The idea of a AAA developer going out and sharing its technology with other developers for no reason other than to just do it seems like a silly notion from a crazed message board poster. But that’s exactly what Insomniac Games, developer of Ratchet & Clank and Resistance, is doing with its Nocturnal Initiative.

As the Nocturnal wiki page states, it isn’t a game engine. You won’t be going to the Nocturnal site and downloading an engine for you to plop your own game into. Instead, it attempts to provide “a useful toolbox for the professional game developer” with libraries that could be useful in the process of developing a game engine.

Insomniac engine director Mike Acton explained, “We really wanted to contribute back to the industry. That’s always been in the Insomniac philosophy, and from a tech and tools team point of view we wanted to do something very specific. Like I’ve said many times, we’re all here standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before us, so we feel it’s our responsibility to give back.”