Leading Unity into the future

Yup, been following every post in this thread. I also work with JR, and he was in the Copenhagen office just last week.

To be fair, I don't think any _one_ particular person can answer every question asked in the forum/blog. It's a team effort, one person cannot make all the decisions That's a big reason JR has to spend time with every team, because he alone cannot decide on everything. It's a company of 500 people, we have to cooperate. Imagine being part of a team of 500 people, it's not that easy to coordinate whether you are a dev or a CEO (thus things can take a little bit of time.)

 

I think you will always have to commit to hard work, sweat and talent. Tools are there to enable devs to create things, not create it for them. The devs using Unity are the brains and efforts behind each project, still I agree that passing on knowledge to others is a great thing (such as learning material), but I also think the Asset Store has an important place for many developers. It helps them focus on the creative part, whether that's coding, design or art.

 

The UT "learn" section is a powerful and potentially marketable asset for you I think. It may come out really good for moving democratisation to the next level in order to compete globally (against UE users, to say one) in a saturated market.

I mean, hard work, sweat and talent from single or not AAA devs might be better leveraged after proper education. Therefore, UT may provide the base with in-house courses, open or not, focused on intermediate and expert tricks to improve results. Technical case studies based on existing, successful and polished small games would be very welcome. You have the showcase section already as a pool for transmitting smart knowledge.

Too many people still lament their half-baked, amateurish failures (made possibile by UT democratisation of game development for mobiles) without actually having a clue why. After the tools, for which we are grateful, give us the clues!

 

I'm actually part of a team of over 16,0000 Our CEO didn't know a thing about our business when he took over, and it has effected us tremendously... There is a HUGE disconnect from executive members to local leadership, and that is very bad for business (as I have witnesses closely). So when John makes statements about being on the board for a year, but still can't answer pretty simple questions, that leads me to believe he is the same way... That DOES effect the business.

 

It does feel like, in his responses, JR is trying to play both sides. He's trying to reassure us that he's been here a while and that things aren't changing that much, but at the same time he's so new he can't answer questions yet. Along the same lines as @VicToMeyeZR 's comment, this sounds like the sort of thing a CEO might say if he isn't all that involved in the day-to-day operations.

 

What? A bunch of folk in the forums are trying to bait the new CEO into a technical debate as if they could manage the process themselves, well...

 

Hey there. Never knew about this thread.

I agree with goat. It's easy to judge and complain from the safety of your desks and pretend you can manage the thing better... in any case, personally I'm very skeptic about this change and what is going to make a difference for me is how the features requests on Unity Feedback will be managed.

I mean, there are very popular feature requests from more than 5 years ago that are not even started. I'm not talking about the Linux Editor (personally I don't want efforts being spent on it, and you can justify not doing it as not being profitable/etc), but what are the reasons to 'hold' features like a decent FBX(/blend) importer, decals, and a (basic) visual shader editor... those are features that are present in some of the competitors and they have lots of votes (2k-3k).

I don't know if Riccitiello is going to surprise us, but according to my 2 cents Unity is about to be sold so possibly John won't even have the time and 'freedom' to amaze us, but that's just my opinion and I really hope I'm wrong.

In any case, look at the initial reactions when Riccitiello was announced as the new CEO:
http://imgur.com/EYZBJOL

 

I guess you missed Joachim confirming that we aren't being sold.

 

Really? Holy Geez, I missed that! You sir made my day! .

So, let's wait and see if Riccitiello will surprise us... or not.

I kinda regret all the bullshit I've commented on the blog and on the IRC... I admit I had overreacted a little bit... but that was due the two 'magic' letters: EA .

Being realistic and taking the actual facts into account:
-Riccitiello has been in the board for some time
-David (and I think the other founders) trust him
-Joachim confirmed Unity is not being sold
I think there's no reason for panic. So, I give him (and Unity) the benefit of the doubt. Unless the thing actually becomes worse, nothing changes for me.

 

I honestly think people hate EA the same way they hate MS. Or Apple. It's actually sort of like some mass geek hysteria of some kind. An internet phenomenon.

