Leading Unity into the future

I dont know what to think about this sudden change for us Unity users, it can be a good change for unity and investors, but maybe not that good for users. unity is reaching its fifth cycle but i hope it wont change that much. Hope we can have more informations about your futur decisions and how it will impact us, since this morning got a good motivation to finish my games faster and before things change

 

Nope was here before, but that were with business account, this is my private one. as I moved out of the compay I worked for where unity was the solution.
And I forgive you your well researched and balanced post, as an employee you are really open to have an "own" thougth about this.

The thing is just that unity was made big with other really different ideals than the ones the mister EA was showing in his time at EA.
But as part of the industry I know that only the numbers count and as long as there is enough money coming in from sells, it will be a acknowledgment for his policy.
If it is prohibited to post the an opinion that is not going along with the of the company and its new CEO, feel free to censor me.

 

Hi John
You are brave to enter the Unity forums!
As you may be able to tell, some Unity users (including myself) have strong opinions on EA. I would hope that most of us realise that you are not the embodiment of EA and that the challenge you are facing as the CEO of Unity are not the same as when you were with EA.
I would like to congratulate you on your new job, I am certain that we are all excited to see what these changes are going to mean for Unity. From what I can tell, Helgason can be more involved with the Unity Engine than was previously possible - which seems pretty cool.

 

You are honored for the time you take to take care of the community.
But to be honest, I think that it would better if John would take this time, because it is about him his person and his role as CEO. He has to convince the people of the things that are now going to happen, not happen or change.
Unity is about gaming, the passion and freetime of the people, that it gets controversial and emotional is quite natural. And devs are no exception.

Oh and you already made unity a paper work

 

Can you be addicted to game development?

 

There are more then 7 billions people on the Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population) and ....
GG.

 

Most of game developers begin as gaming addicts, but early on they discover their interest in making their favorite games better. ~95% of those pursuing game dev careers will ultimately fail and quit, since making games is not fun at all (compared to playing them). Remaining ones will find their own ways to cope with that - some will force themselves to love game development, others will do it purely because they can't do anything better or simply for money. In the end of the day, it's not that bad - you're sitting in a comfortable chair and cranking out code and art all day. Still much better that flipping burgers or selling drugs on streets, or even working some dead end job at local business.

 

Well, best of luck Mr.Helgason and Mr.Riccitiello.

 

So its your fault? D:

 

Interesting times!

Welcome John. And David, it'll be great to see you getting your hands dirty on the shop floor

Re the mixed feelings: It's better to have a helmsman who's made mistakes than one who's yet to make them. Rough seas need a weathered captain, and the waters these days are anything but calm.

 

Elop/Nokia style Trojan Horse anyone? Prepare for impact...

Installed Origin for Mass Effect 3, uninstalled both directly after finishing it. My last EA game for forever even the game was not bad.

Could be John was not the problem for all EA fails, but preventing fails is also part of CEO job description.

I like Valve, Epic and Bethesda/ID. Some others I don't like. Does not matter for Unity in theory, but in practice it could matter soon...

[anyone taking bets 1:1 on EA buying Unity in the next 5 years?]

 

Welcome John,

I can't help but wonder if there are going to be any changes made to Unity's roadmap (if there is one), and licensing model. Unity 5 is still not released and Unreal Engine 4.5 is already eating its way into the market at a considerably more affordable price.

Here is what I meant by roadmap.

Thanks in advance.

 

You are right, of course. However, people make assumptions based not only on what a person does with one employer but also on the way the world seems to be working today. Many of us have been victims of company reorganizations, buyouts, IPO's, etc., not just in the gaming community but in our real lives. My family was caught up in all this when the automobile industry went south and our breadwinner lost his job. Scary when an experienced mechanical engineers has to grovel for jobs.

In today's world, we see more and more companies/individuals getting rich off the backs of the rest of us while we see our salaries go down or at least become worth less in today's economy. I am not blaming anyone for this. It is unfortunately the way things work. But now we have a successful "fixer of companies" who takes over our small cozy company (yeah, it is not really ours but it is sort of like a family) and people are afraid. They are expressing their fear and sometimes that comes out as anger and insults. If you look beneath it, it is simply fear of change based on the very scary types of change we are seeing all over the world.

I am not nearly as invested in Unity as most of you. I can't imagine having your main livelihood based on Unity and then seeing this stuff happening. It will be the same gut wrenching fear we felt as we watched the economy tank and the auto industry sink and then expand to hit thousands of suppliers, including my husband's employer. The good news is he did find a job and he is doing better than ever. As I said in my last post, hopefully this means Unity is seeing the changes in the market and reacting to them in a proactive way. Not doing anything, in my opinion, was just as scary as doing something.

