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

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

#132
post #48
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Committing to a full price game is also thinking about monetization.

And this is the model that's being criticised as archaic and stupid here.

It's really not. Just making a guess is what he's talking about. You still need to right price a full paid game and I'm sure Unity would be happy to help you figure that out.

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

#133
post #85

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 blo…

When people say Stardew Valley is a counterpoint, are they saying publishers shouldn't pay developers at all until their game is a massive success? ConcernedApe spent 4 years working on the game on a pretty much ramen salary and then hit a success; I vastly prefer whatever dysfunction we have now, to publishers not paying any salaries unless you come with a 1-in-100 success. Games are a hit driven business; so if you…

I think the problem is that we have to have $100M games - or bust. There is very little funding available for those "less than blockbuster" titles.

Even with predatory monetization it is extremely hard to recoup costs caused by such budget - there is a market for only so many Worlds of Warcrafts or similar long running games where the huge costs can be amortized over millions of players and years of subscriptions.

If you don't build the game around the "AAA" assumption that requires you to ship (and have made!) hundreds of gigabytes of artwork, scripting and what not, then a lot of these monetization pressures go away - unless your producer pushes to put it back in, because, hey, free money!

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

#134
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ori runs on unity? Why don't we have a linux native build?

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

#135

> “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…

Path of Exile has the most exquisite set of compulsion loops within loops. Even when you’re aware of it they’re so satisfying.

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

#136
post #52
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 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…

> "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!"

As someone who has worked at a start up that really took off, didn't truly think out monetization and prayed at some point the free users would be willing to play assuming we gave the right features and benefits, I would say you're incredibly naïve. So in retrospect, this isn't that poor of a take.

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

#137
What he says ONLY applies for AAA games. Metrics and research push every game into the same few buckets. Just like web design best practices imply that every website should be roughly the same.

Chasing what 'works' the best has little to do with stickiness. Yeah, you can be addicted to Candy Crush and play it endlessly without any joy at all. But that kind of stickiness is a problem and not in the soul of gaming.

Real stickiness comes from some kind of authentic joy. And coders and marketers don't know how to put that on screen.

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

#138
post #52
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 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…

I haven't worked with Unity, but I'm assuming they get a percentage of the money spent through microtransactions and monetized content? They're essentially a platform, kind of like the Apple app store, and taking a cut?

In that case, it's obvious why the Unity CEO would say this. He has a financial incentive to get game developers to try and milk gamers for profit (because Unity gets a cut).

I think that this could ultimately push gamers and developers to use other engines/platforms. If you try to milk gamers for profit, it will eventually lead to unplayable games where the only way to compete online is to buy a ton of virtual power-ups and accessories.

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

#140
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fully cross-platform for the usual suspects on desktop, mobile and web.

If you want to publish on consoles you need to pay someone who ported the engine to the console you want to target (or port the engine yourself). The code can't be open source because of licensing issues.

From: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co...

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