11 ms·

The full quote for context: > Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gami

by morley 4y ago

The full quote for context: > Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots. Their CEO is certainly not calling everyone an idiot, just that there are some in that group of people. And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews. The next thing he says in the interview: > I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.

jeffwask 4y ago
He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful. As a gamer I reject that and have been with my wallet for a while. There are hundreds of dev teams producing great stuff below the AAA level that only ask me to buy the game once not every day.
- deleted 4y ago
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- selfhoster11 4y ago
  IMO it's not clear just from the immediate context in the article that he's actually advocating for MTX or ads. If he is, then he deserves all the flak. If he's simply talking about having a market fit so your game sells at all, then IMO that's just talking about the viability of the game as a product - and in this case it's just about whether making the game makes financial sense, not whether you can juice the customer for more money.
  - jeffwask 4y ago
    He just executed a merge of his company with a company that produced know malware delivery platforms for installing scamware. I think we can guess where his intentions lay
    - placatedmayhem 4y ago
      Having read the full context on the original article on pocketgamer.biz, he is, in fact, making the assertion in this post title -- that game creatives that aren't working with sales and publicity teams from the beginning to build in monetization are idiots. Original article: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource-john-riccitiello-marc-whitten-merger/ https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource... Edit: I say this because I don't understand how it's not clear that he's driving for monetization in every game.
      - selfhoster11 4y ago
        The confusion is over what is meant by 'monetisation' here. Is is "making sure the game is at all commercially viable so I can afford to keep myself alive and well fed", or "making sure that every drop of money is juiced from the customer". Without a clear statement that he meant the latter, I decided to give him some benefit of doubt unless I have additional context (I never heard of the guy before).
        m0llusk 4y ago
        It looks like the intent is to offer tools for taking money from customers. This means that the extent and character of monetization would be up to developers. It might mean adds, it might mean in game purchase opportunities. It does not necessarily mean a choice between two extremes.
        munificent 4y ago
        Having worked under Ricitiello at EA, I am fairly confident his brain is not capable of distinguishing these concepts. I don't think he even understands the concept of "enough money".
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- karaterobot 4y ago
  > He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful. Come on, that's clearly not what he's saying in that quote. I don't like microtransactions either, but it makes your position weaker to get hyperbolic. He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. To me this seems so obviously true that it's almost a product design axiom, let alone a priority for businesses. The question is how it should be done, and how well it will be done, which he says nothing about in that quote.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    I think the confusion is in the art vs business part of the conversation. Some people are not making games for business purposes, they are 100% focused on the creative pursuit. Does that make them stupid? Of course not, they're competent adults who made their decision not to prioritize money over the experience of the game. I think it's pretty clear that's who he's talking about as well, with the "pure, brilliant.." comment.
  - xg15 4y ago
    > He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. What's wrong about monetizing your game by, I don't know, selling copies of it?
    - falcolas 4y ago
      That only gets you some of the customers’ money, not all of their money.
  - nmfisher 4y ago
    To me, "monetization" means everything except for just selling your product for an upfront sticker price. When it comes to games, that means subscriptions, ads or microtransactions. Arguably, the latter two aren't inherently scummy, but I find it very distasteful when a game's design is fundamentally changed to push them. This is the reason I completely avoid F2P games to begin with. I can't deny it's financially very lucrative though.
OskarS 4y ago
I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "compulsion loops"... just, no. Unity used to be famous for being the game engine of choice for creative indies. Games like Hollow Knight, Return of the Obra Dinn, or Ori and the Blind Forest. It seems to me very clear that Riccitello has no understanding of the value of tools for making games like that. He sees Unity as a way of pumping out endless shitty Candy Crush clones stuffed with predatory microtransactions. EDIT: by the way, for the full context, this is the question he's answering: > "Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is certainly an angle that has seen pushback from some developers." The pushback the question is referring to is developers being disappointed in the ironSource merger. He's literally being asked about Unity focusing too much on microtransactions and ad technology, and in his answer to the question he refers to his critics (which, again, are his customers!) as "fucking idiots". This guy should not be in charge of Unity.
- zero_ 4y ago
  Godot seems to gain popularity. Maybe it has a chance to become the choice for indies.
  - SpaceManNabs 4y ago
    at the microsoft game hackathon thing in 2019 at their HQ in NYC, godot was pretty common choice. I think i saw it more than unreal actually (anecdotally, I don't know the actual aggregate). seems to be gaining popularity.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      It's very easy to get into, and very light weight so I'm not surprised. I'm not sure how well it'd scale into a large team or for a commercial project, but it's gaining heaps of steam.
soneca 4y ago
