4 ms·

Here's why King gave away its 2D mobile game engine Defold

36 points by cpeterso 11y ago

ajbetteridge 11y ago
Couldn't find a link in the article, so found it at http://www.defold.com/ http://www.defold.com/
vanderZwan 11y ago
I think the contalk about how Defold uses Clojure and an in-memory, transactional graph database to make the GUI highly customisable might be interesting to the HN crowd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajX09xQ_UEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajX09xQ_UEg
- Svoka 11y ago
  Just to be clear 1) all Clojure and other goodness have nothing to do with the game engine. It is editor only. 2) it's not even editor one can download - instead you'll get something based on Eeclipse, which has nothing to do with what is in video 3) Weirdly overcomplicated system around something others (like Corona) was doing for at least 3 years already
  - vanderZwan 11y ago
    Thanks for the context, I was not aware of any of these things! Not sure if I agree with the "weirdly overcomplicated system" comment though, it looks like a fairly elegant system to me?
    - Svoka 11y ago
      ok. Elegant, future system, not tested in real world, seen only in youtube video. P.S. I'm actually looking forward seeing it. Pardon my scepticism.
  - sicher 11y ago
    It is the 2.0 version of the editor. It will come out eventually. (disclosure: I work with these guys)
jay_kyburz 11y ago
I really want to love Defold, but just think it too big a risk to build your business on a game engine that you can't fork and continue to support if Activision / Blizzard decide that is not making money for them anymore and drop it.
- Drinkandcode 11y ago
  I think EULA covers this case.
TY 11y ago
Looks interesting, but I'm not sure how much traction this will get outside of King. Compared to the competition, such as Corona SDK, King will have to work real hard to build a community and ecosystem around Defold. In 2016, having a great technology alone is not enough to get traction in game dev, all other parts of the ecosystem matter a lot: language, plugins (own and third party), art assets, tutorials (written and video), books, mind share retaining efforts (podcasts, events and etc). Unity got this quite right, others are working hard to catch up (Unreal, Corona in 2D space). Being open source is a huge boost as well, in terms of flexibility of development as well as peace of mind for the third party devs that the owner of the engine won't switch to the dark side with the next leadership change or simply let the technology get obsolete by not releasing new versions any more. Still, I welcome this, Defold is a cool engine - hope that King open sources this eventually.
- bko 11y ago
  Just to note, that Defold won't be open source: > GamesBeat: Is this going to be open source? Hartwig: It’s not open source, but it’s free of charge. There are no royalties or team size limitations. You get all the features on all platforms. For us, the main driver—There are two reasons. One, we believe that opening the engine up to external developers will increase our product quality. That will benefit us internally when we develop our games. Two, we want to support the game industry. We think we can bring a lot of value to the whole industry by helping indie developers create awesome games.
  - Svoka 11y ago
    This was very weird to read, especially with King's attempts to sue/patent troll dozens of indie studios which used anyt of the words "Candy" "Crash" or "Saga" in their game titles.
  - TY 11y ago
    Yep, I read the article and that's why I said that I hope that they open source it eventually, since it's not open source now...

36 points by cpeterso 11y ago

Couldn't find a link in the article, so found it at http://www.defold.com/ http://www.defold.com/

I think the contalk about how Defold uses Clojure and an in-memory, transactional graph database to make the GUI highly customisable might be interesting to the HN crowd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajX09xQ_UEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajX09xQ_UEg

Svoka 11y ago
Just to be clear 1) all Clojure and other goodness have nothing to do with the game engine. It is editor only. 2) it's not even editor one can download - instead you'll get something based on Eeclipse, which has nothing to do with what is in video 3) Weirdly overcomplicated system around something others (like Corona) was doing for at least 3 years already
- vanderZwan 11y ago
  Thanks for the context, I was not aware of any of these things! Not sure if I agree with the "weirdly overcomplicated system" comment though, it looks like a fairly elegant system to me?
  - Svoka 11y ago
    ok. Elegant, future system, not tested in real world, seen only in youtube video. P.S. I'm actually looking forward seeing it. Pardon my scepticism.
- sicher 11y ago
  It is the 2.0 version of the editor. It will come out eventually. (disclosure: I work with these guys)

jay_kyburz 11y ago

I really want to love Defold, but just think it too big a risk to build your business on a game engine that you can't fork and continue to support if Activision / Blizzard decide that is not making money for them anymore and drop it.

Drinkandcode 11y ago
I think EULA covers this case.

TY 11y ago

Looks interesting, but I'm not sure how much traction this will get outside of King. Compared to the competition, such as Corona SDK, King will have to work real hard to build a community and ecosystem around Defold. In 2016, having a great technology alone is not enough to get traction in game dev, all other parts of the ecosystem matter a lot: language, plugins (own and third party), art assets, tutorials (written and video), books, mind share retaining efforts (podcasts, events and etc). Unity got this quite right, others are working hard to catch up (Unreal, Corona in 2D space). Being open source is a huge boost as well, in terms of flexibility of development as well as peace of mind for the third party devs that the owner of the engine won't switch to the dark side with the next leadership change or simply let the technology get obsolete by not releasing new versions any more. Still, I welcome this, Defold is a cool engine - hope that King open sources this eventually.

bko 11y ago
Just to note, that Defold won't be open source: > GamesBeat: Is this going to be open source? Hartwig: It’s not open source, but it’s free of charge. There are no royalties or team size limitations. You get all the features on all platforms. For us, the main driver—There are two reasons. One, we believe that opening the engine up to external developers will increase our product quality. That will benefit us internally when we develop our games. Two, we want to support the game industry. We think we can bring a lot of value to the whole industry by helping indie developers create awesome games.
- Svoka 11y ago
  This was very weird to read, especially with King's attempts to sue/patent troll dozens of indie studios which used anyt of the words "Candy" "Crash" or "Saga" in their game titles.
- TY 11y ago
  Yep, I read the article and that's why I said that I hope that they open source it eventually, since it's not open source now...