Understand that people will vent and say things that might seem to be 'chicken little-ish' but at least they care and they are here posting instead of running for the hills.

 

Your business can depend on game development, which is kind of the same thing, except that you can't go cold turkey.

 

I'd personally be happy with Mithos Yggdrasil (at least his plans worked for a few millenia), Caius Ballad (has a tenuous grip on reality, but plays out a mean Xanatos Gambit), or Major Payne.

Jokes aside, I'm not sure what to think. I am a bit worried (the guy did preside over the modern consumer-facing trainwreck of EA), but I have a feeling that EA has also been heading to that conclusion for a while. Maybe Unity's momentum and philosophy will prevent Unity from doing the same thing.

As a consumer, I'm a bit worried, but we'll see.

 

Amen!

 

I'm interested in seeing unity prosper, i have no objection to profit-oriented actions that help to achieve that goal.

However i think unity already has some conflicts of interest, like the fact that several of the Pro specific features (pathfinding, IK) are also available for non-pro users via third party packages on the asset store, and these packages often implement the feature in a more efficient way. I find it very odd that these things exist, and it would seem most logical to buy them up and/or shut them down, to preserve your own profits.

#It will be interesting to see what, if anything, changes in the near future. Actions speak louder than words.

 

Ok John, "Mister EA" is indeed wrong, "Mister Ex EA" would be correct, that is clearly my mistake. It is not just a bit formal but also it provides somekind of distance, and that gives a bit more comfort, as I simply don't know you as a person.
It is not really a Anti-new-CEO not that I have, as I said I don't know you, and most of the community also does not, but it is about what you represent and the history you have, especially within EA.
willgoldstone is quite right if the makes the joke about his previous job in a book store, because that is not what defines a person, but EA not just a book store. EA is a history of extremely pressuring monetiseing strategies, bad customer support, and questionable releases. And that is the big fear that everyone is having and expressing in their very own ways.
SimCity-Always on, Dead Space 3 F2P purchases in a AAA title, death of Command & Conquer, I think you get what I mean.
If it comes to the question of who was in charge of this, it pretty much always ends up with the CEO of the certain company, in these cases, you. Of course you can argument that it is the project manager, the game-designer or even the investors, but that is just not the view of the community.

I'm fair enough to say, time will tell, but to prove it to the community is a difficult task with a long way to go.
But still there is the question, what does "democratizing game development" mean to you, and how do you want to establish or improve it?

PS:
College of me watched me writing this and said I should tell you all the things that gamers have in mind about EA and all their software, but that would really not be helpful nor would it change anything.

 

I'm not saying "should". Certainly i would dislike it if you did so. but i'm saying from an objective business standpoint, having things around that embarrass your company is generally not tolerated in the corporate world.

It seems like a lot of those packages are filling in holes or oversights in unity functionality. I do hope you aren't relying on them to avoid properly implementing features.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/mecanim-control.224315/

 

I think the worry with your hiring, John, is that we basically can only know you (so far) based on your resume, and by far the largest thing on your resume is EA. If EA keeps coming up, there's good reason for that.

I see a few parts to this fear:

1) The assumption/perception that EA had a habit of protecting or building its own profits at the expense of the user experience,
2) The assumption that you, as CEO of EA, bear most or all of the responsibility for those decisions,
3) The assumption that you will have similar habits as CEO of Unity.

It would logically follow that, if all these things are true, then the fears for Unity's future are well founded.

You seem to be contesting #3 the most, saying that the companies are different and that you believe in Unity's vision. To be honest, I (and possibly others?) am finding this argument difficult to accept - as the largest item on your resume, wouldn't you almost be expected to replicate your (financial) success there, and wouldn't that imply similar habits? In other words, if you don't plan on working in a similar way - and if UT didn't expect you to work in a similar way - why would they have hired you at all? This is the part that doesn't fit, for me. It's as much the implied expectations of your being hired, as it is your record in itself.

Of course, if you also contest parts 1 or 2 of that, I'm interested in hearing how.

Does that make sense?

 

This is my first post here, although I've played with Unity for a few years now. (I work mostly on non-game 3D stuff). I just want to make an observation here...

CEO's in this country are paid absurd salaries. Those salaries come with huge responsibilities.

So why is it that when a CEO "turns around a company" he gets the credit, but when the company's reputation is destroyed "it's complicated"?

