To paraphrase a description I rather liked, a game engine is a system of systems (from Jeff Plumber’s master’s thesis, which has been passed around and discussed quite a bit on software development forums like gamedev.net and ogre3d.org). Now, the word system has serveral meanings, but the interpretation I use is the mathematical one where a system is essentially a “collection of things.” By that interpretation, a game engine is a collection of collections of things. A game engine is a collection of software components that collaborate to produce the experience of a game.

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