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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#311

Post by makeitdouble »

Willish42 wrote: post #45

I wish I had a large enough Twitter following to make a public claim about this before Unity "went back" on the first version of the recently-announced pricing changes, but I was nearly certain this was an intentional move to make the "Update on our update" second version more palatable. There's probably a wiki link somewhere to the Proper Noun PR phenomenon in business school for this strategy, but the "terrible pla…

I remember a game developer on a podcast saying that business relations in the field where not just about the money, and commitment and proof of perseverance was the strongest currency.

Basically each game developer is gambling their time and livelyhood, and no one would start a game studio just to make money (that would be crazy given the odds). In this respect, a platform has to also show they're commited and will fight in the trenches with everyone else when winter comes (basically the exact opposite of Stadia...).

Unity playing with developers' trust feels like showing your pregnant wife divorce papers. You can retract it and apologize, but it will never be the same from there after.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#312

Post by theptip »

MattRix wrote: post #295
Willish42 wrote: post #45

I wish I had a large enough Twitter following to make a public claim about this before Unity "went back" on the first version of the recently-announced pricing changes, but I was nearly certain this was an intentional move to make the "Update on our update" second version more palatable. There's probably a wiki link somewhere to the Proper Noun PR phenomenon in business school for this strategy, but the "terrible pla…

There is no way this was intentional. First you’d have to argue that only the top execs were aware of this, because a bunch of Unity employees quit due to this. Secondly, if it was a form of anchoring, they did it in the worst possible way. The problem wasn’t really the numbers, it was the base idea of using installs and having it apply retroactively. If they had just wanted to anchor they could have come out with a…

Agreed; Hanlon’s Razor applies here.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#313

Post by freeone3000 »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #259
nitwit005 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A history of doing the right thing doesn't matter in the slightest, unless you can somehow guarantee their leadership won't change (or is unlikely to, at least).

> A history of doing the right thing doesn't matter in the slightest If we all thought this way, certainly there'd be no incentive for anyone to do the right thing at all? A good track record should be rewarded, up until the point when it stops. You shouldn't trust any company indefinitely, but there are a few that you can trust "for now".

When does the “for now” stop? When is a brand actually a mark of a certain quality and when is it a facade for a swapped tooling line backed by a dozen products? We might have had reliable brands once, but no longer — now all products have to be evaluated individually.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#314

Post by Daegalus »

neurostimulant wrote: post #122
ROFISH wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity has been on a buying spree including traditional TV/Movie CGI firms for some insane reason†. They're just plain _bad_ at spending money. († Yes, I know the growth potential from real-time to rendered. I still think it's a terrible investment.)

Is unity used for movie's CGI? I can only think of one example of shows made with unity (it's bad): https://myanimelist.net/anime/38853/Ex-Arm

I think the Lion King movie was made in Unity

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#315

Post by Miraste »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #216
jsmith45 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the dumb thing is that if they had listened to the engineers who were telling them the customer base was going to freak out at this, the company could have avoided large parts of the drama, since a few of their fixes were not even really a change in plan, so much as better more clear wording. The big drama causes 1. People assuming unity was going to add additional telemetry to track installs. (Reality: Unity see…

And that's why people like Jonathan blow and Casey Muratori have for so many years now warned game devs about this and learn how to make a game engine from scratch. Hopefully some listened.

Being wary of large corporate engines is a good piece of advice. "Make a game engine from scratch" is a terrible recommendation and shouldn't be linked to the first one. Every dollar and hour spent on a custom engine isn't being spent on the end result. There's a place for it, sure, for people like Blow who are in love with the craft--but most indie game devs don't want to make an engine, they want to make a game.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#316

Post by berkut »

Daegalus wrote: post #314
neurostimulant wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is unity used for movie's CGI? I can only think of one example of shows made with unity (it's bad): https://myanimelist.net/anime/38853/Ex-Arm

I think the Lion King movie was made in Unity

No it wasn't...

Unity used some of their tech in 2022 to create a demo with some lions in it.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#317

Post by klft »

the-dude wrote: post #110
duped wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of something I once heard a VP say at a very old, established company. Something along the lines of, "Our brand is trust. It took 90 years to build it, but it would take just one day to destroy it." The point he was making was that this old, established company's biggest asset was its brand, and its brand identity was just "trust" (they made professional products, and others could undercut them, but pros w…

Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback Dutch : Vertrouwen komt te voet en gaat te paard ( Thorbecke ) https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-leaves-...

from the linked article:

> people and organisations alike tend to be judged by the worst thing they do

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#318

Post by CountVonGuetzli »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #282
CountVonGuetzli wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Milton Friedman, 1970, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr... Wikipedia has a summary on the idea behind the essay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

Unity is running as fast as possible in the opposite direction of Friedman's advice. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollutio…

Interesting that this is enough evidence to the contrary for you. To me that looks more like what they say, not what they do, and is a well crafted smoke screen. They still seem to be acting as if they’re purely interested in extracting maximum shareholder value, at the expense of the public.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#319

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

Miraste wrote: post #315
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why people like Jonathan blow and Casey Muratori have for so many years now warned game devs about this and learn how to make a game engine from scratch. Hopefully some listened.

Being wary of large corporate engines is a good piece of advice. "Make a game engine from scratch" is a terrible recommendation and shouldn't be linked to the first one. Every dollar and hour spent on a custom engine isn't being spent on the end result. There's a place for it, sure, for people like Blow who are in love with the craft--but most indie game devs don't want to make an engine, they want to make a game.

Maybe, maybe not. Watch this talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsT-5VSqk8I

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#320

Post by hackernewds »

Willish42 wrote: post #304
kulahan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all just based on the idea of anchoring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_effect

These are both exactly what I had in mind. DITF was specifically something I'd definitely read about but couldn't remember the name for. Also think this reply correctly identifies that anchoring bias is the underlying more generic version of this effect / tactic. Thanks! Edit: Specifically, reading through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiation#Tactics , I believe both the "Highball/Low-ball or Ambit claim" and "A…

Thanks to you, I learned and named some interesting concepts today.

I also found that vaguely explaining to GPT-4 the description you start with, also produced the proper names for me. Unstructured querying that I could not Google-Fu

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