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I sorta want to do this, but developing completely open source games. Maybe even developing my own game engine. Of course all this costs a lot of money with n
by 999900000999 2y ago
I sorta want to do this, but developing completely open source games.
Maybe even developing my own game engine.
Of course all this costs a lot of money with no clear way to make it back. If I had to come up with a monetization model, I would come up with an ad network similar to Unity.
If Unity needs 2 billion in revenue to barely keep going, I reckon a more focused engine could be funded for 20 million a year.
It's a moot point since I'll never have that much money or be able to raise a VC round.
But HN, let's dream. Imagine a .net or JavaScript engine that's web first. With mobile and PC support coming later( PC can just run a local server). The engine developers dog food their own engine, making very high quality examples for the community.
Keep the engine focused on small lightweight games.
Unity's ultimate problem is they keep trying to do literally everything.
I wouldn't do that. I'd say straight up this engine isn't going to do AAA gaming. It's not going to scale. I'm not supporting 800 design patterns.
- kleiba 2y agoDon't write your own engine, unless you want to do that just for fun. But if you actually want to make a game, use one of the exiting engines. If you want to develop a game engine as a product to make money of, it's probably better to forget that idea. There are enough very sophisticated engines out there, so why would any third-party developer take the risk and use yours instead? I mean, even the big open source engines that already exist today have trouble gaining traction.
- 999900000999 2y agoI don't have the money to do this anyway, it's a moot point. But the idea is you build the engine, and make better tools for advertising hooked into your own commercial service. That's by and large how Unity makes money. I want to actually make quality open source games, and I want to use one easy language, like C# from the engine to the scripting. Or maybe one day I'll learn Rust and Bevy...
- kleiba 2y agoIMO, that's not a feature that would set your engine apart enough from the existing ones. And if it were, the big ones could add that feature as well. Thousand of man hours have gone into the development of the big commercial engines. You'd have to match that and then add your new feature on top in order to become a serious competitor. What's the advantage of making your game open source? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm a big free software fan but what do you think will come out of that?
- 999900000999 2y agoI don't exactly have commercial goals here. I want to go open source so people have something to learn from. I think Unity, Unreal, and even Godot try to do too much at once. I want an engine to do one thing really well.
- butlike 2y agoWhich license would be best to get out of the hell of "30% to the distribution store" "25% to UDK" so 50% of your revenue is skimmed off the top before you see a dime. Assuming you'll make _some_ money.