He did have a little bit of a point....(Shovelware)

I for one, found this thread quite lunatic and likely done to enrage oversensitive people, but the poster did raise a little bit of interesting point about shovelware.

It's a truthful and accurate description in most cases, but it still seems a bit out of taste to label other peoples' work in such a way, especially if you have not reached any success in games development. For example, I could quietly say to myself your Mario Brothers clone for iOS is shovelware and garbage and has awful controls, but I'd never say it publicly especially when I haven't made any successful, respectable game myself, or maybe I just did, LOL.

 

What is there to discuss? Some games are cheaply made, have no support after release and are only created for the purpose of making money. Always been that way, always will.

 

Bad games are bad.

 

Pretty rude for no reason.

 

But without even knowing what you're working on, I know every single one of your games will be shovelware garbage compared to any similar AAA offering backed by millions of dollars and hundreds of staff.

Yeah, and going into the showcase area and calling people's work shovelware and implying that they have no business making games (which is often true) wouldn't be worthy of a warning from moderators

 

Some people do bad games because they haven't yet learned how to do better. Others do it 'cause it's cheap, fast and can get you a short surge of money.

 

True, but what's the deal with people with failed businesses or making no money from their games publicly calling out other peoples' work as shovelware? In the thread I was mentioning, one poster had a great Youtube link aptly explaining what shovelware is, but somewhere else in another thread, admitted to making virtually no money from his games. I'm all for calling a spade a spade, but at least have some success in your field if you're going to publicly call games out, especially if have over 2,000 posts to your name.

 

The OP of that other thread was focused more on how all of the shovelware (and likely a lot of it is, as Devil-Inside stated, created by newbies anxious to get their first game out) was giving Unity a bad name. I don't know if that is true but it does make sense if you have tons of super simple poorly programmed games showing Powered by UnIty at startup people might start to associate Unity with poor quality. I would hope people would have enough sense to realize it all comes down to the developer and there are many excellent games out there that were made in Unity.

 

How many of those games stick with Unity Free though? If my games were successful enough that I could afford Unity Pro, I'd likely buy it, perform some minor optimizations on any older games, and remove the logos. There isn't any real advantage to sticking with it and it isn't particularly attractive either.

 

That's "the dream" and whole purpose of Unity Free I think. To give people the opportunity to learn game dev and make some games. Then when they start selling the games and reach that $100k per year they buy Unity Pro. $100k per year is a huge number to reach and the majority of solo devs are never going to reach that. I think a lot of beginners have been misled by the media focusing on Minecraft, Angry Birds and other uncommon success stories. They think if they just build a game and throw it out on cell phones they will be making major money. Other times I imagine it is just the thrill of being able to say they have a game out on iPhone, etc.

 

How many people truly wait till they hit $100,000 to buy Unity Pro though?

 

No idea. I would probably wait til I made at least $20k stashing it all away. That way after buying Pro I'd have enough money to hire some virtual help desk, money for audio and visual assets, marketing etc. If I intended to go full-time I'd probably wait til I absolutely had to get Pro.

 

I don't think it's really the newbies fault especially when people who claim to know better publicly release half-way decent efforts then abandon them and blame the market. I've read most of the excuses, "I'm already have a full time job", "the market is flooded", but others are somehow succeeding. It's just strange how one rarely if ever finds the "experts" with encyclopedias of forum posts, yet not even modest success, calling their own products shovelware.

 

Agreed. I didn't mean to put the blame solely on the newbies. I just meant Unity has attracted a huge... no make that HUGE... number of people who want to make a game for the first time in their lives. Look at the forums and every day there are usually multiple posts saying they are completely new don't know where to begin etc. So out of all of that many will stop at some point before completing their game and some will shove the game out there on the market anyway. And of those that do complete that first game, most will publish it. Just meant this will always be a huge source of these kind of games. And I give them credit for actually making and releasing something. Just I often wish there was a site all of these new devs could publish their first game or two on.

 

People already associate Unity with poor quality. They also think of Unity as being synonymous with bad graphics, unpolished gameplay, etc. It's completely free to get started with and a lot of people will make their first games in Unity. I think at the very least, as a show of good faith for your players, you pay just to get that splash screen removed when you are ready to publish. That's how you can tell people, "I am serious."

If you really want to tell people about Unity, at the end of your credits place the Unity logo. That's how it's been done for ages with foundational technology.

 

You're talking about the other brothers. If you want to call it shovelware or criticise it that's fine. But, trying to ban criticism is about the stupidest thing anyone can do. A game with flaws is a game with flaws, and an opinion is an opinion.

This thread is locked because the op thinks he can continue a locked thread. That doesn't happen here.