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What do you think about the last Jim Sterling video?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by JohnSmith1915, Jul 24, 2017.

  1. EternalAmbiguity

    EternalAmbiguity

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    I don't know about most things, but I would definitely disagree with the idea that Jim's persona is one of dominant masculinity. But perhaps I misunderstood you.
     
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  2. Ryiah

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    Seven pages. We've come full circle in this discussion at least once. :p
     
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  3. neginfinity

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    As far as I can tell, he aims at "unpleasant obnoxious nerd". That's not what people usually call "dominant masculinity".
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2017
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  4. GarBenjamin

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    There are things to learn I am sure. Such as how to create a colorful personality and stand out from the crowd. Jim has done that.

    Also the "there's no such thing as bad marketing" and "bad press is better than no press" sayings come to light as well. I am sure that zombie game and even Unity itself had a few more people check them out due to Jim's videos.

    Also we have confirmation that for basically everything there is an audience; you just need to reach them.

    Finally... and this is true I would think of all of these YTers... if anyone really wanted to make a game that would actually impress Jim (or be one that gets a lot of attention by doing the things that most irritate him) these answers are likely available in their videos. Watch enough of them and you know what they like and don't like. Every time they say "I wish..." that is a good time to pay closer attention.

    I find this kind of interesting and if I was an Indie (as in trying to make money) I'd find it more than just interesting.
     
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  5. Scabbage

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    This is exactly what got me into Unity in the first place.

    I do agree though, that Unity has an image problem (with consumers at least). It only takes a few weeks for any average Joe to pick up Unity Free, cobble together something mediocre and shove it into a storefront.

    Is that a big problem for Unity though? A hammer manufacturer wants to sell hammers, do they really care if someone is bashed in the face with one?
     
  6. JohnSmith1915

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    Unity have image problems with users too (dark theme in free version, remember what happens with first plans prices, etc), not only with customers, the video only talk about consumers but is a bigger problem for developers, the final customers bad image of the engine causes less sales of a game.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2017
  7. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Frankly I don't want to be disappointed by the developers on these boards. If they're not smarter than me or trying to think beyond the immediate I can't help but feel a bit sad.

    If we actively fight ignorance, our own games will be better. You cannot make a great game with wishes and voodoo.
     
  8. Fera_KM

    Fera_KM

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    @hippocoder

    The video, which we are talking about, is a response to twitter feed which describes an event where a "potential customer" did not want to purchase a game because it was a "unity" game.


    edit: While this might be an exception rather than a rule, it is still somewhat relevant in regards to Unity's image to end user.
    And while I know, and you know, that the engine is just the tool, and means jack all in regards to the end user of the game/product, doesn't mean the gamer knows that.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2017
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  9. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Yep and the potential customer likely has many Unity games. The answer would be to educate the potential customer, not increase ignorance by following hype, drama and so on via youtube, and spreading more ignorance and fear. Because it will affect you in the long term.
     
  10. Scabbage

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    @hippocoder I agree, but when talking about Unity as a company then public image definitely means something. That's what we have PR departments for.

    There's no denying that Unity has a reputation for powering some... not so great games ["Not all [group] are [label]!" etc]. I know what it's capable of, but if consumers see it in a bad light, then that affects sales, which in turn affect devs and by extension Unity itself as it's subscription based, not a one time payment. Considering it trickles down till it's likely not a problem for Unity's profits it's probably not even an issue for the company.

    There is a problem though, for the games industry as a whole. Sure you can't just voodoo the problem away, but even if every competent developer actively helped out on these forums as much as they could, I doubt it would have much of an impact. There will still be cash grabs, low quality mobile games put on the already saturated mobile market and broken one man projects where the studios have never published a game before.

    I think the underlying problem is the same with the gun control debate in America. It's not the manufacturers fault (Unity as a company), it's also not the fault of the gun (Unity the editor). The problem is the people using it who ruin it for everyone else. I really don't think more freely available classes or information on how to operate a firearm will stop people doing bad things.
     
