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

pocketgamer.biz

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

#81

Post by wahnfrieden »

whateveracct wrote: post #50
wahnfrieden wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you suggesting that game dev labor should be valued by society in other ways than via the market? the market finds that this type of monetization is more profitable. why does HN turn anti-capitalism when it comes to games?

For the same reason people turn anti-capitalism when it comes to art and music. There's more reasons for a game to exist besides making big bucks.

I agree and hope it would provoke wider reflection beyond how it affects the HN crowd on their couches

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

#83

Post by placatedmayhem »

jeffwask wrote: post #54
selfhoster11 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's not clear just from the immediate context in the article that he's actually advocating for MTX or ads. If he is, then he deserves all the flak. If he's simply talking about having a market fit so your game sells at all, then IMO that's just talking about the viability of the game as a product - and in this case it's just about whether making the game makes financial sense, not whether you can juice the custo…

He just executed a merge of his company with a company that produced know malware delivery platforms for installing scamware. I think we can guess where his intentions lay

Having read the full context on the original article on pocketgamer.biz, he is, in fact, making the assertion in this post title -- that game creatives that aren't working with sales and publicity teams from the beginning to build in monetization are idiots.

Original article: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource...

Edit: I say this because I don't understand how it's not clear that he's driving for monetization in every game.

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

#84

Post by bit_logic »

wyldfire wrote: post #19

> “I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour. A 'compulsion loop' sounds bad to me, I'd never heard the term before. Although if I try to take a step back I suppose this term could be used to describe any game and not just one of the lootbox-mania or idle games. However, the wikipedia article [1] states: > A core or compulsion loop is any repet…

Another term for this is grinding. The CEO is saying they should have made the grinding parts of the game longer. Grinding is usually boring and repetitive part of the game that's required to advance. A typical RPG example is defeating the same monster over and over again to get experience to reach the next new area.

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

#85

Post by f17 »

Counterpoint: Stardew Valley. No IAP bullshit, no lootbox chicanery... and yet I doubt its creator is hurting, financially speaking.

Of course, we're talking about an outlier here. Excellence doesn't guarantee anything, but it is a strategy that sometimes works.

The irony is that you'd expect the big publishers to be the ones willing to take on risks and put out products that are excellent but maybe not financial blockbusters. They're the ones who can afford to parlay a reputation for excellence into further success of their more commercial products (since they're diversified and more likely to live long enough to realize the returns). Yet, it's only indies and self-publishers who seem to care about doing the best work... and this isn't limited to games, but visible in all the arts right now. The entities that can afford big risks and long-term plays (inherent to excellence strategies) nevertheless avoid them, and the small actors are invariably the ones making them.

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

#86

Post by barrysteve »

jamesgreenleaf wrote: post #77

> if you’re not thinking about monetisation during your creative process, you’re a “fucking idiot.” This is why Poe's work is not enjoyable. Knowing he died penniless makes all his creativity worthless. Likewise William Blake - what a fool, laboring upward into futurity! /s

It is a little foolish to marry heaven and hell..

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

#87

Post by Vosporos »

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #24
api wrote: post #5

FTA: ... "they tuned their compulsion loop" ... We've done it folks. We've found business models far shadier than standard issue surveillance capitalism. This whole attention economy thing is just so unbelievably gross. The only things lower on the moral totem pole these days are cryptocurrency scams and the really shady/exploitative side of the porn industry.

“Compulsion loop” definitely needs to go in the hall of fame of dystopian phrases.

/r/BoringDystopia is waiting for your submission

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

#88

Post by cityzen »

Wait, are you telling me this fucking idiot said that:

John Riccitiello, the CEO of gaming company Unity Technologies, repeatedly sexually harassed female colleagues, propositioning them for sex and then threatening one if she spoke about his behavior, the former executive claims in a lawsuit filed last week.

I mean, if you sexually harass your employees... you're a fucking idiot! and a fucking piece of shit...

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

#89

Post by simonh »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #21
formerkrogemp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, you know, invested in building games where people retrospectively assess their time spent with the game as enriching rather than exploitative. The most profitable franchises have not done this. It's all timesinks, pay-to-win, and microtransactions.

The maximization of profit over everything else is the cause of much suffering.

Suffering. Really? All those poor suffering souls, forced to slave away playing... er... video games. Talk about first world problem.

I mean sure, game addiction is a thing, but I remember people shovelling coins into arcade machines. PTW and micro transactions are just the modern equivalent. Nobody's holding a gun to these people's heads.

If you ask me indie and art games are in a renaissance period. It's amazing how many cool games from small dev teams there are on the App Store and Steam. If bored housewives prefer PTW crap, well, they'd probably just be spending it on bingo or scratch cards instead. It's really just mass market casual entertainment moving out of newsagents and bingo halls and on to smartphones, but it's always been there.

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

#90

Post by wahnfrieden »

chomp wrote: post #75
wahnfrieden wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you suggesting that game dev labor should be valued by society in other ways than via the market? the market finds that this type of monetization is more profitable. why does HN turn anti-capitalism when it comes to games?

Not anti-capitalist, quite the contrary, you deserve to be compensated for the fruits of your labor at a rate that the market will bear. However, there's what the market will bear, and what the market can be coerced into paying. The latter is definitely more money than the former. The point at which you step into a game and then are psychologically manipulated into spending more than you otherwise would have, that is…

I agree the market isn’t aligned with fun or respect for consumers
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