Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX
Often, when we meet other game developers and say that we use OpenGL for our game Overgrowth, we're met with stares of disbelief — why would anyone use OpenGL? DirectX is the future. When we tell graphics card representatives that we use OpenGL …
Context & Ripple Effects
Wolfire Games builds Overgrowth on OpenGL, a confirmed choice that puts it against the prevailing view among game developers and graphics card representatives — who told Wolfire outright that DirectX is the future — that Microsoft's API is where PC gaming is heading.
The post lands in an old argument: back in July 2007, coverage of the DX10-on-Windows-XP workaround already suggested Microsoft's tight coupling of new graphics features to new Windows versions was less absolute than it appeared. Wolfire's case is the developer-side version of that same friction — betting on the cross-platform API while the ecosystem default is the platform-bound one.
First-order effects
- Wolfire's OpenGL commitment keeps Overgrowth shippable beyond Windows alone, at the cost of fighting the perception among peers and card vendors that it made the wrong call.
- Graphics vendors whose representatives dismissed OpenGL now have a shipping customer whose experience depends directly on their OpenGL driver quality.
Second-order effects
- If more small studios follow Wolfire rather than accept the DirectX default, IHV engineering attention and driver investment get pulled toward OpenGL — a cost center they currently treat as secondary to DirectX.
- Engine and middleware vendors face a pricing question: bundling cross-platform OpenGL support widens their addressable market beyond Windows-only shops.
Third-order effects
- A credible indie-tier demonstration that the non-Microsoft API is workable weakens the assumption that Windows API exclusivity is self-sustaining, keeping pressure on the Khronos side of the API contest to modernize fast enough to hold defections.
- If the pattern holds, the industry splits into platform-locked AAA pipelines and cross-platform open-standard pipelines, with hardware vendors arbitraging both.
The trend: PC graphics is settling into a long-running contest between platform-bound APIs like DirectX and cross-platform open standards like OpenGL, with developer pragmatism — not vendor roadmaps — deciding which way each studio breaks.