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  11. JohnSmith1915

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    Well, this thread show that almost game developers take this topics only from the developers point of view and is not a problem for them, sorry but i think that is weird try to "educate customers", and sorry for the mention but UE or CryEngine developers dont need educate customers about the engines, is a Unity developers problem, and you can say then use UE or Cryengine, and i answer, yes, a year ago i am migrating my projects to Unreal.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2017
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  12. AndersMalmgren

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    So you are suggesting more strict (gun)laws around who can wield Unity? I like it, I have foreseen the need for programming driver license for years. There are to many idiots on the market, especially the Enterprise system market that I normally work in
     
  13. hippocoder

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    Fight ignorance. Guy on twitter is ignorant? correct him and move on.

    If people didn't fight ignorance then women would STFU and get in the kitchen and people of colour would be 2nd class citizens (as horrific as that sounds). So fight Sterling. Fight people who say the engine matters at all. Fight people bitching about image problems. It doesn't matter. You use any engine in the world and it comes down to one thing:

    The Developer.

    Nothing more, nothing less. If that wasn't true then every single retro game in the world would be amazing. But that's not the case. There are some terrible retro games. I've made a few, I should know. Logically... not the engine's fault.

    A poor workman will blame his tools, and a worse workman will let someone else blame his tools and hide behind that.

    So fight ignorance wherever you find it.
     
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  14. Scabbage

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    @hippocoder That's exactly what I'm intending on doing, with a minor change.

    I don't fight Sterling, misogynists or racists, I fight the ideas that they hold. Fighting the person is just ad hominem and in basically every case it only makes situations more toxic. Plus, I agree with him about a lot of things (he's incredibly pro-consumer, though the bias shows, especially in cases like this), I'm even subbed to him. The great thing about fighting the idea, not the person, is I can disagree with him on some things and not others.

    Speaking of disagreement, the dev is only part of the equation, I don't think it's that simple. What if we take this to the extreme and completely botch PhysX, unoptimise the crap out of it, use a proprietary scripting language exclusive to the engine, scrap Shuriken, move back to the old animation system...

    Why not go all the way, and just assume we're using assembly for everything? 1 man team, assembly, and a laptop from 2003. Sure, you could make a decent game and market it well, but if the engine didn't matter at all surely this is fine?


    What @AndersMalmgren suggested is probably the most effective option I've seen, but I'm not too fond of the the stricter access, that's basically removing Unity Free and only making it a paid engine, or obviously the "programmers license" obtained through a course/some kind of proof of competence. Which no doubt would raise the bar, it's a possible solution, but of course you also cut out the people who use it for fun or don't have the $$$ to drop on a hobby.
     
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  15. hippocoder

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    The problem is with the concept of fighting an idea is that historically it doesn't work until the proponent of the idea is corrected. We can see evidence of this throughout history. It's nice on paper but it just doesn't work, and never has worked because it's a numbers game. If A's idea has more numbers than B, then B will never win unless A decides to also support B or A is removed.

    With the internet, it's much more about numbers. And importantly, this data sticks around. If A can give more people the wrong idea, A wins, regardless if B is correct or not. Facts are less important than drama.

    In any case we've all sat around doing nothing hoping it goes away and ... well, it hasn't. It's just got progressively worse over time.

    Unity majorly improved, in a stunning way with 5 so far yet people obviously are happy to believe it still sucks ass. And they will continue to until preachers stop preaching a bunch of bollocks. So yeah, I'm happy to correct said preachers and happy to correct ignorance.

    You can listen to a preacher (this is exactly what they are, nothing less and nothing more) and agree with some terms and not others but that is precisely what gives them the power. Because they will say so much bs that some of it will resonate with you.

    Old tricks. Effective tricks.
     
  16. Scabbage

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    My strategies are my own from what experience I have in arguments, particularly over the internet. Take this very thread for example, not exactly productive if everyone with a different opinion just insulted any opponents.

    Sure, convincing the opposition is the end goal, but in every case I have always found more success in attacking the arguments instead. I have never changed someones opinion by insulting them or their character.

    Usually, my views wont be changed. Everyone else thinks they're right, else they would't hold those ideas. Sometimes though, I do change my opinion. It's one of the most freeing things mentally. If I assumed I was infallible then I'd just get frustrated with everyone else wondering why they can't see what's clearly so true!

    I like subjecting myself to opposing opinions, otherwise I'm just participating in an echo chamber. By the way, those tricks are only effective if you don't know your fallacies ;)



    Going on a tangent though, back to Unity. Other than helping out newbies on forums, I don't see much else to combat the whole "ignorance problem". Though I think it's more like Dunning-Kruger and scammers looking to make a quick buck. In which case, helping out people who ask is only fixing a part of it.

