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> Unity is focused on small mobile game developers Someone remind Unity of that.

bluescrn 6y ago
They really do need that reminder. The people making money from Unity-based games are primarily mobile/F2P devs, and smaller indie developers. They need stability and ease-of-use/very-rapid-development much more than they need performance or the latest shiny high-end graphics features.
- kbenson 6y ago
  I thought I remembered there being some bigger games, but looking at a list[1], they are all pretty indie, or at least small. Not sure I saw a AAA game on the list (which doesn't mean there aren't any, but they seem rare). The equivalent list for Unreal Engine[2] does contain quite a few big titles (along with a plethora of less well known ones). I'm not sure if that's cause, effect or marketing. It could be that using Unreal Engine results in a smoother process and is more likely to result in a AAA target game being AAA. It could be that AAA studios area already predisposed to use Unreal Engine. It could be both. It could be that Unreal Engine is just better at marketing to larger studios given their pedigree. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games
  - drawkbox 6y ago
    The OP article is written by Garry Newman the developer that did Rust in the Unity list from 2013. Previously he was the developer of Garry's Mod on Valve Source engine.
    - kbenson 6y ago
      I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate. That Rust is a AAA title? It's not, as I understand it. AAA is not a designation of quality or popularity, it's a designation of resources that go into it. Large company with lots of resources putting lots of money behind it means AAA. It's less a designation of the end product than of the process going into that product.
      - drawkbox 6y ago
        Just mentioned that it was on the list of games in terms of popularity, never said it was AAA. However, Garry has lots of pull in games including towards AAA developers. I did not say that game was AAA but on the notable Unity list that everyone knows about. Rust is much bigger than most Unity games, so Garry's opinion on this is highly relevant and influential. Facepunch studios and their forums were also a gamedev spot for a long time. Garry Newman is also someone speaking from shipping experience in another engine that is for AAA studios, Valve Source Engine. Eventhough that was a mod, and yes not a massive budget or team, it has pull at the AAA level in terms of influence as well. Rust competes with AAA titles on Steam in terms of playtime/playercount all the time, was top 10 for a while and quite often. [1] The point is Garry's opinion is more valid than most, even at AAA probably about Unity. A developer of a top 10 Steam game has some pull and is someone to listen to, hopefully Unity hears it. Rust is clearly one of the biggest games in terms of playtime/playercount than most Unity games at least on Steam with the popularity only rising since release in 2013. Rust is AAA level in terms of playtime/playercount with a small team, that is exactly the market Unity wants, in fact it highlights the benefits of Unity clearly. They should listen. [1] https://steamcharts.com/app/252490#All https://steamcharts.com/app/252490#All
        kbenson 6y ago
