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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

#191

Post by nitrixion »

wlesieutre wrote: post #158
nitrixion wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Godot has a big 4.0 release coming up, currently on alpha 11: https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-0-alpha... Breaking changes expected still but should end with the beta, so if you're looking to noodle around with it they're probably close enough for you to skip 3.5 and start learning on 4.

Thanks for the heads up! Adding this to my learning bookmarks.

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

#192

Post by yieldcrv »

OskarS wrote: post #52
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 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 think it does do him favors.

He isn't saying stuff them full of microtransactions and addictive behaviors.

Idealism can just as easily be not paying attention to any form of making money, which you know full well that lots of developers do, especially passionate game developers.

Have you ever tried to help someone make a game? Have you ever tried the finance side with them? When that CEO says some of them are fucking idiots he is absolutely right.

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

#195

Post by drewcoo »

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…

> A 'compulsion loop' sounds bad to me

Yes, it is bad. Crack cocaine has a really tight compulsion loop, for example.

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

#196

Post by ljw1001 »

snek_case wrote: post #138
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…

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 u…

It’s obvious why he would think it; it’s less obvious why he would say it.

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

#197

Post by seydor »

OskarS wrote: post #52
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 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…

Who should be in charge of Unity?

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

#198

Post by phendrenad2 »

OskarS wrote: post #52
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 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…

That's just sticking your head in the sand and pretending that you can't see all of the indie devs that are wholeheartedly using microtransactions and injecting ads into their games. You can opine about how Unity should be a pure game engine for pure-hearted indie devs who make games out of passion, not filthy lucre. But that doesn't match reality, I'm afraid.

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

#199

Post by overgard »

jl6 wrote: post #23

Did 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.

Honestly, I think there already is a market for that. I know personally, when I buy mobile games, I completely avoid the F2P space. The last mobile game I played was The Oregon Trail (on Apple Arcade), and I gotta say, it was incredibly refreshing playing a game on the phone that was just a game. No annoying timers or things like that to convince me to buy "gems" or whatever currency. (I'm not sure if that game is completely clear from that, but I didn't notice it at all if it was there)

Even in F2P games, there's a huge chunk of gamers that take pride in "I've never bought anything in this game". I think culturally "whales" are frowned upon, even though they (sadly) make up the vast majority of F2P games profits.

When guy's like this CEO talk about monetization btw, IMO a lot of these methods are really shady, because the vast majority of profits come from a very small minority that are unable to exercise self control around these "compulsion loops." On the surface, "if you don't want to pay for it you don't have to" seems friendly enough, but when you realize that essentially all the profits are coming from people that have (arguably) an addiction, it feels a bit gross. Not that all monetization is bad. I don't have a problem with like, selling hats or outfits or things that don't affect gameplay, but when your gameplay is designed to open peoples wallets... it's a bit of a grey area IMO.

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

#200

Post by sosodev »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #94
actinium226 wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

I've developed to be a terrible gamer: Great games that are finished in 7 hours usually don't feel worth the money, while games that do these compulsion loops quickly feel like a waste of time. I think I'm not alone in that, and the few games I really enjoyed in the last couple of years were significantly text-based and/or complex simulations for this reason.

Why aren't shorter games worth the money? I really dislike the way modern games inflate their length because it's usually tons of padding.
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