> ”And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.” There is this desire for “authenticity” in the current zeitgeist. You see it everywhere, but mostly in how the crowds love people like Trump and Elon Musk. I think this is an understandable reaction from being lied a lot by polite PR-trained people. Politicians and businesspeople mostly. But I think there are two very relevant types of bias that people who praises this apparent authenticity: 1 - Thinking people who use an aggressive, unapologetic tone do not lie. They do lie. I see no evidence that they lie less than “polite” people. The thing is that the mainstream is smaller and much much less dominant than it was decades ago. So you can get away offending a lot of people, because there will still be a lot of people left that will adore you. So you can use unapologetic tone that offend a group of people. It pays to offend a group, as long it is not your group. It gives you credit to lie to your group without getting caught. 2 - Thinking polite people are always lying. The other side of the coin. We see so many PR-trained people lying emulating polite people that we start to equal politeness to insincerity. But a lot of people are genuinely polite, considerate and kind. They tell the truth and try not to offend anyone. These biases, equaling offensive tone to authenticity is, I believe, a misleading and dangerous way to see the world. You use a flawed heuristic that leads you to believe in liers while bragging you are avoiding liers.
- pcurve 4y ago
  Those are very fair points, and I agree. For me personally, authenticity is more about choosing to speak vs. laying low on certain topics. Sure you can still lie when you speak to it, but at least you're being truthful on your desire to express.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    You can lie..but at least you're being truthful?!?! Care to enlighten me on how to achieve this?
    - t-3 4y ago
      It's more about reacting to being called a liar, I think. React with evasions or moving goalposts, and people will think you're a slimeball trying to fool them, even if you're not. Double down and stick to your guns, and people will respect you, even if they think you're an idiot, a liar, or batshit insane.
mehlmao 4y ago
> I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. Few people have driven as many once-successful studios into the ground as Riccitello.
ehnto 4y ago
Hopefully I'm not putting words into their mouth, but the implication here is that those people are idiots because they're not making as much money as they could be by using the techniques he believes in. The second implication is that they are doing this unknowingly. That's a pretty naive outlook. Some people are either not in it for money, or don't care about the money more than they care about the integrity of their product and experience of their customers.
badloginagain 4y ago
> It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. The thing about a decent monetization model is that is _has_ to be thought about and structured from the very beginning. If you are going to have a live team creating content for a game over the long term, then the game has to make money over the long term as well. If you try to hamfist that monetization model at the end, it looks like a hamfisted monetization scheme that players are _very_ attuned to. Bad monetization design is like bad game design, it makes the game worse. Good monetization design can allow you to support your game for _decades_. League of Legends would have died years ago if not for a monetization model that worked over the long term.
makeitdouble 4y ago
> And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews. I think a lot more CEO talk frankly than we give credit for. The difference would be that many of them are polite and considerate, and their baseline isn’t abrasive language. NPR had an interview of toy maker about Prime day, and it was pretty frank and natural, with pretty emotional topics, without calling anyone fucking idiots.
TameAntelope 4y ago
I think he says "the biggest fucking idiots" in the way some of us say, "aren't thinking of all the angles". If folks are getting wrapped up in the insult, they're not reading his tone correctly. He says it lovingly, and even if you disagree with that kind of tone, it's disingenuous to say he's literally calling these people "fucking idiots".
- deleted 4y ago
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twoquestions 4y ago
Why should Ferrari move on to something other than clay and carving knives? I really can't see a render on a computer screen of any size giving you the same visceral understanding of how a car looks walking up to it and moving around it, which is absolutely critical for a premium product like that. Maybe a VR rig might be useful in prototyping, I don't know. That comment makes him look even more like a short-sighted asshat.
- cartoonfoxes 4y ago
  It does, or ignorant at the least. All the auto manufacturers use clay, not just for Italian sportscars. Automotive technical surfacing in CAD is stupid hard, and is a waste of time for the design staff. The clay models are easier to work with in every sense - easier to change, easier to refine, easier to show and discuss, etc. Designers can apply reflective film to the clay which shows reflections much as the finished product would, and can even be painted. The final surfaces are reverse-engineered from scans taken from those clay models.
- ncr100 4y ago
  .. and it loses any Unity Ferrari business. Is there positivity somewhere in this kind of talk, like will it somehow win Unity more business? I am not seeing it.
techdragon 4y ago
I’ll be as blunt as he is. With the full context … he still sounds like an asshole. Admittedly an “authentic” asshole I genuinely believe that’s how he feels, but he strikes me as a corporate suit wearing asshole … a real Bobby Kotic (I think his name deserves to be a pejorative for assholes in the gaming industry) He can talk nice about it, but he’s saying anyone who isn’t focused on the money is and idiot, the stupid thing about that is that he clearly thinks “pay once” is for fucking idios and just let the mask slip to show this disdain for customers that want quality games that aren’t trying to productise the players. He’s saying if you don’t want to be sold, avoid anything built with Unity. Which is to bring it full circle… fucking stupid of him.
spookie 4y ago
Oh please, defending predatory, manipulative behavior and calling others fools for not indulging in such morally corrupt actions? There are "baked in monetization" practices that went so out of hand, that have become illegal in several democratic, and free countries. Let's just think about that for a second. I'm ashamed to even have to reply to this. These "brave", utterly perverse statements, given out by these decadent businesspersons, shouldn't be met by anything other than criticism, and disbelief. He's totally calling out for developers to embrace these ill practices. It's fucking disgusting, manipulative behavior.

