Godot, Phaser and PlayCanvas.
Virtual AI Corp is built on three game engines. All three are open source under the MIT licence, all three have been developed for more than ten years, and all three run straight in the browser with nothing to install. Below we explain why we use three, who made them, and what that means for a teaching tool that should be usable by thousands of students without the cost growing with each one of them.
You stand in the room — or look down on the whole floor
Godot is built for free movement in three dimensions. The student steers a first-person camera, walks up to the colleagues and holds the same AI-driven conversation as in the other simulations. When they need an overview, they switch view with a single key: the high walls disappear, and they see the whole office floor from above with every colleague in place. Both in the same map, without loading anything again. This is exactly what we are researching — what spatial presence adds to a decision simulation, and when you still need to take a step back.
See the Godot simulation →
Many colleagues, a quick overview
Phaser is the 2D engine our oldest simulations are built in, combined with Tiled for the layout of rooms and corridors. The student sees the whole floor from above and moves between the colleagues with the arrow keys. No camera to steer, no doors to find — they see at once who is there and how far away they sit.
That makes the engine well suited to a large cast: up to 25 AI-driven colleagues in one building without anyone disappearing behind a wall. It is also the most frugal of the three. Phaser automatically falls back from WebGL to plain canvas, so a room full of old school PCs keeps up — and this is still where the three established simulations run.
See the Phaser simulations →
The same room, without the engine in the luggage
PlayCanvas renders the same offices as Godot — the same rooms, the same furniture, the same colleagues in the same places. The difference is what the student has to download first: Godot ships a complete engine program of 39.5 MB that the browser has to start up, while PlayCanvas is written in the language the browser already speaks. The course responsible chooses the engine when the simulation is published, and can run the same scenario in both. That is how we can compare them on real content rather than on paper.
Who made PlayCanvas →Twenty-five years with three engines.
None of them was made for teaching. All three were made by small communities that needed a tool themselves, and shared because it was worth more to them that others could build on it. PlayCanvas is the newest of the three. For each of them we ask the same question before we build further on it: who made it, and will it last?
- 1999Milestone 1 of 27
Codenix is founded in Buenos Aires
Juan Linietsky and Ariel Manzur start their own studio in Argentina. They need an engine to make games in, and they cannot afford to license one.
Godot - 2001Milestone 2 of 27
Work begins, under the name “Larvotor”
The engine is code-named after a larva and licensed to other companies in Argentina. It is a working tool that pays the bills, not a product.
Godot - 2001–2013Milestone 3 of 27
Seven names in twelve years
Larvotor, Legacy, NG3D, Larvita, Larvita2, Larvita3 — and finally Godot. The name comes from Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”: the engine is never meant to be finished; there can always be one more feature.
Godot - 2000sMilestone 4 of 27
OKAM, Square Enix — and a country in crisis
Linietsky and Manzur join the studio OKAM, and the engine is used in commissions for several game companies, among them Square Enix. Linietsky has since pointed out that the work was held back by the political and economic instability in Argentina in those years. That is part of the reason it took thirteen years before the code was shared.
Godot - 2011 · 9 MayMilestone 5 of 27
PlayCanvas Ltd is founded in London
Will Eastcott (formerly Activision) and Dave Evans (formerly Sony) register the company in the same year WebGL becomes available in browsers. The plan is an engine built for the browser from the first line of code, not ported there afterwards.
PlayCanvas - 2012Milestone 6 of 27
The Editor opens in closed beta
The development tool is browser-based from the start: projects are stored in the cloud, and several people can edit the same scene at once. PlayCanvas presents itself as the world’s first cloud-based game development platform.
PlayCanvas - 2013 · 12 AprilMilestone 7 of 27
Phaser 0.5 is released
Richard Davey releases Phaser through his British studio Photon Storm. The aim is games that run straight in the browser, with no installation and no plug-ins.
Phaser - 2013 · 16 SeptemberMilestone 8 of 27
Phaser 1.0, with Pixi.js under the bonnet
The first stable version. Phaser chooses early on to support both WebGL and plain canvas, with automatic fallback. That is why our simulations run on old school PCs without a graphics card.
Phaser - 2014 · 14 JanuaryMilestone 9 of 27
Godot becomes open source
After thirteen years as a closed tool, the entire source code is published on GitHub under the MIT licence. Overnight, an internal tool at a small Argentinian studio becomes something anyone can build on.
Godot - 2014 · 4 JuneMilestone 10 of 27
The engine becomes open source
The runtime code is published on GitHub under the MIT licence, the same licence Godot chooses that year. The Editor itself — the tool you build in — remains PlayCanvas’s own property for now.
PlayCanvas - 2014 · 15 DecemberMilestone 11 of 27
Godot 1.0
The first official version after the project was opened up. A small Argentinian tool becomes something others can build on.
Godot - 2015 · 4 NovemberMilestone 12 of 27
Into the Software Freedom Conservancy
Godot gets a legal home. The project no longer depends on two people’s personal finances to be able to accept contributions.
Godot - 2016 · 23 FebruaryMilestone 13 of 27
Godot 2.0
The scene system that is still the core of the engine takes shape. This way of building rooms from reusable parts is what makes Illia’s offices possible for us.
