Why the games industry needs a new engine

A modular game engine. Sounds like a good idea. Many years ago I was involved in a project to create free 3D animation software as a sort of "digital puppetry for the masses" thing. We licensed Unreal Engine 3 (as it was at the time), and our devs had a tricky time of taking it all apart to weave in our bits and pieces. Still, at least Epic's people were brilliant to deal with, really supportive.

Sadly, the project was sold on after a few years. But some early user-created videos are still floating around.

Here's one, made by a 16-year-old, that won a competition we ran (while the software was still in beta) to create a 90-second short (he added some effects with Sony Vegas, but we later had those capabilities within our product):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzgSdLhzX9Y

And here's another from one of our superusers, a fireman who used to make animated shorts while in the station waiting for overnight call-outs. This is him lobbying our devs for new features:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaytpRjYMKQ

Ah, such a fun project. Happy days ...