Why is it that every single employee's employment history matters 100% when being considered for a new job, but for an executive "that was in the past?"

Those in this thread, and across the intertubes, have good reason to be concerned. As was stated before, those concerns come from a loyalty to Unity, and love for the tools and the company folks have aligned themselves to.

EA and Unity are different companies. For this reason, and this reason alone, things may work out differently here than at EA. While I will never buy another EA game, I'll cautiously withhold judgement on whether I'll continue working with Unity or not. I do wish the team good luck. They've accomplished a ton of extremely valuable things for the community. We should all keep in mind that there is an entire team behind Unity, and that team is what truly matters here.

 

I'll explain. The CEO isn't always the owner of a company. In a lot of cases, the CEO is appointed by a board of directors. These guys answer to stakeholders and shareholders.

A lot of the time the CEO risks being fired or asked to step down if the CEO cannot meet the demands of the job. For example a CEO of Apple would be required to push the company forward in a positive direction. But what if the stakeholders and shareholders had unrealistic expectations? What if they wanted the CEO to capture 50% of the windows desktop market and the only way he could achieve this goal is by making mac os work on any pc for free, for a period of 5 years while constantly pushing mac hardware within the OS?

In this case, it *would* be complicated and *would* ruin Apple's reputation but it may well achieve the unrealistic goal.

If a CEO does a good job, then he of course will be praised, but if he fails to meet unrealistic expectations then it's pretty unfair to criticise without knowing the full story. A CEO does not act alone.

Trying to point out a CEO as being the single point of failure is pretty similar to singling out Margaret Thatcher or Obama - it's very popular to hate on the figurehead without realising or ever understanding that they may have had no choice, or a very limited set of choices. Sometimes there's only bad choices, so which one do you pick?

I'm just saying, there's more to things that meets the eye and it would be refreshing if people realised this. I don't know what went down at EA but I do know that John is painfully aware that many observers are expecting the worst.

 

Well, if a leader is not the single point of failure, then he isn't the single point of success. However, if he is to shoulder the responsibility for success, then he must shoulder the responsibility for failure.

I do agree that we have no insight into what expectations EA had for him, just as we have no insight as to what Unity (truly) expects of him.

Either way, my point was that the concerns are justified, regardless of the duality of business. Only time will tell what Unity's future looks like. I don't think anyone should "hate" the guy. But I do think that people should be able to voice their concerns in the hopes that they'll be listened to.

I applaud Unity for putting forth this forum and for JR responding to a shark tank. This shows fortitude not often seen.

 

Well, the moderators ARE busy in this this thread (me included) deleting any outright troll posts (there has been a few), and some of them were outright nasty.

We're just not interested in immature behaviour at this point and across the forums we can expect Sara and Aurore to guide us in reducing immaturity in general. There's other places like reddit or twitter if people want to act the fool.

What we expect on this thread: people sticking to facts, not hyperbole or made up claims. We expect people to be honest about how they feel (note there's a few harsh criticisms in this thread that were absolutely fine because these posts weren't immature or trolling).

What we will delete: people making up fantasy scenarios, or generally trying to make comedy, and outright childish behaviour. We will know when someone goes too far when we see it

So yeah, moderation is toughening up in general, not just this thread. It's all about how you come across (like an adult), not your views (which we allow, good or bad). Act like an adult and it won't be deleted.

It's OK to dislike the change of CEO or distrust, or complain or even like what is going on. All we ask is your views are presented like an adult.

 

As an indie développer, you are my father. Many thanks (not ironic) to you and EA (and others). They push me to another direction.

 

That right. I'm not a 'graphic' and without the Store i will be lost. Funny, i was not convinced at first.

 

Just wanted to throw my two cents into the ring...

It's very important to remember that companies like EA have shareholders, and when you have shareholders you have a board of directors, and when you have a board of directors, that board of directors gets a great deal of power in steering the company.

EA being the worst company of all time may in fact have less to do with its CEO than you might think... just saying.

 

It is easy for me to applaud this, especially so if it also includes Unity continuing to increase the quantity and detail of their communications and interactions with their users, on this forum and elsewhere. I consider this an important aspect of 'democratising development'. A healthy democracy of any kind requires a great flow of information, and fear of criticism, silly, upsetting or unproductive responses, or overblown poopstorms and backlashes, can easily stand in the way of that. Moderation that is not afraid to let unhappy truths surface, but can nip the unproductive bun-fights of the net in the bud before they sour everything, is not the easiest of tasks to pull off, but gotta keep trying.