by morley 4y ago

jeffwask 4y ago

He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful. As a gamer I reject that and have been with my wallet for a while. There are hundreds of dev teams producing great stuff below the AAA level that only ask me to buy the game once not every day.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
selfhoster11 4y ago
IMO it's not clear just from the immediate context in the article that he's actually advocating for MTX or ads. If he is, then he deserves all the flak. If he's simply talking about having a market fit so your game sells at all, then IMO that's just talking about the viability of the game as a product - and in this case it's just about whether making the game makes financial sense, not whether you can juice the customer for more money.
- jeffwask 4y ago
  He just executed a merge of his company with a company that produced know malware delivery platforms for installing scamware. I think we can guess where his intentions lay
  - placatedmayhem 4y ago
    Having read the full context on the original article on pocketgamer.biz, he is, in fact, making the assertion in this post title -- that game creatives that aren't working with sales and publicity teams from the beginning to build in monetization are idiots. Original article: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource-john-riccitiello-marc-whitten-merger/ https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource... Edit: I say this because I don't understand how it's not clear that he's driving for monetization in every game.
    - selfhoster11 4y ago
      The confusion is over what is meant by 'monetisation' here. Is is "making sure the game is at all commercially viable so I can afford to keep myself alive and well fed", or "making sure that every drop of money is juiced from the customer". Without a clear statement that he meant the latter, I decided to give him some benefit of doubt unless I have additional context (I never heard of the guy before).
      - m0llusk 4y ago
        It looks like the intent is to offer tools for taking money from customers. This means that the extent and character of monetization would be up to developers. It might mean adds, it might mean in game purchase opportunities. It does not necessarily mean a choice between two extremes.
      - munificent 4y ago
        Having worked under Ricitiello at EA, I am fairly confident his brain is not capable of distinguishing these concepts. I don't think he even understands the concept of "enough money".
deleted 4y ago
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karaterobot 4y ago
> He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful. Come on, that's clearly not what he's saying in that quote. I don't like microtransactions either, but it makes your position weaker to get hyperbolic. He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. To me this seems so obviously true that it's almost a product design axiom, let alone a priority for businesses. The question is how it should be done, and how well it will be done, which he says nothing about in that quote.
- ehnto 4y ago
  I think the confusion is in the art vs business part of the conversation. Some people are not making games for business purposes, they are 100% focused on the creative pursuit. Does that make them stupid? Of course not, they're competent adults who made their decision not to prioritize money over the experience of the game. I think it's pretty clear that's who he's talking about as well, with the "pure, brilliant.." comment.
- xg15 4y ago
  > He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. What's wrong about monetizing your game by, I don't know, selling copies of it?
  - falcolas 4y ago
    That only gets you some of the customers’ money, not all of their money.
- nmfisher 4y ago
  To me, "monetization" means everything except for just selling your product for an upfront sticker price. When it comes to games, that means subscriptions, ads or microtransactions. Arguably, the latter two aren't inherently scummy, but I find it very distasteful when a game's design is fundamentally changed to push them. This is the reason I completely avoid F2P games to begin with. I can't deny it's financially very lucrative though.

