"The technical specification documents were sent to all registered developers last month. The core rendering pipeline, physics system interfaces, and audio modules have all been completely reconstructed. The cross-platform compilation channel is now fully open. You can start writing games right now."
With that, Carmack tossed his page-turner onto the podium with a crisp thud and strode off the stage.
The entire presentation had lasted less than two minutes.
The media and company representatives in the audience froze for a full five seconds.
Then, with a thunderous boom, the entire venue erupted in a roof-shaking wave of applause and cheers!
Reporters David and Paul, seated in the third row, felt their eardrums numb from the sheer volume of the sound.
Paul's camera shutter clicked rapidly, the sound of the film advancing nearly inaudible amidst the frenzied applause.
"My God! This guy doesn't even say a single polite word. Who does he think he is? The Savior?!" Paul roared in agitation as he expertly changed the film.
David didn't even look up. His pen scratched furiously across the paper, his wrist trembling.
"He's not playing nice! UE 1.0 is a nuclear bomb dropped on the entire game industry!"
David flipped to the first few pages of his notebook. Pasted there were photocopies of the UE 1.0 technical specifications he'd obtained early through an informant, now covered in red circles.
"The pricing model completely disrupts the commercial logic! Zero upfront licensing fees—whether you're tinkering in a garage or a basement for how long, the Foundation won't charge a single cent! They only take a percentage cut after you hit a certain sales threshold. And the Asset Store is even more terrifying!" David jabbed his pen hard at several bolded words on the page.
Paul leaned in, his eyes wide.
"Art resource producers can list high-res textures, 3D models, and skeletal animations directly for sale in the store. Programmers can package and sell small, pre-written functional plugins, like water rendering or particle effects. They can even take custom orders!" David explained the commercial framework, his words coming out like a machine gun.
Paul gasped. As an industry veteran, he instantly grasped the horrifying implications hidden beneath the surface.
"This means... a ragtag crew of just three or five people, without needing to support dozens of high-paid artists or wrestle with complex, obscure low-level code, could spend a little money on off-the-shelf assets and plugins, and piece together a stunningly high-fidelity 3D game like they were playing with LEGOs?!"
That was precisely the case.
After the minimalist opening ceremony on the main stage concluded, the crowds began to flow like a tide into the various pavilions.
Instead of returning to Sega's massive, opulent main booth to supervise, Oguchi Hisao led a few assistants straight to the South Wing Pavilion—a remote location where the air conditioning barely reached.
This was the area designated by the organizers for small-to-medium developers and indie studios.
At last year's E3, this place had been a flea market for 2D games, teeming with crude pixel art and simplistic side-scrolling gameplay. Back then, developers had to rely on a few poorly drawn concept sketches and a silver tongue to bluff their way into funding from blind investors.
But this year, the situation had completely changed.
The moment Oguchi Hisao stepped into the South Wing Pavilion, he sensed something was off.
The place was buzzing like a chaotic wet market.
On every single low-quality CRT monitor, stunning 3D graphics were running.
A French studio's booth, run by a team of just four, was swarmed by a dense crowd, people packed three deep.
On the screen, a knight in heavy medieval armor was locked in a brutal skirmish with several grotesque goblins in a dim, damp dungeon.
The torchlight cast real-time shadows across the moss-covered stone walls. The physics were rock-solid—when weapons struck shields, tiny, realistic sparks even flew off.
"How the hell did you build this lighting system?! How many people could possibly have written this code?" a senior investor wearing an EA badge yelled from the front of the crowd, his eyes glued to the screen.
Behind the booth, the lead programmer—sporting a bird's nest of hair and dark circles that nearly reached his chin—clutched a half-eaten, cold slice of pizza, looking like he was on the verge of collapse.
"We didn't build it," the programmer mumbled, stuffing the pizza into his mouth. "We bought a fifty-dollar lighting plugin from the UE Asset Store and just tweaked the interface parameters to make it fit. And that goblin model? We paid a Japanese outsourcing team two hundred dollars for a custom asset with a full skeleton rig. Just called the data directly. Dirt cheap."
The EA investor swallowed hard, feeling his worldview shatter.
"How much did it cost to get this project off the ground?"
"Less than ten thousand US dollars. All spent on assets, rent, and pizza," the programmer replied, casually wiping the grease from his hands on his jeans. "We poured all our energy into combat mechanics and level design. The Chapter One demo is finished, and we need two hundred thousand US dollars in investment to complete the rest of the development. Will you sign the agreement? If not, there's a line of people waiting."
Without a word, the investor unzipped his briefcase, pulled out a letter of intent, and slapped it onto the flimsy folding table with a loud thwack.
"I'll sign! We'll discuss the details at my hotel this afternoon! Two hundred thousand isn't enough—I'll bump it to three hundred thousand!"
Oguchi Hisao watched this scene from the sidelines, a faint smile playing on his lips.
He turned and walked to the next booth.
The screen here displayed a real-time strategy game from a space perspective. Dozens of fully 3D-modeled interstellar warships wove through an asteroid belt, exchanging fire. Brilliant laser beams and stunning explosion effects intertwined, creating a visually arresting spectacle.
"So many units on screen, so many effects, and it's still holding a steady 30 FPS? Did gods do your optimization?" A Ubisoft scout pushed up his glasses, his face a mask of disbelief. He felt as if the million-dollar programmers at his own company were completely useless.
"The low-level multithreaded scheduling is built into the UE Engine. We only wrote the high-level AI logic and pathfinding algorithms," the developer explained, a chubby man in thick-rimmed glasses, deftly operating the mouse as he spoke. "The ship textures are from a general asset pack we bought on the Asset Store—a hundred high-res metal textures for five dollars. We just tweaked the hue slightly to differentiate the factions. It's incredibly cost-effective."
The Ubisoft scout immediately drew a business card from his holder and presented it with both hands.
"We are extremely interested in this project! If you switch to a Ubisoft exclusive, we can provide 500,000 in immediate development funding and station our most professional QA team to help you test! Please, you must consider us!"
Across the entire South Wing Pavilion, this kind of frantic talent-snatching was happening everywhere.
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