Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

Focus on monetization/profit as the first priority in a creative effort is the world's biggest flashing neon sign for shitty leadership.

Making a AAA video game is a gigantic gamble no matter how you slice it. Trying to hedge this gamble up front with micro transactions will result in vicious design cycles that further increase the effective risk profile of the project to your business.

This is all a matter of higher-order consequences to me. I always believed the harder you focused on the money (especially in gaming), the harder it would be to obtain. Only once you completely wash yourself of that madness can your mind expand and engage in more empathetic thinking. If you are trying to make something fun, empathy is critical. Obsession with money robs most humans of that trait.

I think Blizzard is a good example of how money has nearly zero impact on the amount of fun that can be produced, especially when looking at fun per unit of capital involved. I believe running a game studio like a hedge fund is the critical error here.

> Why is "have a business model" so controversial?

The same reason that a restaurant that charged you for water, more if it's cold or hot outside, by the second for the time you spent inside it, an extra gratuity if you used the restroom, more if you sat at a 4-person, instead of a 2-person table, had rolling ads in a tablet implanted into your table (That you could pay to turn off), etc, etc would be panned.

Even if the food was fine, and the overall cost were similar/lower than its neighbours. Capitalism is dehumanizing, and people don't want to engage with microtransactions in the middle of having their meal.

There's a qualitative difference between dealing with someone who figures out how to provide a good service, and then get paid for it, and dealing with someone who figures out how to get paid, and then tries to build a good service around it. The latter tends to look like that restaurant - an utter shit-show, and many people won't really care that you have a three-star Michelin chef making the pasta.

Also, in gaming, the bar from your competitors is high. There are a lot of excellent titles that provide a lot of entertainment without having predatory monetization. If your title does, it'll get panned. (If it doesn't, it'll still get panned for the monetization it does have, but hey, gamers are entitled.)

There's also monetization that crosses straight into gambling (loot boxes of various flavours) - or, alternatively - the apocryphal tale of two cowboys who pay eachother to eat cow patties (designing the game around whales trying to outspend eachother). These are very profitable, if shitty business models, and one should probably be regulated down[1], while the other can't scale - it's limited by the number of whales in the ocean.

[1] There are a few reasonable restrictions to it, that could be introduced - requiring all purchases to be fiat-denominated, as opposed to in a smorgasbord of in-game currencies, and requiring odds & costs to be shown[2] (again, fiat-denominated).

[2] If people want to spend $5,000 gambling for a hat that has an expected cost of $2,000, they are free to do it, but they should be aware of the odds.

>It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way

Yeah, I don't know about that.

For every pay-to-play game there are 10 excellent indie games on Steam/GoG that still "works that way".

Frank Stephenson who designed the Ferrari F430, some BMWs and the good looking Mini from 2004, has a youtube channel. He sticks to pen and paper because computers lock him in too early in the design process.

I don't get what Mr Riccitiello is on about. Clay is a great way to sketch car ideas.

Mike Morhaime of Blizzard fame sees indie games as a space where the small guys can try out games that have never been made before. What is the unity CEO pushing for? Cookie cutter games?

There is a GDC lecture from way back in 2017-2018, where one man did his thesis on what motivates people in video games. When people see the 'victory screen' or story cutscene or audiovisual reward feedback for an action, what are they responding to deep down inside?

He did a metastudy of 70-something studies on this topic and they barely agreed on anything. Nobody really has a firm answer for why people are motivated to play video games and you end up with a lot of handwaving around dopamine.

Why is Mr Riccitielo still pushing compulsion loops like we should be yanking players into addiction? Games are so much more than that. See the recent Ocarina Of Time beta showcase at GDQ.