OskarS 4y ago

I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "compulsion loops"... just, no. Unity used to be famous for being the game engine of choice for creative indies. Games like Hollow Knight, Return of the Obra Dinn, or Ori and the Blind Forest. It seems to me very clear that Riccitello has no understanding of the value of tools for making games like that. He sees Unity as a way of pumping out endless shitty Candy Crush clones stuffed with predatory microtransactions. EDIT: by the way, for the full context, this is the question he's answering: > "Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is certainly an angle that has seen pushback from some developers." The pushback the question is referring to is developers being disappointed in the ironSource merger. He's literally being asked about Unity focusing too much on microtransactions and ad technology, and in his answer to the question he refers to his critics (which, again, are his customers!) as "fucking idiots". This guy should not be in charge of Unity.

zero_ 4y ago
Godot seems to gain popularity. Maybe it has a chance to become the choice for indies.
- SpaceManNabs 4y ago
  at the microsoft game hackathon thing in 2019 at their HQ in NYC, godot was pretty common choice. I think i saw it more than unreal actually (anecdotally, I don't know the actual aggregate). seems to be gaining popularity.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    It's very easy to get into, and very light weight so I'm not surprised. I'm not sure how well it'd scale into a large team or for a commercial project, but it's gaining heaps of steam.

soneca 4y ago

> ”And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.” There is this desire for “authenticity” in the current zeitgeist. You see it everywhere, but mostly in how the crowds love people like Trump and Elon Musk. I think this is an understandable reaction from being lied a lot by polite PR-trained people. Politicians and businesspeople mostly. But I think there are two very relevant types of bias that people who praises this apparent authenticity: 1 - Thinking people who use an aggressive, unapologetic tone do not lie. They do lie. I see no evidence that they lie less than “polite” people. The thing is that the mainstream is smaller and much much less dominant than it was decades ago. So you can get away offending a lot of people, because there will still be a lot of people left that will adore you. So you can use unapologetic tone that offend a group of people. It pays to offend a group, as long it is not your group. It gives you credit to lie to your group without getting caught. 2 - Thinking polite people are always lying. The other side of the coin. We see so many PR-trained people lying emulating polite people that we start to equal politeness to insincerity. But a lot of people are genuinely polite, considerate and kind. They tell the truth and try not to offend anyone. These biases, equaling offensive tone to authenticity is, I believe, a misleading and dangerous way to see the world. You use a flawed heuristic that leads you to believe in liers while bragging you are avoiding liers.

pcurve 4y ago
Those are very fair points, and I agree. For me personally, authenticity is more about choosing to speak vs. laying low on certain topics. Sure you can still lie when you speak to it, but at least you're being truthful on your desire to express.
- dylan604 4y ago
  You can lie..but at least you're being truthful?!?! Care to enlighten me on how to achieve this?
  - t-3 4y ago
    It's more about reacting to being called a liar, I think. React with evasions or moving goalposts, and people will think you're a slimeball trying to fool them, even if you're not. Double down and stick to your guns, and people will respect you, even if they think you're an idiot, a liar, or batshit insane.

