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>We don't think we directly compete with Unity. Well, you should, because both C3 and Unity using a subscription model vs the one-time payments of many other o
by Daiz 10y ago
>We don't think we directly compete with Unity.
Well, you should, because both C3 and Unity using a subscription model vs the one-time payments of many other options makes it the most direct comparison. Both concretely and psychologically a subscription model requires a much more serious commitment to the product compared to a one-time payment.
And beyond the payment model, I've long thought that Construct offers a serious alternative to Unity for serious development purposes if you're making 2D games, and in fact I'd say in many ways Construct has the edge over Unity in this space since it's built for 2D development from ground-up whereas Unity is a 3D engine first, which makes 2D development in it more cumbersome. This is why I was happy to see you mention in another comment that you intend to shift the marketing of C3 to a more "serious" direction, where C2 often gave the impression of a "toy". But that's just another reason why you should consider yourself as a serious alternative to Unity yourself.
I assume that the "direct competitors" you're talking of are along the lines of Clickteam Fusion and Game Maker. It's certainly true that these are both 2D-focused game IDEs, but both are sold as one-time payments, much like C2. As someone who moved from Multimedia Fusion 2 to Construct 1 back in the day, I personally think C2 has already been the king of this space for years, wiping the floor with the competition when it comes to both usability and performance as well as scaling to big projects. This is why I'm not at all fundamentally opposed to "going bigger" with a subscription model to compete against other subscription model game IDEs, because I believe C3 is very much capable of competing in this space, all the while having a lower barrier to entry. But again, to be competitive here, things should really change with the way the free edition is handled.
Ultimately right now Construct 3 falls into a very uncomfortable position where I would never want to downgrade to the likes of Clickteam Fusion (neither the current 2.5 nor the upcoming 3) or Game Maker Studio 2 (because they are both less powerful/performant as well as less usable on the whole and scale big way worse), but I honestly wouldn't want to use Unity either because while power-wise it's definitely capable I'd still be somewhat of a downgrade in terms of usability for 2D development (I have actually used Unity for a couple projects in the past, but I've stuck around with Construct 2 for this exact reason). As a professional programmer there isn't really any insurmountable obstacles to using any of these programs for me, so it's all about the convenience for me, and 2D development with Construct is where I believe the sweet spot lies in this regard. But as it is, C3 free edition is just too restricted power-wise and the subscription is too big of an investment. Because of this I also see myself having a hard time recommending C3 to other people in the future, where recommending C2 used to be a no-brainer.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago> Well, you should, because both C3 and Unity using a subscription model Similar payment models doesn't mean you're competing. Granted there will be some overlap, but generally we feel our customer bases are fairly well defined and separate. > I assume that the "direct competitors" you're talking of are along the lines of Clickteam Fusion and Game Maker. It's certainly true that these are both 2D-focused game IDEs, but both are sold as one-time payments, much like C2. As someone who moved from Multimedia Fusion 2 to Construct 1 back in the day, I personally think C2 has already been the king of this space for years, wiping the floor with the competition when it comes to both usability and performance as well as scaling to big projects. Thank you for the kind comments, and I'm glad you consider Construct to be wiping the floor! Shows we're doing something right ;) We did not observe as many free edition conversions to paid as we would of hoped with C2. For this reason, we're experimenting with locking it down more than C2. We will see how this goes. Our philosophy has always been "give more" not "take away", so we're starting conservatively. And, as you put it, we are wiping the floor with the competition so we feel reasonably comfortable at this stage experimenting with a different pricing model. Worth mentioning is that we're planning on selling C3 for ~$99 USD per year, if you want all the Gamemaker export options you'll spend > $1,000. I feel in comparison to that, our pricing is still competitive.
- Daiz 10y ago>Similar payment models doesn't mean you're competing. It inevitably invites comparison though. >We did not observe as many free edition conversions to paid as we would of hoped with C2. I can understand that, and I wouldn't mind it at all if C3 was also a one-time purchase like C2 (if that was still the case I'd be buying C3 in a heartbeat), but I definitely think it's the wrong way forward with the change in the payment model. I have a bunch of small C2 projects from over the years I've used the program, and I can go back and edit them with C2 even today. However, if I got a C3 subscription for a year and upgraded my projects to C3, then a year later when my subscription ran out my projects would suddenly become essentially read-only due to the free edition limitations, and this whole thing of effectively locking me off from my own projects just completely kills my interest in the current free/paid model of C3. (I'm not actually sure how Unity handles this same scenario, but seeing how the free version still offers the fully-featured engine and how the tiers differ, I'd expect the story to be much better there.) >Worth mentioning is that we're planning on selling C3 for ~$99 USD per year, if you want all the Gamemaker export options you'll spend > $1,000. I feel in comparison to that, our pricing is still competitive. While that's true for Game Maker Studio 2, you also have to consider that both Clickteam Fusion and Game Maker Studio 1 have shown up in several Humble Bundles for practically pennies at this point. I actually own both CF2.5 and GM:S along with the most important exporters available for them (Desktop/iOS/Android/HTML5) and I only paid $15 for each (and I bought both because I wanted to see how they stack up against C2 today, which cost more than both combined). From usability and performance standpoints I don't see GMS2 being that big of an upgrade, so sticking with GMS1 would certainly be a viable option for anyone interested in it as an alternative. >And, as you put it, we are wiping the floor with the competition so we feel reasonably comfortable at this stage experimenting with a different pricing model. Well, sadly as much as I like Construct as a 2D game IDE, it pretty much kills the program for me and also makes it way harder to recommend to other people as well, which is something I've done a lot with C2 over the years (I got a lot of people at my uni to use it and know several people who ended up buying personal licenses as well). Personally I think you could expand the free version and make the paid version more expensive. If I ever get around to doing commercial products with Construct, I certainly wouldn't mind paying more than $99 a year for a paid version, even if it was just to get rid of splash screens. You could also take cues from how Unity differentiates the tiers in other regards, like with the cloud build queue priorities and multiplayer support etc (if you're using Scirra-provided infrastructure).