Hobbyist game developer perspective

I liked this article on gamasutra, you might too:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...Why_one_indie_dev_will_never_go_full_time.php

 

He loves his career as a web developer? What madness is this!

 

Yes clearly he is not quite right in the head, but then again he is a game developer

 

Great article and I can relate to him. Making games is just an enjoyable thing to do. I don't need to make money from it. I do see it as a fun experiment to try to make a game and make some money from it. Even then only single digit thousands.

Already have a job I like working with great people. The two are very different. One is the career way to make a living. The other is for passion and possibly a way to earn a second tiny income stream.

From what I've seen there are many part-time game devs out there making as much or even more money from game dev who still keep their jobs. It doesn't have to be an either or thing.

 

To me he embodies the true spirit of indie games, in that he is trying something new and he's not concerned about what will sell best. The spaceflight social media game for instance, as far as I know that's the only one of it's kind and it's kind of cool he had the freedom to do that.

 

@tiggus there was another article I posted a couple weeks back from another Indie who said that same basic thing as you just did. He was a full-time Indie and has since returned to work full-time and said he has more freedom now than he ever had when doing game dev full time. Before he had to constantly turn out tiny games all focused on bringing in money. Now he can build whatever he wants to.

 

If I wasn't doing this just as a hobby I'd worry constantly about my design decisions being too weird for the market. I mean recently I've seen so many bad reviews for games that looked fine on steam, for seemingly minor reasons... like "no 4k resolution? negative review", "just 4 hours singleplayer campaign? negative review" and so on. On the other hand I'm often surprised what the details are that people mention that they actually like about games.

 

A 4K monitor can be bought for about $300. That's only $50 more than the 1440p monitors. While I would much rather have a higher refresh rate than a higher resolution, we're now at the point where we're going to have to start supporting it.

Yes, I know the feeling. It's not very often you run into a game people love because they can't win.

 

Part of the reason that the hobbyist thing could never work for me is that I don't see game development in a purist way - or imagine it as @tiggus said as having a 'true' spirit. It's rather an opportunity for me to combine several different skills that I'm working on toward a common goal, including technical, business/financial, personal motivation etc. I see myself as more of an 'engineer' of game development, someone who is trying to construct something that functions largely from a rational perspective rather than a purely emotional one. It helps of course that I do have something artistic to say, but to be honest, I would have stuck with writing if it were not for my desire to create something of technical significance.

 

Well it's interesting you say you would have stuck with writing if you didn't want to do something technical, because for me it is the opposite.

I do technical work every day and gamedev is what allows me to express my artistic and creative side(writing network security tools and designing networks doesn't scratch that itch for me anymore). I wouldn't mind doing gamedev fulltime but not at the risk of my family's income and house, it's a compromise I can live with. The author of the article seems to be roughly in the same boat but way more motivated than me as he is actually releasing stuff.

I've applied for some junior gamedev positions and got interviews but taking a paycut of that magnitude is just not feasible for me, I think I would have had to made the switch 10+ years ago at a minimum. Also I wouldn't be building the games I want to make then either :/

I think it is a good reminder that part time devs really need to limit scope. For me this has been an ongoing lesson that I keep failing to learn/fight against.

 

It certainly helps that for all intents and purposes I am single and somewhat 'footloose and fancy free'. If I had a family I would definitely take more of the approach in that article.

 

I know what you mean. I'm much more interested in making things I'll like, regardless of how viable they are in the market, so I wouldn't take the plunge and go full time indie unless I tripped and fell into a successful hobby project. Sure, I'll sell my games (one day!) But with player and investor expectations so high and so wildly different, I'll stick to doing it for fun.

 

Thanks for sharing you POV. I'm in a similar boat as @tiggus and @GarBenjamin .
I can understand your view from reading your other threads and posts, to develop something that functions from a rational perspective, although don't you think with added pressure to increase ROI while reducing expenses and time investment, doesn't being 100% indie leave a person vulnerable to have to develop something fast to market, even if it's not something that person is interested in - to get paid - keep the lights on and not be stressed about paying the bills.
Wouldn't that be emotionally driven design?
Where as the part-time indie can really work on whatever they want - there is no pressure (other than self imposed) to get something finished and out the door. A part-time indie can work with less emotion and more thought (wrong word) to create something they are interested in... Maybe.

