An Experience-based Comparison of Unity and Unreal for a Stand-alone 3D Game Development Course

Students' interest in game development often leads departments to attempt to put together a stand-alone game development course. We have used both Unity and Unreal for just such a course. Unity and Unreal are discussed here in the context of how viable they are and how they compare in terms of usefulness for teaching game development. We also present them in context of high level overviews of other game engines and discuss which factors add to a more effective game engine for teaching game development. This paper is intended to help answer some of the questions asked by those without experience in the field who find themselves developing stand-alone game development courses.