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Godot is the most obvious answer from a long term non-profit perspective, but it's not without it's caveats. Rewriting is obviously difficult, starting new proj

Godot is the most obvious answer from a long term non-profit perspective, but it's not without it's caveats. Rewriting is obviously difficult, starting new projects is somewhat easier. The main issue I see is the Unity asset store ecosystem is completely different and provides massive amounts of functionality for current games, which Godot doesn't yet have much of. I've tried Godot a few times and basic stuff like export to web didn't work at all out of the box, and it felt like alpha quality stuff. I would however like it to succeed. Unity also has extensive documentation and training and it's an established tool for game devs who then migrate to industry jobs like industrial process/environment simulations. I have a feeling Godot is barely aware of these scenarios as it's rarely the engine of choice.

clnq 3y ago
To put this very directly, Godot is a meme in the commercial games industry. Most of companies with above AA cash would rather write their own engines than use Godot, as the maintenance effort would probably exceed the effort to write the own engine to spec. Maybe Godot is more seriously considered by indies and open source fans. But then, Unreal Engine is also practically open source for any licensee, including ones that won’t ever pay a cent to Epic. So even in indies, it’s rare to see Godot. I champion all development in games. So I wish good luck to Godot. I’ve actually been thinking about contributing, too. I think in some ways, the ethics of Godot are a breath of fresh air. But contributing to UE looks much better on a resume. There are a lot of forces working agains Godot: inertia, economics, instability, lack of talent, lack of appeal to talent. No marketplace actually is the least of its concerns as we don’t use marketplace stuff much in AAA/AA. The engine makes a lot more sense on paper than in reality.
- vvanders 3y ago
  I hope Godot/Bevy do well but there's a kernel of truth there as well. It was not uncommon for us to make significant changes to licensed engines to meet the needs of the game style/design. UE3 for instance was pretty awful for open world titles(gears was quite a rails shooter and the engine reflected that), there's a number of titles that took the renderer and re-did many of the major game systems. Once you make changes like that upleveling is a serious challenge. We had one dev who's responsibility was to pull latest, spend about a month getting to to compile, another 1-2 months fixing all the issues, checking it in only to them spend another 2 months fixing all the cases that weren't tested. With a ~6mo uplevel cadence it was just enough time to finish it in order to start the next uplevel. Once you've gone through that internal engines start to look appealing(although they have their own pitfalls, I.E. heavy dependency on MAX/Maya for editor support and other "fun" bits).
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  > To put this very directly, Godot is a meme in the commercial games industry. Most of companies with above AA cash would rather write their own engines than use Godot I find this an odd statement because from my perspective there aren't any AAA titles written in Unity either. They are all proprietary engines or Unreal nowadays. So the question isn't if Godot can take over the AA, AAA games, it's can it take over the market currently served by Unity. It probably can't right now, but probably not as far off as it seems either > There are a lot of forces working agains Godot: inertia, economics, instability, lack of talent, lack of appeal to talent. Other than "instability" none of this is a criticism of the engine itself... so why is it a meme? Edit: I'm actually really struggling to think of a game I would consider AAA that I know of made in Unity. Please help me out if you know of some I'm not aware of.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    Unity is used more widely than you might think, though maybe it's just your definition of AAA here. Mihoyo's titles all use Unity AFAIK and have massive AAA-level budgets along with massive AAA-level revenues. Most of the big publishers have teams using Unity, you can kind of pick and choose whether those individual titles are "AAA" or not but like, Blizzard ships Unity games, etc. It's become a go-to choice for stuff that you want to cheaply ship across many platforms and have run on low spec devices.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      Sort of telling then, that when they did their virtual actor software, they did it in unreal and not unity.
