TOOLS NEWS| BUILD
But Havok’s offering remains one where Havok users can still pick and choose the elements they want to use? Absolutely, and we’re committed to maintaining that approach. So for someone who is interested in a full solution including all the middleware components and engine, we can now provide that for them. But if someone just wants Havok AI, Havok Physics or perhaps Havok Cloth, we make sure that they can have that. We’re not interested in providing a single-model solution. We want to put the choice in the hands of developers.
And in offering that range you’re still making your products available to smaller developers, as we discussed last year? There’s two ways we approach that. One is technical, and the other is business related. From the tech perspective, what we’re finding with studios working on more modest budgets is that they may not have the time to round out the gaps between individual middleware pieces they might have selected. Now they’re very interested in actually taking the full off-the-shelf engine that has all the components pre-integrated. It’s a great model for those teams. Adding the engine capabilities has been a really important step in increasing the accessibility of our middleware products for smaller teams. That’s been a very important step forward for us. The business angle is that we obviously
want to remain ahead of the changes in the industry, and we’ve seen huge changes at the moment, in terms of the range of team sizes producing high quality 3D content. So through things like our Strike program we’re
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really looking at business models that allow teams that aren’t necessarily at the triple-A end of the scale to have the ambition to make very exciting 3D titles.
It’s critical that engine technology
evolves to support the kind of gaming experience that potentially moves between platforms.
David Coghlan, Havok
Has positioning the Vision Engine as something of a hub that connects the Havok middleware elements in any way influenced you plans for further developing those tools? At six months in I think it’s had some small influence already, and I think as we go forward you’ll continue to see changes there. It gives us a really good reference case in the way our middleware components will be integrated together inside an engine solution, and that in turn can help inform developers of those products.
As the industry continues to change, the concept of a game engine will need to do the same. How do you see the core concept of the game engine evolving? There’s a number of exciting directions that we’re looking at. One is related to the range of high-end platforms there are today. The gap
between a high-end console and a handheld is narrowing, and as that continues the things we expect to be possible across a diverse range of platforms is very exciting. It’s critical that engine and middleware technology evolve to support the kind of gaming experience that potentially moves between platforms. We’re very focused there.
Now that you are both an engine and middleware company, you’ve broadened Havok’s scope. How far do you take that expansion? How do you choose what not to tackle next, in terms of games tech? I think we feel, in terms of our solution set now, it’s a pretty complete offering. And then when you consider the range of integrations into third party middleware Havok provides, that’s even more the case. We’re certainly keeping those channels open. Deals like that we share with Autodesk for
ScaleForm and Beast integrations now apply to the Vision Engine. The Vision Engine even integrates with
some technologies that could be seen as somewhat competing with our existing products, but we’re really determined that we don’t limit developer choice there. We’re customer lead in that regard. But I do feel that Havok is a position to offer a solution in which it is entirely feasible to build a game of absolutely any scale from a budget iOS title up to something like a cutting edge console title. Looking ahead, the breadth of what we
offer is now pretty complete, so in the future it’s about continued innovation in the areas we cover.
www.havok.com
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