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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

#111

Post by kmeisthax »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #51
bastawhiz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Minecraft did essentially zero marketing and is monetized only in the sense that you need an account to log in (which is easily bypassed for single player) and it was/is the biggest and most valuable game of all time.

Fortnite is also a free to play game, that requires no purchases to be equally competitive to paid players, and it is one of the most profitable games too. Players can pay for skins, celebration dances, theme music, etc. That said, this is not the only way to make a living as a game developer and I'm happy to pay up front for a game that provides the full richness of the experience to all players.

Fortnite does require purchases if you want to be equally competitive in the dress-up meta, however. Certain player groups (usually children) use "default" as a slur. In fact, dressing up your character is arguably more important to the Fortnite experience than the actual shooty-bang-bang part of the game. And it's in line with Epic's "metaverse" aspirations too.

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

#112

Post by SpaceManNabs »

zero_ wrote: post #93
OskarS wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "comp…

Godot seems to gain popularity. Maybe it has a chance to become the choice for indies.

at the microsoft game hackathon thing in 2019 at their HQ in NYC, godot was pretty common choice. I think i saw it more than unreal actually (anecdotally, I don't know the actual aggregate). seems to be gaining popularity.

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

#113

Post by gretch »

haunter wrote: post #99
bit_logic wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yet a lot of people love this and there are multiple genres (MMOs and ARPGs) built around it. Heck even Minecraft is just a mindless grind for some

I think a lot of the people don't understand the 'modes' a person can be in when playing a game.

There are some games that you want to play with your full attention, and you want it to be an intense and immersive experience.

But there are also games that you want to play 'in the background' while having a discord conversation about something else. It's fun and simple, and doesn't come with stakes.

Some analogies to this are throwing a ball back and forth in the yard. Or having a show play in the background. It's comforting.

'Grinding' doesn't have to be bad if it's in that context

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

#114

Post by kthartic »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #26

"Idiot" in this case means anybody who prioritizes anything over money.

That's not how I understood his words, like at all. He means that monetisation should be considered as part of the creative process.

Many indie devs could've been sitting on gold mines, but that those rewards (which could've lead to the creation/evolution of more games) weren't reaped because they didn't consider it. Now of course some of those devs wouldn't care about that at all, but I bet there's also some whose jaws would've dropped if they were told how much they could've made.

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

#115

Post by barbecue_sauce »

zero_ wrote: post #93
OskarS wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "comp…

Godot seems to gain popularity. Maybe it has a chance to become the choice for indies.

What's the current portability proposition of Godot? Unity and UE4 allow indies to cross-platform relatively easily.

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

#116

Post by nitrixion »

zero_ wrote: post #93
OskarS wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "comp…

Godot seems to gain popularity. Maybe it has a chance to become the choice for indies.

I've been using Unity happily for 7+ years at this point, willfully ignoring all other engines because Unity is easy to use and has native C# support.

This merger has spurred me to try other engines. I keep hearing good things about Godot. That'll likely be the first one I try.

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

#117

Post by selfhoster11 »

placatedmayhem wrote: post #83
jeffwask wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 drivin…

The confusion is over what is meant by 'monetisation' here.

Is is "making sure the game is at all commercially viable so I can afford to keep myself alive and well fed", or "making sure that every drop of money is juiced from the customer".

Without a clear statement that he meant the latter, I decided to give him some benefit of doubt unless I have additional context (I never heard of the guy before).

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

#118

Post by theptip »

bit_logic wrote: post #84
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.

Grinding is just one way to lengthen the loop. Or you can create lots of compelling content, like Elden Ring, which did not feel grindy to me at any point in 130 hours.

ER has a couple loops, with dungeons taking O(hour), and regions taking O(10hour). But there is no hard requirement to grind baked in at any level. (Of course, there is a requirement to Git Gud, which might make it feel grindy to some.)

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

#119

Post by wahnfrieden »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #104
wahnfrieden wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you saying that capitalism innately has a good solution for games, but that it became slightly ill and can be reformed back to excellence? seems odd to promote “capitalism, but not like this”

I'm saying that in the past (before the microtransaction era) the parameters of capitalism in the gaming industry were tuned such that it was commercially viable (and most importantly, normal ) to release a nice, toxicity-free game and sell it for a reasonable one-time fee that the customer pays once, and is then free to enjoy without an ongoing commercial (or otherwise) relationship with the publisher. If you could…

games market was much smaller back then. why are you certain that the market has solutions for growing the game industry beyond its current size without these tactics. and why resign to minor reforms of a system you don’t like the results of

vv bingo

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

#120

Post by mehlmao »

morley wrote: post #25

The full quote for context: > Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots. Their CEO is certainly not calling everyone an…

> I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that.

Few people have driven as many once-successful studios into the ground as Riccitello.

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