Bethesda Softworks - Ashley Cheng Interview

We used to hear more of Ashley Cheng than we do now but the Bethblog is pointing out an interview with the production director at GameObserver.  The questions are general and spend quite a bit of time on their choice of engine:

GameObserver: After Oblivion, what made you guys decide to reuse the Gamebryo engine for Fallout 3?

Ashley Cheng: Gamebryo allowed us to get up and running very quickly with Morrowind. Since then, we’ve taken this core technology and added new features on top of it. We’ve actually had the guys at Gamebryo come to us, and ask if we would be interested in a particular shader or feature, only to turn them down and say, sorry, but we’ve already written our own version. With each new project, we scope how much time we have and decide which systems to upgrade. A major reason many projects are delayed or never ship is because the developers decide to start from scratch. Games these days cost way too much for that kind of reboot. For most programmers, it’s easier to write new code than to read old code -- it takes a lot of discipline to selectively upgrade parts of your technology and to maintain others.