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      If a game is freemium it's definitely not a AAA title imo.
      - Player6225 3y ago
        This take seems pretty wild to me, considering that freemium multi-player games have kinda dominated top-grossing for the last decade. Fortnite, League of Legends, Genshin, PUBG all follow this model.
- meheleventyone 3y ago
  It’s worthwhile remembering that in the AAA/AA space that Unity was “a meme” for far longer than it should have been. I remember first seeing it mentoring student teams in Dare to be Digital whilst working on an AAA title and thinking WTF is that!? I’d also note that the ‘commercial games industry’ is much broader than AAA/AA, includes indie game developers and ships games making looooots of money on all sorts of weird tech stacks.
  - alex_lav 3y ago
    tbf Unity still is a meme in terms of AAA games.
    - skelpmargyar 3y ago
      That's not true. Wild Rift, Hearthstone, Genshin Impact, and more are made in Unity. Asset flip and low quality games are a meme, which used to be synonymous with Unity games, but the few AAA games made in Unity have been wildly successful.
      - olig15 3y ago
        That’s exactly the point. If you can list the number of ‘AAA’ games on one hand, then the meme holds true. I work on AAA games on in-house engines, and I’m yet to meet someone at work that would consider using Unity for anything other than a mobile, or small ‘indie’ game.
        meheleventyone 3y ago
        That’s sad it’s still a prevailing attitude because it’s not really true. I definitely wouldn’t choose Unity for a AAA title for workflow issues alone but it’s way more capable than that summation grants.
- alex_lav 3y ago
  > To put this very directly, Godot is a meme in the commercial games industry. Godot might be a meme in terms of AAA games, but "Commercial games" is a lot more than AAA, both by revenue and just total games developed. > Most of companies with above AA cash would rather write their own engines than use Godot See previous statement. When did we start talking at "above AA" companies? Also most companies with "above AA" money aren't using Unity. > So even in indies, it’s rare to see Godot. This has more to do with age though. You see less people driving 2024 cars than 2020 cars. > There are a lot of forces working agains Godot: inertia, economics, instability, lack of talent, lack of appeal to talent. No marketplace actually is the least of its concerns as we don’t use marketplace stuff much in AAA/AA. The engine makes a lot more sense on paper than in reality. Yeah again, it really feels like your perspective on game development is purely from the AAA BigCo game dev side. Which is a real perspective, but is certainly not even close to all encompassing with regard to game development.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    > Also most companies with "above AA" money aren't using Unity. That not so obvious. Ad infested shovelware does make a lot of money.
- shantnutiwari 3y ago
  > To put this very directly, Godot is a meme in the commercial games industry. Yes! I feel the same. As soon as you go beyond toy examples, working in Godot becomes very hard. And the lack of an asset store is killing it. Sure you can get assets from other sources, but I found you have to do a lot of messing around to get it working properly. While with Unity, all assets work out the box.
runevault 3y ago
Worth noting people running Godot have mentioned the Asset store priority is climbing. I didn't save the tweet when I saw it but they are aware that is a huge area that would help people transition off of Unity.
omoikane 3y ago
> Unity asset store Would be nice if Godot can access Unity assets. Someone posted a demo of a Unity loader few months back: https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/13io0bx/load_unitypackage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/13io0bx/load_unitypa... The sentiment of that thread appears to be that it's technically feasible and would be quite useful, but the legal issues are unclear.
- ncr100 3y ago
  https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot Imports *.unitypackage files into Godot, supporting a smattering of Unity asset-types.

