Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer • Hacker News Board

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#81

Post by hesdeadjim » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

qwytw wrote: post #74

hesdeadjim wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10mm each. $30mm backing and you could get a pretty solid tech base to build a game on. Especially since there are some great new libs out there for things like physics. The Horizon Zero Dawn lead programmer has an OSS MIT engine that is very advanced and less bloated than PhysX.

> $30mm backing Realistically that would still only be enough to get something you can make a cool looking demo and that only run on desktop. Building a general purpose engine that is suitable for many different workflows and run on pretty much every singe platform like Unity is very trick and takes a lot of time (and trial an error). Dev UX, APIs, platform integration, QA, all the third party packages and infrastruc…

v1 you would not attempt to be the be-all-end-all. Target iOS and Android since those are core Unity markets and throw on PC+Switch as the secondaries.

$30mm is more than enough when you ditch legacy stuff like anything that isn't a Vulkan/DX11/Metal renderer.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#82

Post by qwytw » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

hesdeadjim wrote: post #81

qwytw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $30mm backing Realistically that would still only be enough to get something you can make a cool looking demo and that only run on desktop. Building a general purpose engine that is suitable for many different workflows and run on pretty much every singe platform like Unity is very trick and takes a lot of time (and trial an error). Dev UX, APIs, platform integration, QA, all the third party packages and infrastruc…

v1 you would not attempt to be the be-all-end-all. Target iOS and Android since those are core Unity markets and throw on PC+Switch as the secondaries. $30mm is more than enough when you ditch legacy stuff like anything that isn't a Vulkan/DX11/Metal renderer.

> $30mm is more than enough

With the right team it might. Realistically they'd just under promise and undeliver (or not deliver at all).

> stuff like anything that isn't a Vulkan/DX11/Metal renderer.

That's also not the complicated part.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#83

Post by BlueTemplar » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 9:05 AM UTC

lelandfe wrote: post #60

BlueTemplar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I have been pointing out for years, and this clusterfuck shows yet again, if you rely on any platform, you are not indie. Some people also say that indie also means small, otherwise the most indie studios out there would be the likes of Valve and (Microsoft-)Activision-Blizzard.

Independent, i.e. not working with a large publisher, like Microsoft, Sony, etc. That precludes those publishers themselves, of course!

Why would that preclude those publishers, if they also own studios ? (See also : Paradox.)

Also, Valve and Blizzard aren't (weren't ??) publishers.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#84

Post by joshspankit » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

floydnoel wrote: post #8

hesdeadjim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS isn’t tenable as a competitor to any real engine you want to ship big games on. Just the QA testing budget alone that is required to support all consoles, PC/Mac, iOS and Android outstrips the budget of even Godot. What we need is a VC backed, for profit engine, that is up front about taking 2% of revenue after $1mm for perpetuity. And only being an engine company. Period. And like Unreal, source available, just…

I don’t think VC-backed engines can avoid enshittification. Unity is really demonstrating that now. OSS is the only way.

Even OSS can be enshittified. Nothing is free from it unless it is legally barred.