RenderWare: The Engine that Powered an Era | Retrohistories
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Published 2020-07-03
14/11: Apologies for the blurring on parts of the video. YouTube told me that I needed to anonymise somebody who appeared, but didn't identify which part was the issue! I had to use their automated tool to blur every detected face that wasn't pertinent to the story. I still don't know if that's enough, but if you're still in this video and don't want to be, please email me: [email protected], and I'll fix it.
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Footage:
Evolution of PlayStation
• Evolution of PlayStation: PlayStation 2
Unreal Engine 2004 tech demo
uploaded by alecTHElion
• Unreal engine 3 tech demo
Chinese Paladin 5 Prequel Gameplay - boss Battle Dragon (HD)
uploaded by Rangris
• Chinese Paladin 5 Prequel Gameplay - ...
Criterion Games new IP! - EA Conference - E3 2014 - Eurogamer
• Criterion Games new IP! - EA Conferen...
Working in Games: YGD visits EA Criterion Games
BAFTA Kids & Teens
• Working in Games: YGD visits EA Crite...
Just The Job – Video Game Sound Designer
Criterion Games
• Just The Job – Video Game Sound Designer
Working in Games: Environment Artist, EA and Criterion Games
BAFTA Kids & Teens
• Working in Games: Environment Artist,...
How to Make Games: EA Criterion (#3)
BAFTA Kids & Teens
• How to Make Games: EA Criterion (#3)
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
All Comments (21)
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Whenever something dies in the gaming industry, EA is somehow always behind it 😂
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Rendereware was unofficially called the PS2 devkit. I played countless rendereware games as a kid.
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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.
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Kudos to the developers who immediately saw through EA's lies.
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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.
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So this is why the 6th gen console era had a unique look
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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.
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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.
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I love how everyone collectively knows exactly where the story is going at 3:43.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That Jurassic Park scene has a real file manager called File System Navigator.
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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.
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Amazing video, thank you. I've worked in game dev industry since 2010 and wasn't even aware of the story. So that's why did RenderWare disappear. Similar sentiments hold true even today, with major AAA studios avoiding dependence on Epic's (otherwise wonderful) Unreal Engine 4.