clnq 3y ago

To put this very directly, Godot is a meme in the commercial games industry. Most of companies with above AA cash would rather write their own engines than use Godot, as the maintenance effort would probably exceed the effort to write the own engine to spec. Maybe Godot is more seriously considered by indies and open source fans. But then, Unreal Engine is also practically open source for any licensee, including ones that won’t ever pay a cent to Epic. So even in indies, it’s rare to see Godot. I champion all development in games. So I wish good luck to Godot. I’ve actually been thinking about contributing, too. I think in some ways, the ethics of Godot are a breath of fresh air. But contributing to UE looks much better on a resume. There are a lot of forces working agains Godot: inertia, economics, instability, lack of talent, lack of appeal to talent. No marketplace actually is the least of its concerns as we don’t use marketplace stuff much in AAA/AA. The engine makes a lot more sense on paper than in reality.

vvanders 3y ago
I hope Godot/Bevy do well but there's a kernel of truth there as well. It was not uncommon for us to make significant changes to licensed engines to meet the needs of the game style/design. UE3 for instance was pretty awful for open world titles(gears was quite a rails shooter and the engine reflected that), there's a number of titles that took the renderer and re-did many of the major game systems. Once you make changes like that upleveling is a serious challenge. We had one dev who's responsibility was to pull latest, spend about a month getting to to compile, another 1-2 months fixing all the issues, checking it in only to them spend another 2 months fixing all the cases that weren't tested. With a ~6mo uplevel cadence it was just enough time to finish it in order to start the next uplevel. Once you've gone through that internal engines start to look appealing(although they have their own pitfalls, I.E. heavy dependency on MAX/Maya for editor support and other "fun" bits).
bluefirebrand 3y ago
> To put this very directly, Godot is a meme in the commercial games industry. Most of companies with above AA cash would rather write their own engines than use Godot I find this an odd statement because from my perspective there aren't any AAA titles written in Unity either. They are all proprietary engines or Unreal nowadays. So the question isn't if Godot can take over the AA, AAA games, it's can it take over the market currently served by Unity. It probably can't right now, but probably not as far off as it seems either > There are a lot of forces working agains Godot: inertia, economics, instability, lack of talent, lack of appeal to talent. Other than "instability" none of this is a criticism of the engine itself... so why is it a meme? Edit: I'm actually really struggling to think of a game I would consider AAA that I know of made in Unity. Please help me out if you know of some I'm not aware of.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  Unity is used more widely than you might think, though maybe it's just your definition of AAA here. Mihoyo's titles all use Unity AFAIK and have massive AAA-level budgets along with massive AAA-level revenues. Most of the big publishers have teams using Unity, you can kind of pick and choose whether those individual titles are "AAA" or not but like, Blizzard ships Unity games, etc. It's become a go-to choice for stuff that you want to cheaply ship across many platforms and have run on low spec devices.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Sort of telling then, that when they did their virtual actor software, they did it in unreal and not unity.
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    If a game is freemium it's definitely not a AAA title imo.
    - Player6225 3y ago
      This take seems pretty wild to me, considering that freemium multi-player games have kinda dominated top-grossing for the last decade. Fortnite, League of Legends, Genshin, PUBG all follow this model.
meheleventyone 3y ago
It’s worthwhile remembering that in the AAA/AA space that Unity was “a meme” for far longer than it should have been. I remember first seeing it mentoring student teams in Dare to be Digital whilst working on an AAA title and thinking WTF is that!? I’d also note that the ‘commercial games industry’ is much broader than AAA/AA, includes indie game developers and ships games making looooots of money on all sorts of weird tech stacks.
- alex_lav 3y ago
  tbf Unity still is a meme in terms of AAA games.
  - skelpmargyar 3y ago
    That's not true. Wild Rift, Hearthstone, Genshin Impact, and more are made in Unity. Asset flip and low quality games are a meme, which used to be synonymous with Unity games, but the few AAA games made in Unity have been wildly successful.
    - olig15 3y ago
      That’s exactly the point. If you can list the number of ‘AAA’ games on one hand, then the meme holds true. I work on AAA games on in-house engines, and I’m yet to meet someone at work that would consider using Unity for anything other than a mobile, or small ‘indie’ game.
      - meheleventyone 3y ago
        That’s sad it’s still a prevailing attitude because it’s not really true. I definitely wouldn’t choose Unity for a AAA title for workflow issues alone but it’s way more capable than that summation grants.
alex_lav 3y ago
> To put this very directly, Godot is a meme in the commercial games industry. Godot might be a meme in terms of AAA games, but "Commercial games" is a lot more than AAA, both by revenue and just total games developed. > Most of companies with above AA cash would rather write their own engines than use Godot See previous statement. When did we start talking at "above AA" companies? Also most companies with "above AA" money aren't using Unity. > So even in indies, it’s rare to see Godot. This has more to do with age though. You see less people driving 2024 cars than 2020 cars. > There are a lot of forces working agains Godot: inertia, economics, instability, lack of talent, lack of appeal to talent. No marketplace actually is the least of its concerns as we don’t use marketplace stuff much in AAA/AA. The engine makes a lot more sense on paper than in reality. Yeah again, it really feels like your perspective on game development is purely from the AAA BigCo game dev side. Which is a real perspective, but is certainly not even close to all encompassing with regard to game development.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  > Also most companies with "above AA" money aren't using Unity. That not so obvious. Ad infested shovelware does make a lot of money.
shantnutiwari 3y ago
> To put this very directly, Godot is a meme in the commercial games industry. Yes! I feel the same. As soon as you go beyond toy examples, working in Godot becomes very hard. And the lack of an asset store is killing it. Sure you can get assets from other sources, but I found you have to do a lot of messing around to get it working properly. While with Unity, all assets work out the box.

runevault 3y ago

Worth noting people running Godot have mentioned the Asset store priority is climbing. I didn't save the tweet when I saw it but they are aware that is a huge area that would help people transition off of Unity.

omoikane 3y ago

> Unity asset store Would be nice if Godot can access Unity assets. Someone posted a demo of a Unity loader few months back: https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/13io0bx/load_unitypackage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/13io0bx/load_unitypa... The sentiment of that thread appears to be that it's technically feasible and would be quite useful, but the legal issues are unclear.

ncr100 3y ago
https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot Imports *.unitypackage files into Godot, supporting a smattering of Unity asset-types.