On the one hand, I agree: a truly motivated Developer could certainly rewrite much of the Engine and author their content to make their game stand out from all the other UE3 games.

On the other hand, the way the Engine is marketed and the way many Developers use the Engine are the reasons why articles such as this ring so true. I will cover each point in turn.

It appears that Epic’s goal with the UE3 Engine was to get it in the hands of EVERYONE, in order to make it the defacto standard. They put the Engine in the hands of students, mod developers, out-sourcers (often third-world) and indies for free (or very cheaply). These types of users are unlikely to change the engine one bit, and will develop for PC almost exclusively. Thus, the Games Industry is flooded with new employees and out-sourcers that are experienced and comfortable developing for UE3 as it is delivered, and not used to developing content that will necessarily work well on consoles (trusting the Engine to do that for them).

When UE3 was first available for licensing, Developers that bought it did so with the intention of creating great games. As the price of the Engine has come down, cheap employees experienced with it have become available, and Developers have become committed to the UE3 pipeline by using it on multiple titles (often across entire studios), the Engine has evolved into the “cheap & safe” way to create a game. This is especially true if you use it out-of-the-box with little modification – you won’t create new bugs or extend your schedule, and you minimize the use of expensive programmers (the way some of the code is written – partially complicated by the integration of a lot of 3rd party Middleware software – it is very risky to modify). The use of UE3 also makes Publishers more comfortable with picking up a title early in development from less-experienced Developers (who need it picked up early due to lack of resources), as the Engine is a known quantity that helps reduce risk. All of this works out great for Epic. Unfortunately, these practices also result in a lot of “Unreal Tournament” and “Gears of War” clones, in look and feel, for which Gamers are becoming dissatisfied. It also means that any UE3 weaknesses are propagated across most of the titles that use that Engine.

So my take is that “It IS the Engine…AND the lazy Developers!”.

Well, I don’t like that method because it only works if you have a laptop (which I don’t.)