    Actively participating in the community likely wont stop people downloading Unity Free and cashing in on a few hours work as people rush to buy their 5,000 achievement game purely for the achievements, or their cheap as chips bodge job just to sell the trading cards. It's not so much what Unity can do, rather than how easy it is to do it.
     
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  17. hippocoder

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    But I actually think it's OK and the way forward to be inclusive. In all fields. What is happening though is that people think it's absolutely OK to tear anyone's work down, good or bad, sight unseen because they've heard that the Unity engine is to blame.

    Let us consider if the logo is removed. It can be removed. Those games still get stick because someone goes and digs around in the files and pronounces it a "Unity game" and thus it must suck. This doesn't even have a logo. It's the idea, the notion, that all Unity games somehow suck.

    Is that an image problem? It becomes an image problem when you agree with ignorant people. In actual fact there are probably more Unity developers using Unity than there are people bitching about Unity. This means by default, the engine doesn't have an image problem.

    It's probably a vocal minority, but I'm not interested in allowing that vocal minority to grow to be a stain and a tumour on democratised game development.

    As we're supposed to be the logical ones (or we wouldn't be able to code), we should be making it clear that all engines are pretty good. You can pick an engine, tool for the job, and do it. If you do it badly, then the developer could use a refund and learn from the experience.

    That's far better than blanket statements.
     
  18. GarBenjamin

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    Problem is the most vocal minority out there seem to be developers. Although I don't connect very well with Unity it is not because I see it as "bad", "crap", etc. It is the same reason that I don't connect with Gamemaker Studio, Unreal Engine and others.

    BUT... when I see these comments hardcore trashing Unity it is always from people saying they either tried Unity and switched to Unreal or people saying they are currently using Unity and have been using it for years. Although the latter makes no sense (why not switch?????) this sends the message even game developers including Unity game developers say it is junk.

    It probably is a tiny amount of people but the problem is when you have Unity game developers themselves out there bashing it because they are unhappy about terrain, think the graphics suck etc it makes it seem more credible.

    At least I think this is why it seems to all have some substance to it. Jim alone would be entirely different I think.
     
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  19. JohnSmith1915

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    Probably many Unity fans can accept Unity with his technical problems and image problems, and can defend Unity of this problems, but i am not a Unity fan, i can understand the position of this fans that can insult a youtuber that says a simply true, but are fanatism cases, really i dont care, is funny see fans making non sense comments.
     
  20. ShilohGames

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    That can happen, but there are examples where people have praised a game they really liked. For example, Jim Sterling showered the praise onto "The Sexy Brutale", which is a Unity game with a splash screen. He says "This is one of my favorite games of the year." Here is his review of that game:


    In theory, he could have dug around figuring out that it was made with Unity, but he did not care because he loved the game. I cannot think of any example where somebody loved a game and then trashed it after finding out it was made in Unity.
     
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  21. hippocoder

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    But that's exclusive to your own competency in Unity. As people are making games that do match AAA for visuals such as D.R.O.N.E and Inside.

    So that'll be the developer's limitation. I look forward to seeing your progress in UE4 as I love that engine too. For different reasons, and yes, I'll defend that engine if I have to as well.

    All these engines give us so much unlimited power, much more freedom than Frostbite, which is limited to doing only a narrow field of tasks. You can easily emulate frostbite's visuals in UE4 and Unity - and both engines will fall far short of FB's performance because they do so much :)

    And I wish he would just stick to games and steam - things he does know what he's talking about. He cannot develop so he probably should observe the old saying "write about what you know". And this applies to wannabe developers as well... you know the haters that have to take sides for really insane reasons I guess.

    I don't even see it as sides. We can have them all.
     
  22. JohnSmith1915

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    The Unity image problem is not only a AAA visuals problem, last versions of Unity (5.6-2017) have good graphics, possibly later but now have decent visuals that can be classified like AAA, the image problem is almost for thousands of beginners developers making thousands of poor qualty games, games with the Unity logo in the intro, in simply, this causes the association of the engine with bad games.
     