The author is thoughtful, and makes a strong argument, although the headline is slightly misleading.
“Barring any kind of runaway Flappy Bird-style success, I'll always be able to earn more money by making websites than by making games."
This would be a difficult decision we'd all consider at a specific dollar point - $500k + or maybe even less. Could a person replicate, even improve upon that success if devoted 100% of his/her time to game dev - if s/he banked 500k only working part time?

This is a logical and smart perspective -
I’d rather plan to go into full-time development after having a financial success than quit my job to chase one.”

 

Well, I don't think I explained myself very clearly. What it comes down to is that what I want from game development, as a developer, is more than simply the enjoyment of creating games - I want the enjoyment of developing technical skill, of hopefully building a business of some kind out of game development at some point, and of pushing technical boundaries (at least relative to what could be expected from someone taking my approach). So I see the end goal, and the enjoyment of game development very much in terms of things besides the game itself, and the game is (partially) only a vehicle for getting those other things.

I think this is probably helped by the fact that my artistic side doesn't need any effort to be kept 'alive' - it's always hanging around ready to influence what I do. So I don't need to actively stimulate an emotional outlook on games.

I think it's a slightly uncommon point of view to see game development itself as a sort of ego-centric reality-based game in itself - where the focus is on pushing your own abilities, the technical quality of the game, and/or financial success - and too many times I see game development treated as a sort of 'humble' undertaking - something that has to come from a place deep down and which emphasizes above all the social or emotional value to the player. No doubt it generally works out better, but funnily enough, I think a lot of people could relate to a game that was designed as an experience for the developer(s) themselves - it probably wouldn't be stunningly popular but it would attract a certain kind of person. In a way, I see No Mans Sky as something a bit like this - where the studio simply wanted to see what they were capable of and didn't emphasize so much the player experience (this is my reading anyway).

But anyway, to actually answer your question, I do think it's a good idea to be financially stable during development, and I hope to achieve this from a bunch of game related ventures before I actually start working on my dream one - I just don't really enjoy or want to make some kind of 'great little indie title' - they're a good way to approach development for a lot of people but it's just not what gets my blood running. I want realism, I want a technical masterpiece, I want sophisticated AI/emergent behaviour, I want something I can enjoy at a technical level as well as an emotional one from the perspectives of both a developer and a player.

For example, I would be much more interested in trying to make a game where you simply sat down in VR with a realistic NPC and had a boring but unexpectedly sophisticated conversation, than creating some kind of indie love-child like Thomas Was Alone - it's not that I don't respect the skill that goes into them but my perspective is very different.

 

@Billy4184 I don't think what you describe is as rare as you think. I think most game devs are this way to a degree. At least the ones who are artists or programmers.

It's way too easy for me to get stuck on the tech side of things. Focusing on the AI or simply building other systems. I've just learned if I do that.... I don't really complete a game. But over the years on various machines I filled my hard drives with projects experimenting with this kind of thing. I think most programmers get lost in that stuff and gain more satisfaction from focusing there (or on architecture) than they do from building a game.

Same for artists I imagine. I think most probably get more enjoyment out of pushing their art to the max. Trying to achieve something really spectacular looking and they probably also have a hard drive full of that stuff.

The difference is the people making the games (for the most part anyway) just realized they need to focus on the actual game itself otherwise it never gets completed.

 

LOL right now I have 4 different folders all with the same game name I've worked over the last 6 months, just different approaches/engines.

I have an ES6 native version, Unity version, C++ libSDL2 version, Go SDL version. I think I have a problem.

 

Well you're having fun and I imagine trying to find the best way forward. I think that in a nutshell is the biggest difference between completing games and not completing them. And I am not pointing fingers. I have done the same myself thousands of times over the years. Heck I just spent time last summer and again in the winter testing out different 2D and 3D game engines and frameworks.

And so many times I had the view of... why do so many games have such lame AI and minimal interaction (compared to what you can imagine it could be)? So I'd focus time on building systems to support much more interaction or little game experiments. Not really a game but just an experiment masquerading as a game. Because I wanted to try different approaches to improve upon the average AI or increase the amount of interaction. It was fun. It was satisfying. And I learned and improved my skills a bit more. So I wouldn't call it a waste. Just that at the end of all of that stuff what I never had was an actual completed game! lol

I now think this is why so many game devs (who may not actually be completing games) look at other completed games on the market and always notice the flaws. Why didn't they improve the AI? Why didn't they improve the graphics? Why didn't they do this, that or the other thing?