 

No that is older than these modern phenomenons, I remember the spread of the EA hate began somewhere around the end of the 90's, while EA grew and became the big publisher monster.

 

I guess people totally ignore all the other monsters. It's easier to hate one monster. Lets face facts, if it was hated by more than a minority, they wouldn't be in business today. Unless people say they hate something but still buy it for pleasure, in which case I guess its some mass geek hysteria, since it doesn't make logical sense

 

That was phase 1. Phase 2 was when NPCs started pushing paid DLC, around 2005. JR was lucky to get out so he's no longer associated with them

 

To tell the truth, I don't really hate EA, I just said that because it's cool to hate EA these days...

I'm not really a 'hardcore' games consumer who has all the AAA titles in my virtual shelf, and I'm not a 'game industry enthusiast' also, I don't know nor care who is the 'new' Molyneux, Wright or Meier, I only care about games. That's why 90% of the games I bought the last 3 or 4 years are indie games. I don't want "more of the same" I want innovation... and a little bit of respect (I don't feel any respect when I play a 'pay-to-win' game or when I buy a mobile game and yet I have to pay for stuff).

I don't hate EA, but their titles doesn't have a big appeal for me; I don't like sports games (rather do the real thing and break a leg ), and imho their good games are all being dumbed down, look at Crysis, I bought the first one, it is fantastic (still consider one of the greatest FPSs) but the others were dumbed down to simple corridor shooters with great graphics. That was not what I wanted... I wanted bigger environments and more interaction (physical stuff, etc.), even if it was necessary to have worse graphics for that. Another game I bought was Spore, I know the game was a success but we simply don't go along. I was expecting something completely different.

Battlefield is "more of the same" imho, and online interactions sucks more each day, I used to like NFS series back in the PSX days (awesome memories of hot pursuit) but nowadays I don't like racing games like I used to, and I'd rather play a more 'serious' game like Forza or GT. Also, I never liked Star Wars (please geek/nerd armies, don't kill me while I sleep). Even when I was a kid I always found ridiculous the fact that with all that technology somehow they managed to make a 'slow light' for the guns... That was a deal-breaker for me.

The series that I'm considering are Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Dead Space. I never played any game of these series and it seems they are very good. Dragon Age is not really my style of game, and imho the market of Mass Effect and Dead Space is saturated... so many games to choose and I don't have 31 to play games. :B

 

I don't know how someone can take you seriously after that. You bash the man because it's cool?

 

No, my fears and doubts about Riccitiello have nothing to do with me hating EA or not, but it's fact that EA was publicly frowned upon when he was their CEO...
I don't think Riccitiello is the personification of EA or the devil or something like that.
My opinion is more along the lines that Unity grew beyond control. It's a monster now and needs a strong personality to lead the way, I just don't know if forwards or downhill .

EDIT: Nice game you've made

EDIT2:
Being realistic, I don't think a CEO can simply go Obama-style and rule-by-decree... That's not how it works afaik, so there's a possibility Riccitiello is not the only one to blame in case of EA.

 

EA, Ubisoft, Activision where is the difference? For me as a customer there is none, broken unfinished products that are only made to sell further DLCs at overrated prices.
Gaming is no longer entertainment, it is a business.

 

Well of course it's a business. They do like to make money and people do like to work and get paid.
Understand about half finished things but they also have people breathing down their necks to meet a deadline. Happens all the time no matter what business you are in.

 

The problem is people think like that but they keep paying for half-assed stuff, so, from the point of view of the 'bad' companies, why would they change? They are selling their half-assed S*** and the crappy DLCs and that's what matters to them, unless people stop buying their stuff they're not going to change, in fact the opposite is going to happen, they're going to make things even 'worse' until they reach the point when people will stop buying their dope, then they will just back down a little to the most profitable combination (the worst scenario in which people will still buy their S***).
They don't give a duck to what people think as long as they keep buying their stuff.

