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I think this is the difference between big shops with big budgets and small indie developers. Lets say you make a game that sells $100,000 on steam. That's pret

I think this is the difference between big shops with big budgets and small indie developers. Lets say you make a game that sells $100,000 on steam. That's pretty impressive. What's your take home then? Steam takes 30%, taxes take 20%, engine takes 5%, marketing costs take 10%, etc. Now you have $35,000 left. Even in the best case scenario of a solitary indie developer that's a piss poor wage for someone who can make a game in a year that sells six figures on steam. Every little bit helps. Now compare that to a game that sells $20,000,000. That's what, 7 million take home? That's 200x the take home pay, yet it doesn't take 200x the staff or 200x the time or 200x the cost to make it. The system is geared for big shops. Smaller shops just seem to get a rougher deal. Guys like Notch are a rare exception. For most smaller devs saving 5% is significant savings.

ChikkaChiChi 12y ago
Based on your own hypothetical, that means you would spend $5,000 (or about 15% of your overall budget) for all of the mechanics that an engine provides. There are certainly games (e.g. visual novels) in which this wouldn't be very cost effective, but in most cases I believe that represents a huge value.
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  Sure, this doesn't make sense for VN's, but its not surprising that a lot of indie success stories are often 2D games that don't use these pricey engines. The cost is a disincentive as well as the extra 3D work compared to what can be done efficiently via 2D. The value argument doesn't make sense if my original vision was a 2D pixel game that I could personally do in my spare time compared to being given the hottest 3D engine and now asset creation and dev is 10x the time and cost. The big winners here look to be mid and big shops. Not to mention the asset stores these engine companies run. Having tons of indie devs suddenly buying all these 3D assets must be nice considering whatever cut Unity or Unreal are getting.
  - ChikkaChiChi 12y ago
    Minecraft was written from the ground up. Writing their own engine in Java has been the subject of great debate because of how poorly optimized it is, how every update shattered the mod scene, or how much work it takes to port it to all the various iterations on all the various platforms. Terraria was written in .NET using XNA and met with huge success. But they too have seen similar problems and have to use external dev houses to get the game onto other machines. Starbound is custom built. They messed up so badly with their initial build that it took them almost a year between releases to even release an update. Kerbal Space Program _does_ use Unity, but even they hit a wall of shame caused by using the engine in a 32-bit variety. Mods are much easier because the platform is written using a "standard" framework, but the game will implode if you require more memory than 32-bit can address. There are also plenty of success stories (Prison Architect might be my favorite game to watch develop) but I think the more complex the basis for the game, the smarter it might be to start with something that's proven and work your way up from there.
    - nightski 12y ago
      This assumes you can just plug in the engine and all is well and good. Many of these engines are optimized for certain types of games and do not play well when bent against their will. There is a large cost of learning to utilize the engine and get the best performance out of it. You are also heavily committing yourself to something where it is possible a wall could be hit and there would be no way out of it. Moving away from one of these engines is very expensive and may involve re-writing the majority of the game. It is not something you want to decide lightly.

ChikkaChiChi 12y ago

Based on your own hypothetical, that means you would spend $5,000 (or about 15% of your overall budget) for all of the mechanics that an engine provides. There are certainly games (e.g. visual novels) in which this wouldn't be very cost effective, but in most cases I believe that represents a huge value.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago
Sure, this doesn't make sense for VN's, but its not surprising that a lot of indie success stories are often 2D games that don't use these pricey engines. The cost is a disincentive as well as the extra 3D work compared to what can be done efficiently via 2D. The value argument doesn't make sense if my original vision was a 2D pixel game that I could personally do in my spare time compared to being given the hottest 3D engine and now asset creation and dev is 10x the time and cost. The big winners here look to be mid and big shops. Not to mention the asset stores these engine companies run. Having tons of indie devs suddenly buying all these 3D assets must be nice considering whatever cut Unity or Unreal are getting.
- ChikkaChiChi 12y ago
  Minecraft was written from the ground up. Writing their own engine in Java has been the subject of great debate because of how poorly optimized it is, how every update shattered the mod scene, or how much work it takes to port it to all the various iterations on all the various platforms. Terraria was written in .NET using XNA and met with huge success. But they too have seen similar problems and have to use external dev houses to get the game onto other machines. Starbound is custom built. They messed up so badly with their initial build that it took them almost a year between releases to even release an update. Kerbal Space Program _does_ use Unity, but even they hit a wall of shame caused by using the engine in a 32-bit variety. Mods are much easier because the platform is written using a "standard" framework, but the game will implode if you require more memory than 32-bit can address. There are also plenty of success stories (Prison Architect might be my favorite game to watch develop) but I think the more complex the basis for the game, the smarter it might be to start with something that's proven and work your way up from there.
  - nightski 12y ago
    This assumes you can just plug in the engine and all is well and good. Many of these engines are optimized for certain types of games and do not play well when bent against their will. There is a large cost of learning to utilize the engine and get the best performance out of it. You are also heavily committing yourself to something where it is possible a wall could be hit and there would be no way out of it. Moving away from one of these engines is very expensive and may involve re-writing the majority of the game. It is not something you want to decide lightly.