8 ms·

The damage is done. This whole debacle only confirms what I always knew to be true: you must build your own game engines and tooling.

by xwdv 3y ago

baal80spam 3y ago
This is my belief as well. In addition (I might be in the minority here) but I can always tell when a game is made in Unity - it has this cheap, plastic feel to it.
SXX 3y ago
Building own engine and tools is not financially viable for 99% of game development companies.
- superkuh 3y ago
  That's too bad. I guess for profit companies won't then and actual decent human people with more incentives in their lives than only profit will continue to do so.
  - chc 3y ago
    Humans actually need to eat more than for-profit companies do.
    - superkuh 3y ago
      You're all (everyone who replied to my comment) assuming that human game developers only develop games so that they can earn money off them. It's HN so that's not weird, pretty much everyone here has their for-profit blinders on. But what if I told you that not all human behavior is done for profit? Including game development. Not everything has to be "financially viable" and return a profit. The best things in life are made by people without any profit motive at all.
  - the_af 3y ago
    Even without profit in mind: sometimes you just want to build a game. It's easy to get sidetracked by "the engine" when all you wanted was to create a game... Most amateur gamedevs I know all started creating "the engine" and then the actual game never happened.
  - simonw 3y ago
    That position doesn't make any sense to me. Why should "decent human people" who want to build a cool game be forced to first build an engine for it?
  - SXX 3y ago
    I wish to just work on making cool games, but unfortunately my damn landlord and grocery store only care about profit and charge me money every time I have to deal with them.
  - rondini 3y ago
    If anything ONLY huge for-profit companies have the knowledge and resources to build their own engines. Without Unity or whatever takes its place thousands of indie devs would never have get off the ground.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  Major developers are too focused on things that hardly matter like cutting edge graphics, and hardly interested in things that do like gameplay. Indie is where people are more forgiving, and keeping as much profit matters. Thus in house engine development is a more viable strategy.
  - SXX 3y ago
    I am co-founder of indie game company. Like in any business there is tons of things you have to deal with: hr and managing people, making good game prototypes and pitches, finding funding or publisher, negotiating contracts, crunching for milestones and release. In case of majorify of indie games you only can only get $100,000-500,000 of funding total for one game with development time of 6-18 months. And like 50%+ of this money will go into creating art assets especially if we talk of pixel art. Go look what is the salary of senior C++ programmer with experience working with graphics, audio and little bit of everything. And one person can hardly create anything close to game engine tooling unless he work for several years. Making own game engine is the last any game developer gonna consider.
    - valianteffort 3y ago
      Thing is you only have to make the engine once. Most publishers just tweak their engine to fit the game over the years.
- raytopia 3y ago
  There are lots of frameworks people can build on. So it doesn't have to be from scratch.
jayd16 3y ago
Not to be snide but how many games have you shipped like that? Its really a massive undertaking to build a game engine. Not to mention a distraction as well.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  You don't need to build a game engine, though. Just build a game. Game engines exist basically to be able to reuse code across the development of many games. If you don't worry about writing an engine, and just write games without one, then as a side-effect you'll also be developing the core of an engine that's more specifically optimized for the sort of work that you actually do. Eventually, it may become advantageous to make that into a formal engine, or it may not. Either way, you're still creating games.
  - SXX 3y ago
    What you describing is only possible for hobby game developers with extremely small scale of a game or development time of 4-5 years. Majority of game developers simply dont have skillset to work with audio, graphics APIs and cross platform support.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > What you describing is only possible for hobby game developers with extremely small scale of a game or development time of 4-5 years. This is demonstrably untrue. It wasn't all that long ago that there were no game engines available for use, and yet small devs managed to produce a ton of great games anyway. It is true that a small developer is unlikely to be able to produce a grand AAA-scale game in a reasonable time, though. > Majority of game developers simply dont have skillset to work with audio, graphics APIs and cross platform support. Then perhaps they should gain that skillset? I would have assumed that any game dev is well-versed in doing these things regardless, but if not, isn't that a problem?
      - SXX 3y ago
        > This is demonstrably untrue. It wasn't all that long ago that there were no game engines available for use, and yet small devs managed to produce a ton of great games anyway. Audience expectations for production quality of art, animations and overall gameplay has grown accordingly over the years. To become a success game dont have to be best of the best, but it's just cant be much worse than baseline of modern successful games. If there is any indie games that you like and they were released less than 10 years ago please do a little research of how long they actually took to build. There are reasons why one-guy indie game production take 5-7 years. > Then perhaps they should gain that skillset? It's just too many skills and each of them take years of practice. If you take any modern game engine there will be dedicated programmers working on audio, graphics, networking, physics, etc. If you have group of 3 rock start programmer buddies who can work full time for free then you might have some chances, but I doubt you will have any time left to actually make games. Also even with your 3 buddies working for free process of making a game costs money. And if you tell the publishers or investors that your company building their own game engine no one will ever invest money into your project.
Zambyte 3y ago
> you must build your own game engines and tooling. From source perhaps

The damage is done. This whole debacle only confirms what I always knew to be true: you must build your own game engines and tooling.

by xwdv 3y ago

The damage is done. This whole debacle only confirms what I always knew to be true: you must build your own game engines and tooling.

baal80spam 3y ago

This is my belief as well. In addition (I might be in the minority here) but I can always tell when a game is made in Unity - it has this cheap, plastic feel to it.

