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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

by 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.
      - bluefirebrand 3y ago
        Fortnite and Genshin are content mills League of Legends is a massive success but AAA? Not really. It's basically a Warcraft 3 mod. And Pubg actually was a mod wasn't it? I'm not questioning the success. AAA implies a certain type of quality to me, and being a freemium content mill online service game is absolutely not it.
        Player6225 3y ago
        Oh ok, then I guess we just have a different definitions. I would define AAA titles almost purely by budget/resources. So for example, I would say that Fortnite and Genshin were AAA games from the start, and that LOL and Pubg became and have been AAA titles for years now.
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.

by clnq 3y ago

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.
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      Fortnite and Genshin are content mills League of Legends is a massive success but AAA? Not really. It's basically a Warcraft 3 mod. And Pubg actually was a mod wasn't it? I'm not questioning the success. AAA implies a certain type of quality to me, and being a freemium content mill online service game is absolutely not it.
      - Player6225 3y ago
        Oh ok, then I guess we just have a different definitions. I would define AAA titles almost purely by budget/resources. So for example, I would say that Fortnite and Genshin were AAA games from the start, and that LOL and Pubg became and have been AAA titles for years now.

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.