Well... I know why now. Because they wanted to get the damn thing done!

And all of that is why a few months ago I made a decision to stop doing that stuff and just make some games. Tiny games. With each growing a bit more. I still have the same interests and I do want to make better AI and more interaction but I will do it bit by tiny bit across a list of games. Each improving over the last. Or at least that is the idea.

 

This is something completely relatable. Its why Im hear learning as much as I can and participating with you fine folk.
I believe Ive mastered (pretty much) my craft and have always wanted to push beyond my acknowledged technical limitations. Code is a mystery and (confession) very unfun trying to learn.
If it werent for some awesome tools from the asset store Id probably be fussing away with blueprints or some other approachable tool that would allow me develop.

LOL that is an awesome representation of A Creative! I get fussed at sometimes for over exaggerating, explaining things in D&D or game mechanic terms, and telling stories that are outragous to entertain. Sometimes I feel hammed in by 'serious' subjects while my mind is telling myself "dang that could be a cool game".

Have you played Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist?
I believe this game was developed foe this purpose, though maybe Im wrong.

@Billy4184 didnt you say you were once a writer?

 

Only four? Last count I had 50+ Unity project folders. And that was after a purge.

Anyway I'm in the same boat as the article poster. Its highly unlikely I could make more money going full indie then I do as a chemical engineer. So until I magically hit the flappy jackpot, I'll stay a hobbyist.

The other possibility is my wife might land a well paid job and let me take a few years off to make games. Even then I'm not sure I would. Earning a double income for a while is also attractive.

 

While this is true, I also see it as part what I want out of game dev, to be able to persist through the completion of something difficult and time-consuming. I think if you ever want to succeed in creating any kind of business, you have to not only be able to make decisions based on the requirements of your customers rather than any fantasy of your own, but also to some extent be motivated by their perspectives.

I think I made a mistake in my last post - it's not that too many games emphasize the player so much as that too many games emphasize a point of view where the value of the game is a measure of how much 'heart and soul' it has or was put into it. While this is great for a lot of people who are motivated by that perspective, I think it maybe makes people who see things from a more rational perspective, or who are motivated by technical and/or financial achievements, second-guess themselves as to whether their games are complete or 'acceptable' enough in the indie-verse - basically whether it's coming 'from the right place'.

I would like to see a place where indies could sell 'tech demos' - basically something that is technically a game (has a defined player experience) but is short and one-dimensional and is only designed to show off something new or innovative that the dev has accomplished. In the current state of the market I doubt anyone would be comfortable doing that and would be constantly striving to 'round off' the game with more levels, more grind, more this and that and so on.

For example (I haven't played it still) but my biggest gripe with No Mans Sky is not so much that it seems boring and pointless, but rather that the devs attempted to jam boring, repetitive grinding mechanics into the game in an attempt to make it more palatable for the masses. If the game had been purely about exploration and wandering around enjoying the procedural generation I think it would be much more enjoyable for what it was - I think Jim sterling even said as much if I'm not mistaken.

Basically devs are afraid of a clash between their world, and the world of the players/market, when I think there's a good possibility of finding a lot of players out there who enjoy playing a game as a tech demo rather than for some emotive value. In a lot of cases not as many, but enough to make it worthwhile.

This isn't to say that the game doesn't still need a clear player experience but I think that in the right kind of game (to put it very simply of course but you get my drift) exposing the Inspector to the player can be enough in itself, as long as what the game offers is technically sophisticated - for example KSP is a little bit like this. Even Minecraft might be said to be a bit like this. Both of these offer to the players part of what the dev experiences themselves during development.

 

As an example, I was impressed not just by the quality but also the tiny scope (in terms of what most people would call a 'complete' game experience) of the Grace VR demo, it's essentially a tech demo for cutting edge photorealism in VR (yes it's UE, no let's not go there). In fact I would be far more interested in it (including to the point of shelling out $$) compared to almost any game - it's very compelling to me simply for being something unusual or exceptional in technical terms, rather than what it does or doesn't have in terms of a game experience.

I'd like to see a way for indies to approach their work from that angle of technical innovation - whether it's visual fidelity, AI, procedural generation, whatever - and financially benefit from it - but there's not really a clearly defined space in the market for it at the moment. While I think part of the problem is potentially a failure to package it properly - it's still necessary to build some sort of structure for the experience that people get from it - there's definitely a lack of clear identity in the market for that kind of thing, and I wish that would change.

