 😂

[LowSpecGamer]

Thinking of the recent blunders at EA over Frostbite it is interesting to think about how long EA has been trying to find its unified Engine all of its studios can use... and how many times they have failed!

[Aboveup]

The second EA entered the story, it became too clear to see how it would end up. They really do have a tendency to push companies to a breaking point, and then actually break and discard them once they've stopped being immediately profitable. It makes sense from a cold business perspective, but it doesn't make it any less sad to see how many times it's transpired. Had no idea it even went so far as an entire game engine though.

[colderplasma]

Ex-Frostbite engineer here, yes RW lost to UE3, but their engineers were also absorbed by Frostbite which became the dominant in-house engine. A lot of animosity about the decision to effectively kill RW still exists from ex-RW engineers to this day. A lot of tech was also absorbed by Frostbite too, so RW lives on to some degree, a lot of its code is still within Frostbite.

[izzyhopeunlisted]

Renderware was originally made by CANON. Like the Canon that makes dslr's and cameras Canon, THAT! Canon. Now that's super surprising to me.

[JomasterTheSecond]

Shoutouts to Bloody Roar 4, the game that accidentally left an entire copy of the Renderware SDK on the disc so people could just straight up use it for their own nefarious purposes.

[agnel]

Rendereware was unofficially called the PS2 devkit.
I played countless rendereware games as a kid.

[ImAltair]

Sort of unrelated little fun fact: Sean Murray, the No Man's Sky lead director, was the Technical Lead of Black, and Technical Director of Burnout 3.

[mediocreman]

3:43 – “And in mid 2004, *Electronic Arts* bought the company …”
_The very moment_ I heard this, I already knew it would end badly. The rest [of the video] was just confirmation.

[Pesthuf]

Kudos to the developers who *immediately* saw through EA's lies.

[ikagura]

So this is why the 6th gen console era had a unique look

[MasonFowlkesKenneth]

A lot of mod teams are still using Renderware. We're even trying to remap all of GTA VC to make a Back to the Future mod, with new textures, models, animations.. pretty much a whole new game! Renderware may be gone from major studio development, but indie teams and mods are still running ye' old' engine to this day.

[blakegriplingph]

_Grand Theft Auto_ arguably popularised RenderWare at least in terms of modding, as most of the tools for manipulating RenderWare models were made with GTA in mind, and much of the research done on it was done by the GTA community.

[dingus_maximus]

I love how everyone collectively knows exactly where the story is going at 3:43.

[ocass]

I only ever knew Criterion for Burnout and the 2010 and 2012 Need for Speed games, so hearing about their early history was fascinating. I'm glad you waited till about the midway point before revealing the company's identity, it made for a somewhat mindblowing reveal. Good video.

[RockYeahh]

This was brlliant. It is tragic that EA wiped out Renderware. It was all too familar hearing that EA wanted to make Renderware the default engine for all of it's studios. They said the same about the Frostbite engine years later but have since given up on that too. These ideas are always brought up by executives that don't understand the need to train studios to use them. They'd need to expand massively to support so many studios with one game engine team and EA has never been capable of something like that.

[SentientHoodii]

video game documentaries voiced over by guys who sound bored and enthused at the same time are a niche I can't get enough of.

[TKsh]

Looks like EA, even as when they were more respected as game devs and producers, had a lot of mistrust from others. At the time, we as consumers would laugh at this silly idea, but it turned to be true nowadays.

[kuraiwolf]

Still got an old 2003/2004 copy of renderware. Kept it backed up from an old workstation I used to have. Along with a shit load of various console and handheld SDKs.

[syntaxerorr]

That Jurassic Park scene has a real file manager called File System Navigator.