        I think you misinterpreted my original comment (which is why yours seemed like a non-sequitur to me). I wasn't saying Garry doesn't have any big games, I was saying that the list of games made using Unity doesn't include many big/AAA games. I also wondered why this might be. To clarify, I'm not saying there aren't AAA Unity games, just that I didn't immediately see one. Nor am I stating that Rust is not as good as a AAA game, I made my position clear that AAA is more to do with resources. I would even go so far as to say it's more of a marketing term. What I am saying is that is seems like (from the lists I saw) a lot more large and AAA titles are made using Unreal Engine, and I wondered what specifically leads to that. > The point is Garry's opinion is more valid than most, even at AAA probably about Unity. I'm not sure why that's the point. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about. This thread was about Unity being better targeted as small/indie/mobile developers, and I was responding in that context.
  - redisman 6y ago
    AAA studios have a millenia of C++ experience in-house so it just doesn't make sense as a product to them.
  - an_opabinia 6y ago
    Unreal is for people who get games financed. The demos looks great and the execs don’t play games anyhow so what do they know. That’s why it’s all FPSes, it’s stuff non-game-playing adults can understand just by looking at it. They will fund the most photoreal looking pitch for the Star Wars IP. Unreal as an engine product is competing with Frostbite and Source Engine (the various engines Star Wars appeared recently) not Unity. However EA and Respawn won those bids for a variety o reasons, mostly related to the mechanics of royalties and their support commitments. It’s complicated. There are many forces at work, only somewhat related to engineering, that funnels the engines to one kind of game or another.
    - aseipp 6y ago
      Jedi Knight: Fallen Order uses UE4 (I can't tell from your phrasing if you meant otherwise, but I figure I'd clarify.)
  - rasz 6y ago
    Escape from Tarkov might be the biggest Unity game on Twitch right now. Thanks to Unity you get game stutter and freezes during tense action. Escape from Tarkov devs keep promising every year that thanks to the close cooperation with Unity team 'this next update' is totally going to solve the problem! year after year it doesnt.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      Game stutters and freezes during tense action sound like GC related problems. In theory it is solvable but I doubt that anyone is going to bother and actually put in the work. Lots of popular games have known flaws and unless there is a direct competitor nobody is going to switch games.
  - hnick 6y ago
    Hearthstone is the largest that comes to mind, I'm not sure if it qualifies as a AAA game but it's from a large studio with a lot of experience and earns AAA money.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      So a virtual card game where most of the complexity is server side?
      - hnick 6y ago
        Hardly a complex product compared to some, yes, but time to market and speed of iteration are still important. I don't like the game but the presentation and feel was good when I tried it. I don't know how well it worked out for them overall though, and I don't recall seeing them use Unity again on another game.
  - sershe 6y ago
    There are a bunch of AAA-ish? RPGs and strategies on Unity, like Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder, Endless Legend, Endless Space. They may not have the player numbers of Heartstone but they are basically what top notch equivalents like like Baldurs Gate or Civ are, and more. In my experience Pathfinder for example suffers from poor perf compared to e.g. Tyranny, but Endless Legend doesn't compared to recent AoW or whatever non-unity game equivalent.
redisman 6y ago
But it's more fun to work on 5 different rendering pipelines! They're definitely trying to please everyone without really catering greatly to anyone. Like the official 2D capabilities are still about as hacky as what I implemented 5 years ago myself in about a month of work at a mobile games studio.