Personally, I didn't feel cheated by the horse armour in Oblivion (one of the worst DLCs ever afaik) because I didn't buy it (the DLC), but even though, and considering that I'm a huge fan of the series, I didn't buy Skyrim right away, because my 'threshold' is much much lower than the average gamer joe, so that horse armour somehow made me think twice about Skyrim, and I only bought it when it was on sale. If there were no horse armour in Oblivion I'd surely buy it right away without moving a single neuron.

As I said, I don't buy lots of games any longer and I know that games are not essential stuff, so when I sniff S*** in there, I simply don't buy it. The problem is people nowadays treat games like something essential, they think the companies are obliged to provide quality and an enjoyable experience, so they just buy whatever pops in front of their eyes and hope it's going to be good, but that's exactly what makes games worse, because in the end, if the companies are making money with crappy games, why would they spend more money to make good games? Only to have less profits?

In a certain way, the consumer is what makes the games good or bad, if most games are bad, it's because either the average game joe likes bad games or it's because he's too stupid to continue funding bad games and hope that companies will eventually make good games only to have less profits.

 

We live in interesting times...

 

You said that perfectly. People vote as consumers with their wallet. If they only knew how much power they really had.

 

And that is the reason why I just only buy Early Access games, I know what I get and know the risks.
They are honest in even saying it might never get finishes, and then it is ok for me.

 

It's funny that Early Access could be abbreviated as EA ... Yay! I'd consider many EA (Electronic Arts) games as Early Access in fact because some are released in a very poor form . Let's not get into that talk though because Ubisoft really kicked the bucket in terms of releasing unfinished/completely bugged games this year.

I like to buy Early Access games also (most are Indie afaik), some I actually regretted like Probably Archery (bought from humble store), but Steam nowadays is a pain in the arse with all that EA (Early Access ) content... sometimes you just want to buy a new game to play the weekend and it's just impossible to find one that is NOT on EA. Sometimes I just don't feel like playing unfinished games and just want to have some fun, but at the moment it's impossible to find it on Steam because no matter what you do you always face that dreaded blue strip of EA. :B You should be able to filter EA games... I'm all in for EA stuff, but as I said, sometimes you just want to play a good and 'finished' game.

 

I never buy Early Access games. The market is full of complete polished games, why would I buy an early access one? I also think the whole concept of early access is bad for our business in general, oversaturating an already crowded market with half finished cr@p.

 

I also don't really see too much appeal in early access games unless it's a project I have a personal interest or investment in and where I want to see the progress or (maybe even just a little bit) influence it. So far that was never the case.

This has not much to do with John being the new CEO of Unity, though. Even if the discussion derived from EA but even then I am pretty sure it wasn't John's direct responsibility when to release which games and in what state they were in.

 

I'll have to stop cussing John every time I encounter an Early Access game then

 

Early Access is just a marketing ploy to make you feel special for supposedly having access before others.

 

Yeah, I'd never buy a game simply because it's on early access, the fact is most of them are the kind of game I like, since most are 'indie' and brings some innovation. Plus I really like 'sandbox' kind of games, and so far only indies makes decent sandboxes games, I mean, of course there are some AAA sandboxes here and there but most of them are very limited, I think that's because somehow they are limited by the consoles, either because they're ported from consoles or perhaps the publishers hope to port them to consoles... you know, lots of procedural stuff and storing scenarios and stuff on disk was something that only recently minecraft pioneered on consoles... in fact before this generation (xbone,ps4) you couldn't even count on decent disk space on consoles, and even before that you couldn't store more than a few kb in a 'memory card' .

Sure it has an appeal like that, just like 'ecologically correct' products nowadays . But you can't deny the fact that, besides the marketing ploy and the outrageous company fee , you are in fact helping the development of the game somehow... or at least you're throwing a few bucks in the developer's hat. I mean, if the dev doesn't plan to develop the game and just want the money (cubeworlds anyone?) :B

 

That is the fact why all my last games were early access indie titles, because they had the courage to try something new, something different, something innovative.
The big publishers make the same stuff every year, new name, same stuff and far to expensive.
Most of my early access games get more support love than finishes and "polished" games.
Early access in general is not all bad or all good, but there are some developers out there that have a real close connection to the community and listen to them and changes the game, never except something like that from the big ones.