Unity sure is taking some bad PR hits
Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
121–130 of 370 posts
Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#122Did you know there is a market for pre-war steel? This is steel manufactured before 1945 that is uncontaminated by radionuclides: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel There will soon be a market for pre-microtransactions games. Also: I used to hate on the casino industry for using the term “gaming” to euphemistically refer to gambling, but now they’re not so different so I’ll let them have that one.
>There will soon be a market for pre-microtransactions games I'd argue there already is -- what's currently called "indies". IMO the greater threat is the "compulsion loop". Plenty of excellent games, both historical and modern, are content to challenge the player without much in the way of enticement. But in this late year, we're having to contend with things like Vampire Survivors [0], which, while being microtrans…
This is just arcade design. Vampire Survivors might have a more bombastic way of presenting random drops, but otherwise it's not meaningfully different from something like Robotron or Gauntlet.
Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#123I wish the game industry would crash hard as people realize most games these days are nothing but time wasting addictive loops, and all these people that are in it for pure profit get blown out, leaving only the true craftsmen as the only ones making games.
Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's nice and all but it'll be the last thing your studio does if you didn't think about monetization. Why is "have a business model" so controversial?
> 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…
Figuring out if you can sell your game for $1 or $10 is thinking about monetization. Understanding the market is important.
>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.
On another note, it's funny to see HN understand that when Google does it, it's borrowed time but scrambling to cram in monetization after you launch a game is the smart way to do it...
Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#125The 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 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…
he used to be pretty high up in EA. He also worked at a PE firm that especialized in media, although I think better of PE firms than most people. Point being is that I am not surprised at his revenue driven perspective.
Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#127Did you know there is a market for pre-war steel? This is steel manufactured before 1945 that is uncontaminated by radionuclides: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel There will soon be a market for pre-microtransactions games. Also: I used to hate on the casino industry for using the term “gaming” to euphemistically refer to gambling, but now they’re not so different so I’ll let them have that one.
Elden Ring's massive success shows the market for games without MTX is absolutely active and large.
Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#128Or, you know, invested in building games where people retrospectively assess their time spent with the game as enriching rather than exploitative.
Isn't that what he means when he says the loop needs to be an hour or longer, not 2 minutes? Isn't he advocating a longer rewarding sequence instead of a quick cash grab every couple minutes?
No. He's advocating for the opposite—an enhanced "time on device" that keeps the users playing for much longer than they otherwise would have. This is well-known technique lifted directly from machine gambling in Los Vegas, where they try to draw out the "loop" long enough so that people keep playing as long as possible without ever walking away. Here's a quote about one of the best academic books on the subject, Addiction By Design:
Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the “machine zone,” in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible—even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion. In continuous machine play, gamblers seek to lose themselves while the gambling industry seeks profit. Schüll describes the strategic calculations behind game algorithms and machine ergonomics, casino architecture and “ambience management,” player tracking and cash access systems—all designed to meet the market’s desire for maximum “time on device.” Her account moves from casino floors into gamblers’ everyday lives, from gambling industry conventions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to regulatory debates over whether addiction to gambling machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two.
There's a ton of crossover in these fields between people who designed gambling machines for Los Vegas and then got in on the ground floor of the big mobile gaming boom.
Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compulsion loop does sound rather dystopian and "attention-hacking" but it's interesting that he says "two minutes when it should have been an hour," instead of the other way around. An hour long compulsion loop sounds like it could be an immersive experience. That said, I'm not hearing nice things about IronSource and it sounds like maybe there's better ways to get user feedback than the particular implementations t…
Two minutes would be a holdover from 1980's arcade games. That's about how long you'd play on a quarter. Maybe 3 minutes.
And most of them were tuned for profit too, so it's not like this is a new concept. It does feel like a lot of the mobile and F2P monetization folks are the same ones that enjoyed profiting from arcade games and see them as being similar to slot machines (except better, because they only pay out in neurochemicals, not money!).
There's been a quiet war for decades between people who want to design games as art, and people who want to design them as a predictable recurring revenue stream. I'm not sure what iteration we're up to now.
Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s hardly a solid business plan though. We’ll be the next Minecraft because of magic! What about the 1000s of games released every week that fail to get more than a thousand downloads?
Is there some correlation between predatory mechanics and game popularity I don't know about? I'm not sure that games that follow the Unity CEO's advice have a better chance of breaking that barrier.
Because if you read the article his advice wasn't to engage in predatory mechanics - and that's why this conversation is so inflammatory for folks. It's a bad title. Here's the quote:
“It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.”
“But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product. And I don’t know a successful artist anywhere that doesn’t care about what their player thinks. This is where this cycle of feedback comes back, and they can choose to ignore it. But to choose to not know it at all is not a great call.”