Godot - 2016Milestone 14 of 27
Phaser 2 draws to a close
Version 2.6.2 becomes the last in the series. By then the framework is already used in thousands of browser games, and Davey begins planning a complete rewrite.
Phaser - 2017 · MayMilestone 15 of 27
Snap buys the company
Snap Inc., the owner of Snapchat, buys PlayCanvas and brings the technology into its own games effort. The engine code remains open and MIT-licensed, but the company behind it is now owned by a listed corporation, not a foundation.
PlayCanvas - 2018 · 29 JanuaryMilestone 16 of 27
Godot 3.0
A new renderer and much better 3D. Godot goes from being an option for enthusiasts to a real choice for production.
Godot - 2018 · 13 FebruaryMilestone 17 of 27
Phaser 3.0
Two weeks after Godot 3 comes Phaser 3, rewritten from scratch with a modular structure. Both projects take on the cost of a full rewrite rather than carrying old architecture with them.
Phaser - 2018 · 24 AprilMilestone 18 of 27
Engine 1.0
The first stable major version, six years after the closed beta. The API is now considered mature enough for backwards compatibility to be taken seriously, and the engine is already in production use by thousands of developers.
PlayCanvas - 2019 · 19 AugustMilestone 19 of 27
Phaser 4 is announced
Work on the next major version is announced. It will take almost seven years before it is out — a project with no quarterly report to answer to can take the time it needs.
Phaser - 2020Milestone 20 of 27
Epic Games gives 250,000 dollars
The company behind Unreal Engine supports a competitor. Godot is funded by donations, not licence income, and the donors get no ownership stake.
Godot - 2022 · NovemberMilestone 21 of 27
The Godot Foundation is established
The engine moves to its own non-profit foundation in the Netherlands. Development is now governed by an organisation with statutes, not by a company that can be sold.
Godot - 2023 · 1 MarchMilestone 22 of 27
Godot 4.0
A new graphics architecture. This is the generation our offices are built in, and the reason a 3D building with forty colleagues can run in a browser tab.
Godot - 2023 · 31 MarchMilestone 23 of 27
First WebGPU support, in version 1.62
PlayCanvas is early with WebGPU, the successor to WebGL, and has to rebuild large parts of the renderer to support both graphics APIs side by side.
PlayCanvas - 2024 · 22 AugustMilestone 24 of 27
Engine 2.0
The first big version jump since 1.0. WebGL1 support is removed to make room for WebGPU — fewer than two per cent of devices out there still support only WebGL1 — and old code such as the 2016 script system is cut.
PlayCanvas - 2025 · 30 JulyMilestone 25 of 27
The Editor becomes open source too
Eleven years after the engine was MIT-licensed, the editing tool follows. Only now is the whole toolchain — what runs in the game and what you build it in — freely available to anyone.
PlayCanvas - 2026 · 10 AprilMilestone 26 of 27
Phaser 4
A new major version, thirteen years after the first. The engines we have followed here are still maintained by the communities and companies that started them.
Phaser - 2026 · JuneMilestone 27 of 27
Gaussian splatting and a new WebGPU renderer
Version 2.19 uses compute shaders to render 3D Gaussian splats — a technique for photorealistic scans of real rooms — directly in the browser. PlayCanvas is among the first production engines with full WebGPU support, including compute shaders.
PlayCanvas
A tool that should outlast the project.
Choosing three open engines is not only a technical decision. For a teaching tool developed at a university, it is also a question of what will still work in ten years.
No licence cost per student
All three engines are MIT-licensed. There is no user fee, no seat licence and no supplier who can change the price in the middle of a semester. The cost of using the tool in one more course lies in the content, not in the licence.
No supplier lock-in
The source code of all three is public and can be built by anyone. Should one of the projects be shut down tomorrow, the code could still be run, fixed and developed further. NMBU owns its own maps and content independently of all three — and since Godot and PlayCanvas render the same rooms, there is already a way out of each of them.
Runs on the machines that already exist
All three run in the browser. No installation, no new hardware, and no students who have to buy anything. Phaser automatically falls back from WebGL to plain canvas, so older school PCs still keep up, and PlayCanvas avoids the 39.5 MB engine program Godot has to load before anything appears.
Built by communities, not by a department
Godot is maintained by a non-profit foundation with contributions from thousands of developers. Phaser is run by the community that started it. PlayCanvas stands out: the company behind the engine has been owned by Snap Inc. since 2017. But the code is MIT-licensed and public, so even if Snap were to lose interest, it can be run and developed further by others. That is exactly why the licence matters more than the ownership when choosing tools that have to last through several cohorts of students.
The years above are taken from the projects’ own documentation and from Wikipedia’s articles on Godot and Phaser, checked on 28 August 2026. Godot has also published screenshots from its own early years. The years for PlayCanvas are taken from Wikipedia, PlayCanvas’s own developer blog and the release notes on GitHub, checked on 4 September 2026. The engine and the Editor are MIT-licensed; the company behind them, PlayCanvas Ltd, has been owned by Snap Inc. since 2017.