 

I really liked the article... maybe because I am in the same boat (besides that I am not soooo fond of my dayjob, but that has nothing to do with me doing game dev as a hobby. If it was bad enough, I would go looking for a different day job).


But also because it offers a new and not so often heard perspective to contrast all the "Indieapocalypse, the sky is falling!!!" voices. I find it quite difficult sometimes to feel too much empathy with some Indie devs that clearly didn't do their homework, overestimated the expected sales numbers and completly underestimated the needed work, made some stupid decisions ("we need to build our own engine first!"), completly misjudged the market, and in the end tune in to the vocal minority of Indie devs that cry about an "Indieapocalypse" when the market just got a little bit tougher because of increased competition.

You know, if you would talk to people outside your own industry, or even the AAA devs, you would see that this is true for others to some extent too. We have a raging drive to outsource labour to lowcost countries, and reduce headcount to save cost in the industry I work in. Even though profits are up. Many people complain and bitch about it. And to some extent, they are rightly doing so. Not because the employees suffer, but because the company suffers. Stability is going down every day in an industry were stability is everything, and management seems to be still more concerned about saving costs than about avoiding the iceberg this ship is steering towards.

But you know what? This sh*t has happened before. And it will happen again and again. Instead of complaining about the work environment you are in, maybe you should do something about the things you CAN change?
If you really cannot think of a way to make it as an Indie dev.... why not go look for employment in a different Industry? Why not try to work for a bigger dev instead as an employee?
Why not suck it up and work a dayjob, or do paid gigs? And if you are already doing that, what are you complaining about anyway? That you are not as successfull as others? That you have to work 2 jobs to make a living?

Welcome to the world of the starving artist. You choose your hell yourself. If you feel uncomfortable in it, what are you still doing here?

 

@Billy4184 There is (still) a thriving Demo Scene out there as far as I know. Some people love tech demos (usually developers or wannabe developers). It's possible perhaps to be able to sell very good demos. Generally though people just do that kind of thing to test their skills and gain a bit of fame within the demo scene community.

I just don't think gamers would be your target market. By definition they want something to play and they want something that is finished. It'd be like making a fantastic demo and putting it on Steam Greenlight. Lots of people may Yes it and buy in but they'd be expecting a completed game at some point.

So it sounds more like making things for the Asset Store would be better. If you made a great tech demo and wrapped it around just a tiny barest bit of a game you could probably sell it on the Asset Store. That seems to be what most of the stuff up there is anyway. Just bits n pieces.

 

I'm in the same boat as this guy. I actually do like being a web developer, and I'm much more likely to keep making a living at that than I am to get rich from making games.

But I enjoy making games as well, and I won't stop trying to make that 1 run-away success that lets my wife and I retire early and go have fun all the time, and work on games when I want to. That's incredibly unrealistic, though, so things continue as they are.

 

I don't know if that's what I mean exactly though. Put it this way, totally apart from any desire to learn about games and Unity, I've always been impatient with games and I've always wished there was a way that I could connect with a game without having to go through the usual boring and repetitive content, even just for a short time. It sounds strange but it's not as if I want a movie either. I want an interesting, short term interaction with the game on an unusual level.

Maybe a better way to describe it would be something that merges a coin-operated game machine with photorealistic graphics and/or complex AI interaction - something where the experience was designed around a session of a say 5-20 minutes but somehow combining it with the latest technical achievements in game development.

That's why the Grace VR demo really struck me, it's the first of this kind of experience that I've seen - something that doesn't quite fit into the category of a game, but is nonetheless interactive and artistic, and which is an attempt to really push the technical capability of the medium while being severely limited in scope.

What I'm looking for would be the sort of thing that you would design for a game exhibit at a physical venue, where you wanted to show something in an interesting way, but you knew that people were moving around and had very limited time. Because I actually feel this way even at home, I have a lot of stuff to do and I don't want to be sucked into some long game loop just to be able to reach a few moments of an interesting interactive experience.

 

Ah I understand better now. Well that makes sense to me. I have been a gamer for a long time but I also do short game sessions. I just played Bit Blaster XL and ORCS last night and total of those two game sessions was about 15 minutes.

