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Unity itself was once seen as the "mobile and hobbyist platform" compared to "big kid engines" like frostbite, cryengine and unreal. I think Godot is there, an
by Macha 3y ago
Unity itself was once seen as the "mobile and hobbyist platform" compared to "big kid engines" like frostbite, cryengine and unreal.
I think Godot is there, and they are seeing the start of adoption by AAA devs even before the Unity licensing shenanigans. But as Unity's own rise shows, it's not going to be a matter of flipping a switch and having comparable share amongst big games tomorrow.
It's probably also worth mentioning that it's possible to build pretty much any game in any framework, or without, it's just a matter of time and effort. Like LWJGL still is seen as a "toy" framework despite being in one of the most successful video games of all time (Minecraft). Factorio used just Allegro as a layer on top of SDL before migrating to bare SDL2. Conversely, many of the technical problems for KSP1 or Cities Skylines 2 have been attributed to Unity being a poor fit, despite being widely recognised as having "made it" into the "real engines" tier. There were also some EA developers with not very nice things to say about frostbite for games that don't look like Battlefield in the era where EA was pushing for all their devs to adopt it.
- arlcode 3y agoI wonder whether that is because most games are projects with a clear endpoint after which development mostly stops. That allows developers to experiment a little bit (internally or with smaller projects) and hedge their bets. If there is language compatibility (e.g. C# ) and your reusable components are somewhat sensibly designed (if only to mitigate update risks in your initial engine) it's feasible to think about switching for your next game (unless say in with service product that is expected to run indefinitely)
- Macha 3y agoThe counterpoint to this is many studios are sequel factories, or producing games that are at least broadly in the same genre continuously, and each game starts as a fork of the last, which is how you end up with things like the COD engine or Source 2 having a direct lineage to engines from 90s quake games. So "Assassins Creed: Odyssey" may not be an ongoing service, but "Assassins Creed" is, and tech carries forward from one to the next.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zenbowman 3y agoExactly. I used Unity starting from almost the first release, and attended Unite in 2007. Unity was seen as a hobby engine then, we used it for the web, but for desktop used Unreal. Godot today is way ahead of where Unity was in 2007ish.