They really do need that reminder. The people making money from Unity-based games are primarily mobile/F2P devs, and smaller indie developers. They need stability and ease-of-use/very-rapid-development much more than they need performance or the latest shiny high-end graphics features.

kbenson 6y ago
I thought I remembered there being some bigger games, but looking at a list[1], they are all pretty indie, or at least small. Not sure I saw a AAA game on the list (which doesn't mean there aren't any, but they seem rare). The equivalent list for Unreal Engine[2] does contain quite a few big titles (along with a plethora of less well known ones). I'm not sure if that's cause, effect or marketing. It could be that using Unreal Engine results in a smoother process and is more likely to result in a AAA target game being AAA. It could be that AAA studios area already predisposed to use Unreal Engine. It could be both. It could be that Unreal Engine is just better at marketing to larger studios given their pedigree. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games
- drawkbox 6y ago
  The OP article is written by Garry Newman the developer that did Rust in the Unity list from 2013. Previously he was the developer of Garry's Mod on Valve Source engine.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate. That Rust is a AAA title? It's not, as I understand it. AAA is not a designation of quality or popularity, it's a designation of resources that go into it. Large company with lots of resources putting lots of money behind it means AAA. It's less a designation of the end product than of the process going into that product.
    - drawkbox 6y ago
      Just mentioned that it was on the list of games in terms of popularity, never said it was AAA. However, Garry has lots of pull in games including towards AAA developers. I did not say that game was AAA but on the notable Unity list that everyone knows about. Rust is much bigger than most Unity games, so Garry's opinion on this is highly relevant and influential. Facepunch studios and their forums were also a gamedev spot for a long time. Garry Newman is also someone speaking from shipping experience in another engine that is for AAA studios, Valve Source Engine. Eventhough that was a mod, and yes not a massive budget or team, it has pull at the AAA level in terms of influence as well. Rust competes with AAA titles on Steam in terms of playtime/playercount all the time, was top 10 for a while and quite often. [1] The point is Garry's opinion is more valid than most, even at AAA probably about Unity. A developer of a top 10 Steam game has some pull and is someone to listen to, hopefully Unity hears it. Rust is clearly one of the biggest games in terms of playtime/playercount than most Unity games at least on Steam with the popularity only rising since release in 2013. Rust is AAA level in terms of playtime/playercount with a small team, that is exactly the market Unity wants, in fact it highlights the benefits of Unity clearly. They should listen. [1] https://steamcharts.com/app/252490#All https://steamcharts.com/app/252490#All
      - kbenson 6y ago
        I think you misinterpreted my original comment (which is why yours seemed like a non-sequitur to me). I wasn't saying Garry doesn't have any big games, I was saying that the list of games made using Unity doesn't include many big/AAA games. I also wondered why this might be. To clarify, I'm not saying there aren't AAA Unity games, just that I didn't immediately see one. Nor am I stating that Rust is not as good as a AAA game, I made my position clear that AAA is more to do with resources. I would even go so far as to say it's more of a marketing term. What I am saying is that is seems like (from the lists I saw) a lot more large and AAA titles are made using Unreal Engine, and I wondered what specifically leads to that. > The point is Garry's opinion is more valid than most, even at AAA probably about Unity. I'm not sure why that's the point. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about. This thread was about Unity being better targeted as small/indie/mobile developers, and I was responding in that context.
- redisman 6y ago
  AAA studios have a millenia of C++ experience in-house so it just doesn't make sense as a product to them.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  Unreal is for people who get games financed. The demos looks great and the execs don’t play games anyhow so what do they know. That’s why it’s all FPSes, it’s stuff non-game-playing adults can understand just by looking at it. They will fund the most photoreal looking pitch for the Star Wars IP. Unreal as an engine product is competing with Frostbite and Source Engine (the various engines Star Wars appeared recently) not Unity. However EA and Respawn won those bids for a variety o reasons, mostly related to the mechanics of royalties and their support commitments. It’s complicated. There are many forces at work, only somewhat related to engineering, that funnels the engines to one kind of game or another.
  - aseipp 6y ago
    Jedi Knight: Fallen Order uses UE4 (I can't tell from your phrasing if you meant otherwise, but I figure I'd clarify.)
- rasz 6y ago
  Escape from Tarkov might be the biggest Unity game on Twitch right now. Thanks to Unity you get game stutter and freezes during tense action. Escape from Tarkov devs keep promising every year that thanks to the close cooperation with Unity team 'this next update' is totally going to solve the problem! year after year it doesnt.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Game stutters and freezes during tense action sound like GC related problems. In theory it is solvable but I doubt that anyone is going to bother and actually put in the work. Lots of popular games have known flaws and unless there is a direct competitor nobody is going to switch games.
- hnick 6y ago
  Hearthstone is the largest that comes to mind, I'm not sure if it qualifies as a AAA game but it's from a large studio with a lot of experience and earns AAA money.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    So a virtual card game where most of the complexity is server side?
    - hnick 6y ago
      Hardly a complex product compared to some, yes, but time to market and speed of iteration are still important. I don't like the game but the presentation and feel was good when I tried it. I don't know how well it worked out for them overall though, and I don't recall seeing them use Unity again on another game.
- sershe 6y ago
  There are a bunch of AAA-ish? RPGs and strategies on Unity, like Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder, Endless Legend, Endless Space. They may not have the player numbers of Heartstone but they are basically what top notch equivalents like like Baldurs Gate or Civ are, and more. In my experience Pathfinder for example suffers from poor perf compared to e.g. Tyranny, but Endless Legend doesn't compared to recent AoW or whatever non-unity game equivalent.

redisman 6y ago

But it's more fun to work on 5 different rendering pipelines! They're definitely trying to please everyone without really catering greatly to anyone. Like the official 2D capabilities are still about as hacky as what I implemented 5 years ago myself in about a month of work at a mobile games studio.