I like classic style games for this reason.... they are something I can just launch and start playing when I feel like playing a game. Get in play a bit and then stop. I do most of my playing like this until winter comes then may play D3 for a couple hours straight.

Anyway, I think you could absolutely do this. Just scope tiny on the game. Something like a Bit Blaster XL or Devil Daggers. Then you can knock yourself out on the AI and graphical parts.

Now that I better understand what you want to do it is not drastically different to my own goals. I want to make games with more interaction and better AI. Graphics we differ on in that I will use whatever is needed to get the thing done. But the other parts seem to be the same. Anyway, the games themselves will likely be tiny scope enhanced by multiple modes of play. Just different areas with a different view and different gameplay.

I decided to just slowly iterate my way there across many different game projects. In fact, so far the better AI and more interaction is not even in the picture. But it will be soonish just a tiny bit at a time.

 

I'm not entirely sure it's just a case of scaling up a typical short-session game, such as a simple mobile game. There's a lot more opportunity to occupy the player with something other than frenzied button-mashing activity.

For example, (the first random thing that came to my head so bear with me): Let's say you write a 'game' where you enter a VR session, describe your day to an NPC sitting opposite from you, and they assemble some sort of procedurally generated vista based on the words or emotions you describe. It would be an interesting thing to do at the end of the day, every day, in a very short session.

What I'm getting at is that if you have a certain amount of technical capability in the interaction, it's possible to create a much more subtle experience than would be possible in a common short-session game. i.e. the depth of the interaction, the complexity or immersion of it, makes it easier to turn what would be an otherwise boring experience into a stimulating one.

For example when Siri came out people would just sit there writing random stuff and listening to the response - if it were not for Siri's technical sophistication it would not be possible to entertain people with such a 'boring' premise as a random conversation.

So maybe there are opportunities for devs who are particularly technically and/or artistically skilled to tend toward something more of this nature, rather than trying to merge, e.g., procedural generation with an endless grinding game loop so as to be able to compete with AAA games with 40 hours of content. I don't know what market there is for it but it would be interesting to try to open it up a bit.

 

I like my web app developer job. Been doing it for about 15 years. I just like developing applications that can make another person's job easier or more manageable.

I also like trying to solve problems or provide a solution to a request or situation with code.

However I really like developing video games and playing games, but because I spend my week developing code and debugging other applications, sometimes; just sometimes (and it can last for weeks to months) I get tired of looking at code and have to refrain from developing games. I can only look at code for so long before it all looks like a big F'n mess to my eyes.

 

Oh yeah no doubt there is. I think I was confused (probably confused myself). What you are talking about could be a piece of a game or could just as well be in its own application not a game at all.

Long ago I bought a book of type-in C64 Games and other programs. One of them was a a game called Animal. It was fascinating to see the program learn new animals. Later I came across a port of ELIZA.

It was very interesting to talk to the program and see how it would repond. Very basic overall yet serves as the base of programs such as Chatterbox today.

So yes you could do this kind of thing. Wrapping it up in some type of application. Not just a tech demo as I was thinking but I can see why you refer to it that way. I see it more as a specialized app.

Of course, you could do such a thing in a tiny RPG where players end up spending all of their time discussing their problems with the local pub owner.

 

Y'know, I've had a lot of thought about this as well.. I like making games, I dislike the thought of releasing it for many reasons.. Like fiscal risk, every semi-succesful indie story seems to be a slightly miserable one for many reasons. It's sort of damned if you do / damned if you don't sort of thing..

So I was thinking about dishing out the game as a community project, we already have a fair few beta testers.. I'll invite some more in and just use it as a community game that continuously gets updated when I want to work on it.. Just do it for funzies and cut my losses.. It's pretty far on at this stage, so there's no point in just trashing the project..

I can then remove some of the monotony and expenses of it being a large game, like everything doesn't need to be voice animated as it's a free game.. I can add easter egg's, interactive side missions etc. etc. all over the place.. Finally there's no real expectations of it to be great, it's free end of the day..

 

@GarBenjamin well, there's not really a clear definition of what a game is - I see it as a game since it involves both interactive and artistic elements. Not every game is grinding for xp ...

 

True. I just meant chatting with an AI in and of itself is not a game to me. It definitely is a form of entertainment but not a game. Although the person interacting with the program could make a game of it like anything else.

 

Maybe consider setting a Patreon or just a donation box for the people who like what they see and want to say thanks or otherwise pitch in. From what I understand, this is how Dwarf Fortress has made money from the game.

