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I'm afraid this will be an unpopular opinion with how beloved Godot is... but this is how Unity ended up where they are. Unity launched with a very similar mis

I'm afraid this will be an unpopular opinion with how beloved Godot is... but this is how Unity ended up where they are. Unity launched with a very similar mission to Godot, very similar energy of busting up big game engine: then the funding came in.

tmpz22 4y ago
Well there's more hindsight for them to draw on and learn from the mistakes of the past. Im sure there were for Unity too, but its more immediate in this situation I think. You're probably right though.
- Macha 4y ago
  The concern with something like this is that chucking the early adopters under the bus once they were established is unlikely to be viewed as a mistake given it likely didn't affect the investors or owners
_manifold 4y ago
The key difference is that Unity was a commercial venture from the start and Godot is a FOSS project. That's not to say FOSS development doesn't have its own challenges and potential issues, but I don't think it's fair to say they are resigned to follow in Unity's footsteps simply because they are now receiving funding. By example, Blender is receiving a not-insignificant amount of funding from a variety of sources and they are doing better than ever.
- homarp 4y ago
  godot started as a in-house engine, so commercial venture. (see https://godotengine.org/article/first-public-release https://godotengine.org/article/first-public-release ). Just like Blender started as in-house tools ( https://www.blender.org/about/history/ https://www.blender.org/about/history/ )
  - larsiusprime 4y ago
    The relevant point is that Godot and Blender are both open source now, and Unity remains closed source.
    - homarp 4y ago
      Original post said "To date, Godot follows the Blender story, not the Unity story" to which _manifold replied "The key difference is that Unity was a commercial venture from the start and Godot is a FOSS project." My point was to point out that both Blender and Godot were commercial venture first and went FOSS. They did not start as FOSS ventures. That Unity is not OpenSource yet is not really relevant to what I was trying to explain.
syntheweave 4y ago
To date, Godot follows the Blender story, not the Unity story: built originally as a proprietary tool, later open-sourced, but in a state where few could seriously use it. Then after years and years of gradually built momentum, you start to see industry backers appear. Unity's story was always "plucky startup goes big". They never dogfooded an actual game in-house, they kept the source closed, broke everything as they went along, never fixed longstanding bugs. All the early goodwill was simply based on the fact that the IDE made the first 80% of a game easy to reach - the part where you have some collision logic wired up to input, things interact, assets appear, it runs on device. Actually finishing complex, featureful games in Unity has always been a dark art.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  I feel like this is being insanely harsh by leveraging hindsight, so harsh you're actually ignoring reality at points. Like Unity was originally born from the idea the two co-founders would build a game studio that would license their tech. And they did in fact release a game: https://www.macworld.com/article/174909/gooball.html https://www.macworld.com/article/174909/gooball.html They were 100% that plucky startup (I mean the team started when two people met in an apartment off a forum and merged their codebases...) and before they started leveraging all of their funding to buy up middleware after middleware, they were actually pretty good about stability and quality. They literally built their initial success on the quality of their editor) - Godot also suffers from the exact same 80/20 problem Unity does (W4 Games is literally betting the farm on commercializing part that 20% in closed source tooling). As far as I'm concerned that problem is inherent to any game engine that targets widespread accessibility, because making a game without an extremely deep level of discipline when it comes to organization will always be a recipe for a slog. Yes Unity being more responsive to bugs would help, yes Godot is currently a million time better off in _that_ respect being open source... but again, to me funding is exactly where the train starts to jump the rails. If you actually go back and research Unity's roots, they had the _exact_ inspiration and drive Godot did, but it was having to recoup investments that slowly pushed things off track, and eventually that snowballed into what we have today. From guy who wanted to make Mac games and tools for people who make Mac games... to a company that's merging with an ad corporation for their survival.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
Unity started development for years as an open source project?
- hgs3 4y ago
  It's not about how you start, it's about how you end up. Only time will tell.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Unity became an open source project, or Godot became a commerical one?

tmpz22 4y ago

Well there's more hindsight for them to draw on and learn from the mistakes of the past. Im sure there were for Unity too, but its more immediate in this situation I think. You're probably right though.

Macha 4y ago
The concern with something like this is that chucking the early adopters under the bus once they were established is unlikely to be viewed as a mistake given it likely didn't affect the investors or owners

_manifold 4y ago

The key difference is that Unity was a commercial venture from the start and Godot is a FOSS project. That's not to say FOSS development doesn't have its own challenges and potential issues, but I don't think it's fair to say they are resigned to follow in Unity's footsteps simply because they are now receiving funding. By example, Blender is receiving a not-insignificant amount of funding from a variety of sources and they are doing better than ever.

homarp 4y ago
godot started as a in-house engine, so commercial venture. (see https://godotengine.org/article/first-public-release https://godotengine.org/article/first-public-release ). Just like Blender started as in-house tools ( https://www.blender.org/about/history/ https://www.blender.org/about/history/ )
- larsiusprime 4y ago
  The relevant point is that Godot and Blender are both open source now, and Unity remains closed source.
  - homarp 4y ago
    Original post said "To date, Godot follows the Blender story, not the Unity story" to which _manifold replied "The key difference is that Unity was a commercial venture from the start and Godot is a FOSS project." My point was to point out that both Blender and Godot were commercial venture first and went FOSS. They did not start as FOSS ventures. That Unity is not OpenSource yet is not really relevant to what I was trying to explain.

syntheweave 4y ago

To date, Godot follows the Blender story, not the Unity story: built originally as a proprietary tool, later open-sourced, but in a state where few could seriously use it. Then after years and years of gradually built momentum, you start to see industry backers appear. Unity's story was always "plucky startup goes big". They never dogfooded an actual game in-house, they kept the source closed, broke everything as they went along, never fixed longstanding bugs. All the early goodwill was simply based on the fact that the IDE made the first 80% of a game easy to reach - the part where you have some collision logic wired up to input, things interact, assets appear, it runs on device. Actually finishing complex, featureful games in Unity has always been a dark art.

BoorishBears 4y ago
I feel like this is being insanely harsh by leveraging hindsight, so harsh you're actually ignoring reality at points. Like Unity was originally born from the idea the two co-founders would build a game studio that would license their tech. And they did in fact release a game: https://www.macworld.com/article/174909/gooball.html https://www.macworld.com/article/174909/gooball.html They were 100% that plucky startup (I mean the team started when two people met in an apartment off a forum and merged their codebases...) and before they started leveraging all of their funding to buy up middleware after middleware, they were actually pretty good about stability and quality. They literally built their initial success on the quality of their editor) - Godot also suffers from the exact same 80/20 problem Unity does (W4 Games is literally betting the farm on commercializing part that 20% in closed source tooling). As far as I'm concerned that problem is inherent to any game engine that targets widespread accessibility, because making a game without an extremely deep level of discipline when it comes to organization will always be a recipe for a slog. Yes Unity being more responsive to bugs would help, yes Godot is currently a million time better off in _that_ respect being open source... but again, to me funding is exactly where the train starts to jump the rails. If you actually go back and research Unity's roots, they had the _exact_ inspiration and drive Godot did, but it was having to recoup investments that slowly pushed things off track, and eventually that snowballed into what we have today. From guy who wanted to make Mac games and tools for people who make Mac games... to a company that's merging with an ad corporation for their survival.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

Unity started development for years as an open source project?

hgs3 4y ago
It's not about how you start, it's about how you end up. Only time will tell.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Unity became an open source project, or Godot became a commerical one?