Mike Acton serves as Insomniac Games’ engine director, and last month he delivered a keynote address about the studio’s approach to optimizing code at the CppCon C++ conference that offers some potentially interesting insight for game programmers. Acton outlines the working pilosophy of Insomniac’s engine team, runs down how the inherent limitations of C++ can restrict the performance of console games (“How are games like the Mars rovers?”) and takes pains to strike down some common programming wisdom that’s antithetical to game design. He also offers some practical examples of how developers can architect their code to better satisfy the unique demands of console game development, and explains the reasoning behind some of Insomniac’s data-oriented design practices. It’s a talk worth watching, if only to better understand what exactly an “engine team” does at a studio like Insomniac. Acton’s keynote was filmed by Bash Films and posted to the CppCon YouTube channel this week, so we’ve taken the liberty of embedding it above.