Crytek's CryEngine in UK classrooms

Students of video game design in the United Kingdom should be doing back flips after hearing that Crytek is donating their CryEngine free of charge to all universities in the country. CryEngine is most famously known as the graphics engine behind visually stunning titles such as Crysis and Aion.

This is really big news because only the priciest universities tend to license high quality software for their students to learn on. They're the only ones that can afford it. It's also great for students to dream up pie in the sky concepts for games, but knowing what's practical in the real world is essential. "Universities are looking to foster creativity and send people out into the industry who have lots of ideas, but it's also about that practical hands-on training so that they know what the limitations are," says Managing Director of Crytek UK Karl Hilton. "It's very easy for students to come out of the academic world and not have a grasp on the realities of making a video game."

We hope more MMOs are released with CryEngine due to its stellar performance and scalability and it would be great if other graphics engine companies followed suit to increase the options in our genre.