Almost every gamer is aware that modern video games run on things called “engines,” large pieces of generalized code that handle a game’s technical underpinnings. And many of those people further understand that an engine is comprised of many constituent pieces and parts which may be grafted on, swapped out, or rewritten so as to better meet the needs of the game in development. After that, though, we’re in the land of assumption and conjecture. A group of people somehow became convinced that using the Unreal engine led to good art, resulting in previews that state things like, “the game is shaping up nicely in the visual department thanks to the Unreal Engine 3.0,” and thus the idea that specific technologies somehow inexorably lead to graphical fidelity became ever more fixed in everyone’s minds— to the point that a reviewer sometimes expresses genuine surprise when a game that doesn’t actually look very good is based around Unreal technology. I don’t mean to pick solely on one engine, though, no matter how well-marketed: we can also read that Quantum of Solace looks good because it uses the Call of Duty 4 engine, or that Left 4 Dead makes the best of what it can of Valve’s Source technology, despite the fact that it is allegedly “getting a little long in the tooth”.