An obvious example right now would be issues relating to communication of release dates for new versions, and historical lessons perhaps learnt by Unity about how some vocal users may misperceive some information as being cast-iron promises that they can then complain loudly about later. Throughout much of this year I saw encouraging signs that with the passing of the running jokes about the arrival of the new GUI system, and yes perhaps a fresh level of competition in the game engine sector, Unity were better able to lay to rest some tendency towards being too defensive over information, and not timely enough in their communications, that might have built up to an extent over a periods of years along with other growing pains. I always want more though, so for example right now I will be judging Unity by how much they keep people such as their Unity 5 pre-order customers in the loop regarding progress with the current closed beta and some sense of how impending the pre-order customer access to the beta of 5 is. Timing just happens to mean this is the first thing I'll judge the 'new CEO era' on, of course followed by many other things that I better not detail right now since my post is already on the long side.

So welcome John. So long as sufficient resources are allocated to all the aspects required to ensure phrases about democratising game development never ring hollow in many peoples ears, things should shine, and conflation of EA past with Unity future should largely exit the scene. It may well be that in time the successful creation of new layers of services for developers by Unity enables new pricing models for your core product that offer both fewer barriers of entry to, e.g. pro versions, but also criticism or unease from some quarters that they may sometimes frame with a narrative about your EA past, but so be it. The much broader reality of what happens to Unity the company, the services, the product, the platforms and the partnerships will win through.

 

What IS nice is that you are here, speaking with us above all the gunfire. That is a positive sign.

 

How can you allow yourself to help lead a company if you don't agree with their vision or expectations?

Like I said in my earlier post, I understand that he most definatly was being pushed to make a higher profit tier. However, that is no excuse to be an accomplice in such business. When your boss tells you to make more money, you don't steal from your costumes to close the gap. If you can't do it without gray measures, tell them or leave.

 

John, must be an interesting change of pace for you on a personal level to agree to work somewhere like Unity?

And an interesting challenge.

 

Well John you can always make a small game
Follow the learn section first and don't let it be a mmo rpg first time around

 

I really like the way things are handled at the moment at unity. They promised to be more open and they still tend to stick to that, mostly.

@John:
Are you a gamer?
Are you a developer?

 

Maybe they will put in the "Make MMO" button.

 

Thanks for chiming in there Aras, I was worried for all of 10 seconds

 

Sweet text to my eyes. So you are in it for the game, well then game on and Onward!

 

This seems like a very interesting gem, especially for small 'hobbyists' whose goals are entrepeneurship (that's my goal, specifically.) While AAA users like @ShadowK and @angrypenguin necessarily drive what games are doing, and the big money floating around, Single- or Sub-A developers are the next generation of the trade and business of game development. Helping us to find success is not only a smart move for Unity Tech itself, but also for the greater industry. No one suffers from competition, unless they're not actually competing.

I realize you can't talk about this (per below), but I for one am interested in what your Single- and Sub-A initiatives are. I feel that as good as helping to expose our games through the correct media and business channels, that a major obstruction newer developers like myself face is the process of creating a 'hit'. Some of it relies on luck, but there's tried and true aspects of game design & development that newbies - again, like me - simply don't know. I think the Design forum that was started earlier this week was a positive step forward in that direction, but I'm curious to know your thoughts on what you think would help single and sub-A developers to write that map-placing hit game.

I think that's a fair request, but due to other's reservations - and, some of my own - I also feel that it would be equally fair to ask of you to be mindful of the things that happened in EA, both what you know about on the inside, and what we perceive as being the case with EA, so that trust can be nurtured, grown, but most importantly not betrayed. The fact that an earlier comment can photoshop your face onto a picture of Darth Vader and not have people speak out against it isn't a good sign of the level of trust you're receiving. To do the most good, we have to trust each other.

As a consumer, I actually feel that's the core of the ambivalence towards EA, it's sort of devolved into a Cold War of gamers versus the company. To this Unity user, gamer, and person, the possibility of that happening here is terrifying. We should all work together to prevent that from ever being a thing.

 

This is exciting! I do hope that more is done to help us "little people" those of us with tiny teams or single developers. Adding new services or teaching experiences for us will really help us grow into "not so little people" and truly make Unity shine among the competition. I guess my fear is that this is really directed toward the bigger studios and not the rest of us, making democratization more about helping those who already have found success.

But I will put aside my doubt and let John and Unity show us how it is done.

 

The hints about helping with discoverability sound interesting.