 

Dwarf Fortress is an interesting example because you didn't simply donate and that was the end of it. If you donated you could receive a feelie in the form of ascii art or a crayon drawing with a quick little story associated with it. Sometimes the story would even continue with each additional donation you made. Check the link below for one example.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/ASCII_Art_Reward/T-Z#The_Toad_Preservation_Society

 

That's an awesome fundraising strategy. People will always be more inclined to give when they are getting something extra in return.

 

I feel the same. Although what bugs me more than people who are first starting out with unrealistic expectations is the veteran indies who also have unrealistic expectations. Those who were in very early and got away with selling match 3 and other such saturated genre games (even then) for $23.99.
Since they can't replicate that success now - because the bar has risen substantially (sorry) since then - the pronounce the end of indie dev, can't make money doing that. Bull!
I disagree with that nay-saying. Maybe they can't get by with making a marginal game and still make money - sure - however there are now more variables in the system to be successful - we have to address more areas than - just make a marginal game and sit back - step up or see ya - make room for more hungry developers who are willing to face the challenges of today, and always know the game has to be good first.

A lot of those 'successful' early mobile and steam (pre-greenlight flood) games were marginal at best. They wouldn't and don't pass muster today.

 

You've tested different apis/engines... wondering if you ever tried Oxygine?

Yeah I know... I already tested many things and came back to Unity so why am I still occasionally searching? It's just because in my mind I believe if I can find something just purely programming-oriented from the start... no Editor even exists at all period... I could shave probably another 20% off my game development time and end up with much smaller builds as an added bonus. Closest so far I've found that supports desktop and web is Monkey X.

 

No never tried that one. Just using PIXI.js with Webstorm IDE has been a winning combination for me so far. You can tweak it and see the results realtime with hot reloading. Then you can use Cordova or one of the other webkits to bundle it for desktop or mobile if needed.

 

Did you use XNA when it was alive and well? And if so, I imagine you're aware of MonoGame? (Haven't used MonoGame myself.)

 

Yes I liked XNA. When support was dropped for it I took a break for a while from game dev. And when I got the urge again is when I started checking around for something else to try and found Unity. I was tired of learning a new API and so forth every few years or so and wanted something that looked like it would be around for a long time.

I did check into MonoGame and one more thing that was some kind of an independent spin-off of XNA that I don't remember what it was called now. My impression with MonoGame was that it seemed like too much set up work as I recall.

I am pretty happy with my Unity development overall. I just think 2D development would be faster if it weren't for the whole monobehaviour, GameObject thing. You know just loop and draw images for the tiles and sprites as needed. It's not terrible though just that sometimes I wish I could just do away with that model entirely of components and so forth and just focus more directly on making the games.

BUT... Monkey X is a strong alternative that works exactly the way I'd prefer. And so is GLBasic and Blitz3D. For that matter I could use C# & XNA or C & Allegro too. So there are many options.

I found it interesting that Stardew Valley was created with C# & XNA. Goes to show that unless you're chasing the latest gee whiz graphics & physics stuff all of these older APIs are still very much usable.

Sometimes I still knock out little tests in Blitz.

 

Not to hijack the the thread, but I thought MonoGame was just cross-platform XNA. That's why I ignored it, no real interest in cross-platform, generally. I guess that isn't the case?

 

I LOVED XNA!

When that came out I was thinking this could be the start to an indie career. I looked over the tuts that were available explaining how to use the API. I started developing simple proof of concept games, games like Dragon Warrior, Castlevania, etc., the simple ones with simple direction.

Than Microsoft abandons it after version 4. Was a pretty good API that worked out of the box so to speak, sad to see it go; but now we have Unity which is even better, as it makes 3D games more accessible to an indie.

 

It may well have been but when I checked into it it wasn't as straightforward as just using XNA. Maybe it was a lack of documentation or extra work to set up projects I don't know. And that was long ago now too. So it might be much better these days.

 

I agree with that completely. Unity is fantastic for 3D games from what I have seen and from the few 3D projects I have tried with it. For 3D Unity is probably the best choice for rapid game development.

And for certain kinds of 2D games... mainly things like Angry birds and other physics puzzlers (probably most click puzzle games on mobile too) I think Unity is also a great choice.

 

At least you didn't buy a Microsoft band 2 months ago which they have now also abandoned