SXX 3y ago

Building own engine and tools is not financially viable for 99% of game development companies.

superkuh 3y ago
That's too bad. I guess for profit companies won't then and actual decent human people with more incentives in their lives than only profit will continue to do so.
- chc 3y ago
  Humans actually need to eat more than for-profit companies do.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    You're all (everyone who replied to my comment) assuming that human game developers only develop games so that they can earn money off them. It's HN so that's not weird, pretty much everyone here has their for-profit blinders on. But what if I told you that not all human behavior is done for profit? Including game development. Not everything has to be "financially viable" and return a profit. The best things in life are made by people without any profit motive at all.
- the_af 3y ago
  Even without profit in mind: sometimes you just want to build a game. It's easy to get sidetracked by "the engine" when all you wanted was to create a game... Most amateur gamedevs I know all started creating "the engine" and then the actual game never happened.
- simonw 3y ago
  That position doesn't make any sense to me. Why should "decent human people" who want to build a cool game be forced to first build an engine for it?
- SXX 3y ago
  I wish to just work on making cool games, but unfortunately my damn landlord and grocery store only care about profit and charge me money every time I have to deal with them.
- rondini 3y ago
  If anything ONLY huge for-profit companies have the knowledge and resources to build their own engines. Without Unity or whatever takes its place thousands of indie devs would never have get off the ground.
valianteffort 3y ago
Major developers are too focused on things that hardly matter like cutting edge graphics, and hardly interested in things that do like gameplay. Indie is where people are more forgiving, and keeping as much profit matters. Thus in house engine development is a more viable strategy.
- SXX 3y ago
  I am co-founder of indie game company. Like in any business there is tons of things you have to deal with: hr and managing people, making good game prototypes and pitches, finding funding or publisher, negotiating contracts, crunching for milestones and release. In case of majorify of indie games you only can only get $100,000-500,000 of funding total for one game with development time of 6-18 months. And like 50%+ of this money will go into creating art assets especially if we talk of pixel art. Go look what is the salary of senior C++ programmer with experience working with graphics, audio and little bit of everything. And one person can hardly create anything close to game engine tooling unless he work for several years. Making own game engine is the last any game developer gonna consider.
  - valianteffort 3y ago
    Thing is you only have to make the engine once. Most publishers just tweak their engine to fit the game over the years.
raytopia 3y ago
There are lots of frameworks people can build on. So it doesn't have to be from scratch.

jayd16 3y ago

Not to be snide but how many games have you shipped like that? Its really a massive undertaking to build a game engine. Not to mention a distraction as well.

JohnFen 3y ago
You don't need to build a game engine, though. Just build a game. Game engines exist basically to be able to reuse code across the development of many games. If you don't worry about writing an engine, and just write games without one, then as a side-effect you'll also be developing the core of an engine that's more specifically optimized for the sort of work that you actually do. Eventually, it may become advantageous to make that into a formal engine, or it may not. Either way, you're still creating games.
- SXX 3y ago
  What you describing is only possible for hobby game developers with extremely small scale of a game or development time of 4-5 years. Majority of game developers simply dont have skillset to work with audio, graphics APIs and cross platform support.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > What you describing is only possible for hobby game developers with extremely small scale of a game or development time of 4-5 years. This is demonstrably untrue. It wasn't all that long ago that there were no game engines available for use, and yet small devs managed to produce a ton of great games anyway. It is true that a small developer is unlikely to be able to produce a grand AAA-scale game in a reasonable time, though. > Majority of game developers simply dont have skillset to work with audio, graphics APIs and cross platform support. Then perhaps they should gain that skillset? I would have assumed that any game dev is well-versed in doing these things regardless, but if not, isn't that a problem?
    - SXX 3y ago
      > This is demonstrably untrue. It wasn't all that long ago that there were no game engines available for use, and yet small devs managed to produce a ton of great games anyway. Audience expectations for production quality of art, animations and overall gameplay has grown accordingly over the years. To become a success game dont have to be best of the best, but it's just cant be much worse than baseline of modern successful games. If there is any indie games that you like and they were released less than 10 years ago please do a little research of how long they actually took to build. There are reasons why one-guy indie game production take 5-7 years. > Then perhaps they should gain that skillset? It's just too many skills and each of them take years of practice. If you take any modern game engine there will be dedicated programmers working on audio, graphics, networking, physics, etc. If you have group of 3 rock start programmer buddies who can work full time for free then you might have some chances, but I doubt you will have any time left to actually make games. Also even with your 3 buddies working for free process of making a game costs money. And if you tell the publishers or investors that your company building their own game engine no one will ever invest money into your project.

Zambyte 3y ago

> you must build your own game engines and tooling. From source perhaps