  23. ShilohGames

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    There are good and bad games made with every engine. For example, Jim Sterling recently played "Lawnmower Game", which some of his viewers incorrectly assumed was a Unity asset flip but it was in fact made with UE4. Here is a link to that review:
     
  24. Scabbage

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    From a consumers point of view, absolutely it does. I don't have enough information to be able to tell if that affects Unity though (from a purely business standpoint), in all likelihood it doesn't.

    There is another possibility for the UE4 > Unity mentality, precisely because of this:


    What free, multi platform encompassing engine shows up first on Google for a budding asset flipper? Searching for "game engine", "free game engine", "free game development software" every time, without fail, results in...





    UE4 doesn't have the hatred because Unity acts as a shield from all of the amateur devs. There are crappy Unreal bodge jobs (Like @ShilohGames mentioned above), even CryEngine does despite them having a significantly higher barrier to entry than UE4 or Unity 5.
    Since this is a thread concerning Jim, here's two amazing gems achieved with CE:



    So really... "UE4 is better than Unity" because Unity exists in the first place =D
     
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  25. hippocoder

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    I covered most of your post in various threads. I suspect we are in agreement already. The reason Unity is to blame is due to how much easier it is to use than UE4. It really only becomes apparent how much easier Unity is when developers realise that making full games in blueprint is very hard still :)

    My agenda if there is one, is to educate people that the song matters more than the brand name on the instruments.
     
  26. JohnSmith1915

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    Is right. but i think if exist real stadistics for example in metacritic possibly almost good rate games are made with UE and CryEngine and almost bad rate games are made with Unity, if someone can investigate this would be fantastic. (i have not free time)
     
  27. JohnSmith1915

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    is very simple, Unity is the most easy to use 3D game engine, but this no means that have better customers image that Unreal.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2017
  28. ShilohGames

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    I am also too busy to compile Metacritic stats regarding various game engines. Also, keep in mind that most of the worst games won't ever get a Metacritic score. I don't know if it would really make any difference, though. Unity has already won the developers (3 million of them) over, and the splash screen can be disabled in both Unity Plus and Unity Pro.
     
  29. JohnSmith1915

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    This is part of the problem, the Unity bussiness model consist in two pilars, a dark theme and can disable the unity logo in pay versions, then a image problem is good for Unity, you need pay for have not a bad image engine logo in your intro. The ideal situation is upside down, that only pay users can use the Unity logo.
     
  30. Scabbage

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    Probably, I haven't read through all of the other pages here, though there are 7 of them lol...

    I see you guys are mostly leaning towards Unity being easier to use/learn. Is it though? I feel like even I'm biased (despite using both U5 and UE4) because C# and object orientation is my dominant background, and it's easy to forget what it was like when first picking up Unity.

    How do you even gauge "easy to learn"? Are we covering everything, ie the engine itself as well as tutorials, community... A survey would likely be incredibly biased, and if easy to learn means you an pick it up faster then how do you measure this? What if a Unity dev can technically make a game "work" in a week while a UE4 dev takes two, but ends up with a better game?

    ...and Personal ;]

    Pretty sure it's against the T&C, though I doubt Unity cares unless it's a relatively well selling game.
     
  31. JohnSmith1915

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    Well, this is my last post in this thread, thanks to moderators for not lock it, two years ago a thread like this it would have been locked in minutes, then for resume my opinion, Unity have a final customers image problem? Yes. This affects Unity bussines? No at moment. This affects Unity developers? Yes, for obvius reasons game sales are affected for this situation. This can be fixed by Unity? Yes, but maybe can take years for that measures have effects in the perception of the gamers community.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2017
  32. hippocoder

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    My argument (wherever that post was) was more along the lines of it's easier to deploy results in Unity. Unity is by far (IMHO)

    - easiest to get assets into
    - easiest to get solutions for
    - easiest to export to... everything basically

    Other engines don't do all 3 at all well. Pick an engine and practically only Game Maker matches Unity for an easy export path direct to market.

    You don't need to even understand Unity!

    Asset store means you can be a totally crap developer and deploy. I don't blame Jim at all for talking about this, only that as an orator, he needs to be fair on developers in his industry. He is part of our industry therefore he needs to be a bit careful because one wrong word and his legions of fans end up punishing legit Unity games. So that's a responsibility I'd like him to take and I trust he will.