mehlmao 4y ago

> I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. Few people have driven as many once-successful studios into the ground as Riccitello.

ehnto 4y ago

Hopefully I'm not putting words into their mouth, but the implication here is that those people are idiots because they're not making as much money as they could be by using the techniques he believes in. The second implication is that they are doing this unknowingly. That's a pretty naive outlook. Some people are either not in it for money, or don't care about the money more than they care about the integrity of their product and experience of their customers.

badloginagain 4y ago

> It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. The thing about a decent monetization model is that is _has_ to be thought about and structured from the very beginning. If you are going to have a live team creating content for a game over the long term, then the game has to make money over the long term as well. If you try to hamfist that monetization model at the end, it looks like a hamfisted monetization scheme that players are _very_ attuned to. Bad monetization design is like bad game design, it makes the game worse. Good monetization design can allow you to support your game for _decades_. League of Legends would have died years ago if not for a monetization model that worked over the long term.

makeitdouble 4y ago

> And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews. I think a lot more CEO talk frankly than we give credit for. The difference would be that many of them are polite and considerate, and their baseline isn’t abrasive language. NPR had an interview of toy maker about Prime day, and it was pretty frank and natural, with pretty emotional topics, without calling anyone fucking idiots.

TameAntelope 4y ago

I think he says "the biggest fucking idiots" in the way some of us say, "aren't thinking of all the angles". If folks are getting wrapped up in the insult, they're not reading his tone correctly. He says it lovingly, and even if you disagree with that kind of tone, it's disingenuous to say he's literally calling these people "fucking idiots".

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

twoquestions 4y ago

Why should Ferrari move on to something other than clay and carving knives? I really can't see a render on a computer screen of any size giving you the same visceral understanding of how a car looks walking up to it and moving around it, which is absolutely critical for a premium product like that. Maybe a VR rig might be useful in prototyping, I don't know. That comment makes him look even more like a short-sighted asshat.

cartoonfoxes 4y ago
It does, or ignorant at the least. All the auto manufacturers use clay, not just for Italian sportscars. Automotive technical surfacing in CAD is stupid hard, and is a waste of time for the design staff. The clay models are easier to work with in every sense - easier to change, easier to refine, easier to show and discuss, etc. Designers can apply reflective film to the clay which shows reflections much as the finished product would, and can even be painted. The final surfaces are reverse-engineered from scans taken from those clay models.
ncr100 4y ago
.. and it loses any Unity Ferrari business. Is there positivity somewhere in this kind of talk, like will it somehow win Unity more business? I am not seeing it.

techdragon 4y ago

I’ll be as blunt as he is. With the full context … he still sounds like an asshole. Admittedly an “authentic” asshole I genuinely believe that’s how he feels, but he strikes me as a corporate suit wearing asshole … a real Bobby Kotic (I think his name deserves to be a pejorative for assholes in the gaming industry) He can talk nice about it, but he’s saying anyone who isn’t focused on the money is and idiot, the stupid thing about that is that he clearly thinks “pay once” is for fucking idios and just let the mask slip to show this disdain for customers that want quality games that aren’t trying to productise the players. He’s saying if you don’t want to be sold, avoid anything built with Unity. Which is to bring it full circle… fucking stupid of him.

spookie 4y ago

Oh please, defending predatory, manipulative behavior and calling others fools for not indulging in such morally corrupt actions? There are "baked in monetization" practices that went so out of hand, that have become illegal in several democratic, and free countries. Let's just think about that for a second. I'm ashamed to even have to reply to this. These "brave", utterly perverse statements, given out by these decadent businesspersons, shouldn't be met by anything other than criticism, and disbelief. He's totally calling out for developers to embrace these ill practices. It's fucking disgusting, manipulative behavior.