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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

#241

Post by ByersReason »

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…

Well, that and the fact that their rendering engine isn't really competitive with Epic, who do get it ....

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

#242

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Other things monetized to great success:

- facebook (soooo much better with 80% ads)

- google search (soooo much better with an entire first page of ads)

- app stores (I love how they "curate" and "enforce standards")

- insulin (mmmm, monopolize a drug whose manufacture is open and charge 10x for that, that's the free market)

- college tuition and education (even nonprofits can be completely ruined by MBAs)

- military/defense

Well, the list goes on.

Gotta love those MBAs with their excel spreadsheets and strike price stock options.

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

#243

Post by fuzzythinker »

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…

Thank you for the "The Game" wiki link. It's pretty much a software virus on intelligent beings' minds. Very interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if something like it has been deployed in other intelligent worlds.

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

#244

Post by sirmarksalot »

mulmen wrote: post #180
structural wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

Comparing arcade machines to gambling is a sore spot, especially for pinball. Ostensibly arcade machines are skill based. They are not random. You may be able to win an award or prize but that will be based on some objective measure of performance with little to no randomization. This is important because arcades operate where gambling is illegal, so suggesting they are anything like gambling threatens the security o…

You are factually correct, but the intentions are a bit murkier. The explosion of video arcades in the 70s and 80s was due to how lucrative the machines were as an investment, not due to any passion on the part of the owners. The value proposition for arcades at the time was basically like gambling, but not illegal. While arcade games have always been skill-based, that's not the same as "fair," at least in the modern game design sense.

Yes, with repetition, you can eventually learn to beat Ghosts and Goblins on a single quarter, but the game is not going to just let you do that on the first try. Games of that era are designed to lure you in, then kill you with something completely out of nowhere after your 3 minutes are up and it's time for the next person in line to put in their money. This self-reinforced when you saw someone who had put in the reps getting really far on one credit, so you would think you can do that. But no, you can't. You die at the end of the first stage like everyone else.

It's not gambling, but it's still designed to extract money as efficiently as possible.

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

#245

Post by blululu »

jayd16 wrote: post #187
snek_case wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They don't get a cut. It's a per seat model. Everyone seems to think Unity has some incentive to push IAP and they don't.

If your game doesn't make money, your studio collapses and Unity loses a customer. They do have an incentive but it's indirect.

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

#246

Post by aroman »

smoldesu wrote: post #225
dvlsg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the unity CEO pushing for? Cookie cutter games? Does Unity take a cut of any microtransactions run through their ecosystem?

Nope, licenses are paid up-front and per-seat. I think they optionally had a free tier where you could pay nothing except a royalty on your overall earnings, but I don't think that exists anymore (and even if it did , it always made sense to just buy the licenses). Broadly speaking, though, no. Unity does not offer any payment services that he would directly/indirectly benefit from. This just seems like a bizarre off…

Most of Unity's revenue does not come from licensing the engine. It comes from their "services" portfolio, which includes advertising and other tools for monetizing, including via IAPs (although they don't take a cut of IAPs, they offer tools to help implement them and improve monetization e.g. A/B testing). I agree it was a bizarre attack at his customer base, but it makes sense given Unity's merger with Ironsource (mobile game advertising giant).

The message seems to be clear: Unity is for people who want to make games that make money, not for indies who want to create for the love of craft.

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

#247

Post by scratcheee »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #36
chomp wrote: post #20

Yeah, this is gross. He has a point that when you are selling a game, you're in it for a non-zero amount of profit, so you do have to think about compulsion and keeping people coming back to the game - if people aren't drawn back over multiple sessions then they're going to walk away thinking they spent money for 2 minutes of playtime and they'll be upset. But the context of the question was moving monetization earli…

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?

The way the psychology of gambling has entered the games industry has indeed produced more money, but at the same kind of costs that the gambling industry has always created.

I don't advocate for killing this new gaming industry, just as I don't advocate for killing the more traditional gambling industry, but both need much stricter supervision than most markets because they attack a weak point in human psychology, and taken too far, they harm humanity more than they generate value.

In the end any "distortion" of the market requires a strong justification, but I think the justifications used against the gambling industry have always been pretty compelling, and they appear to apply just as well to modern games industry techniques.

Another way to put it is that the "value to society" of modern games techniques contains a negative externality: damage to the players comparable to that of gambling addictions. You could solve it with the equivalent of a carbon tax, though defining the cost of different tactics feels impossible, so I'd argue that the traditional gambling restrictions are a better fit (illegal in many places, illegal for children, legal limits, requiring various warnings and protections to discourage extreme behaviours, high taxes, etc).

Many families play boardgames with their children at home. Fewer visit blackjack tables. I think theres a fair argument that these broadly match the different financial strategies in the games industry. How much of this behaviour is parental wisdom and how much is limited accessibility thanks to legal restrictions is a hard question to answer, but I have a suspicion that the world would be a worse place with unrestricted gambling. But kids _do_ sit at home opening lootboxes as their parents watch tv, I'm not sure if the effects are much different.

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

#248

Post by some_random »

sosodev wrote: post #200
bakuninsbart wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't call a 7 hour game short, I'd define that closer to 2 hours. The reason it's bad is that they usually fail to fully explore whatever idea the game is built around or they never really had an idea good enough to carry an entire game.

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

#249

Post by overgard »

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…

It's not a great sounding phrase, but a compulsion loop can be a pretty harmless thing. Think about a cliffhanger in a book or a tv show -- something that gets you to come back to the next episode/chapter. That's really the same thing. Right now I'm playing God of War, and there's a compulsion loop of doing side quests to make my character stronger. There's definitely a compulsiveness to that -- I stayed up too late last night doing that -- but it's not particularly evil.

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

#250

Post by mulmen »

dylan604 wrote: post #221
mulmen wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pinball machines actually track average ball times in the audits. It’s a KPI for operators. Machine setups will be changed to increase difficulty if necessary.

Have any pinball machines ever been designed to change the difficulty during game play. Some sort of algo to make the bumpers less bumpery, restrict the movement of the flippers, adjust the angles of things, etc?

Not to my knowledge. It would be antithetical to the game. Games do scale difficulty based on progress but this is the same for everyone. Some games do reverse flipper sides or direction but again, it is based on progress, not a more complex playtime targeting algorithm.

An example of this is multiballs. The first one (per player) can start with say three shots. The next one might require six and then the third nine. This is oversimplified but the point is the progress is consistent.

The only dynamically-scaling feature I am aware of is the replay score which (can) set a starting score based on recent plays but will also scale up rapidly when it is reached (say, +50%) until it isn’t reached, at which point it resets to the starting score. But this has no actual in-game effect.

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