choice of game technology decision graph

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David over at Wolfire Games put together a well crafted and executed piece on revisiting the dreaded “OpenGL vs. Direct3D” debates.

I think while these debates are great (and still important), the choice of graphics layer has almost been marginalized by the access provided by today’s hardware and OS solutions along with the tools available to us.

If you have a (download) product supporting both Mac and PC, then your fastest path to a release is most likely via OpenGL support. But your options for traveling that path are wide open, with the only constraints being your skill level as a developer, the budget you have and the time you have. Likewise as a web game developer, you’re still facing the same types of choices..(Flash vs. Shockwave vs. Java vs….)

And this comes down to your own personal choice as either the investor in a project, or the lead making the “final call”.

Every game technology works. Every choice of game library or creation package CAN help you succeed in producing your game. The question is what’s your decision graph?

For example, no matter how terrific a certain technology piece is (or how much money you have, or how much time you have), it might be a terrible choice for you and your team if the other 2 factors in that decision triangle are imbalanced.

What are your thoughts? What have you encountered in your own projects?

Tagged as: choosing, debate, directx, game technology, MAC, opengl, pc