    I don't have any problem with Jim Sterling's other content, only any engine rhetoric makes no sense and causes damage.
     
  33. ShilohGames

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    It is not a problem for Unity, since it has been a very effective strategy. Most developers use Unity, and most games use Unity.
     
  34. ShilohGames

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    I have worked with both Unity and UE4, and I definitely prefer Unity. I have over 30 of programming experience, and I actually used C++ more during that time than C#. UE4 is not bad, but it is not as easy to use as Unity.

    What I do think happens with UE4 is that some people switch to it and then fail to complete their game because UE4 ended up being harder for them than they realized. In some cases, it is nonprogrammers assuming BluePrint can do everything. At some point in most UE4 projects, game devs realize they will need to use C++ instead of BluePrint for some complex task, or they end up get really stuck actually attempting to implement something complex in BluePrint.

    Some issues regarding UE4 are not as bad as they used to be. For example, with UE4.0 there was no hot reloading of C++ code. So you had to restart UE4.0 after you recompiled your C++ scripts. That resulted in very slow iteration of code, because testing and debugging was delayed by restarts. Later versions of UE4 eventually added hot-reload support, so that annoyance is no longer an issue. But anyway, could you imagine how clunky Unity would feel if we needed to restart Unity each time we made a change to C# scripts in our projects? Thankfully Unity nailed that feature. This is one example where Unity was way ahead of UE4 and UE4 had to play catch up.
     
  35. neginfinity

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    Yeah, I noticed the same thing. I've come across several projects that followed this kind of pattern:
    • "We're fed up with unity and are switching to unreal 4!"
    • "Everything looks SOOOOO beautiful now! O_O"
    • No updates for a long time and project silently dies.
    It seems to be incredibly common.

    It is still an issue when you're developing plugins. Also, one annoying thing about Unreal 4 is that it has exceptions disabled and can't recover from exceptions being thrown. Meaning one mistake instantly kills the whole editor.
     
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  36. Murgilod

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    Yeah, I've noticed the pattern you've stated too, though in some cases (like me) we learn, come back to Unity, and just lose months of progress on projects instead of them dying entirely.
     
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  37. hippocoder

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    It's pretty clear that Unity is the easiest at everything without blueprint. So once it gets blueprint style stuff - natively - and properly integrated, we might as well just accept everything is going to be made in Unity. Home movies. Games. You name it.

    So while it matters now, I want people who do orate and have audiences to make it clear that the developer dictates the quality of the title. Nothing else. Otherwise legions of misguided people on the net will form witch hunts for anything remotely Unity for no reason. This is a major concern of mine.

    I want people to understand that if someone writes a terrible novel, it's not going to be the word processor's fault.

    This doesn't let Unity off the hook. We developers will still vote with our wallets and minds if they become sloppy. No, this is more about just creating a space where it matters to try and make a good game without it being auto trashed due to what colour the engine is.
     
  38. nhold

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    I don't think that happens because UE4 is particularly hard (It's just a different API and language after all) but because they likely had to port their entire game over to it, including code. That's a lot of non-trivial work to get to the point where they left.

    Is this true though? UE4 provides a lot of game \ networking stuff for you out of the box. Unity is nicer because it doesn't come with that cruft but means you are going to develop everything yourself (Better terrain, paging, shaders etc) making it slightly harder. The only thing harder with UE4 is the C++ \ Blueprint integration IMO.
     
  39. angrypenguin

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    First, that only matters if your game uses and/or needs to customise those things, which not all games do.

    Secondly, "easy" matters most to beginners, who are the least likely to notice / care about the flaws in those areas. They're often happy that something functions and are willing to live with flaws.

    Third, @hippocoder said it's easier to "make" games. That's all. You don't need "better" anything to make games. If your game needs terrain then Unity provides that. It is indeed easy to make something with that in Unity. Making it look as good as the terrain in other toolsets is a different matter, and (refer to previous points) is one that not everyone cares about.

    Also... our game uses Unity terrain* and regularly gets compliments on its visuals. Are there better terrain systems out there? Absolutely. Would we like to have one of those in our game? Heck yeah. But neither of those things stop is from making something great with the tools available to us.

    * We use custom shaders (from the Asset Store, because why build something when someone else has put more time and experience into it than I can afford to do myself?). I don't count that as a point against the system because I see Unity as an extensible starting point, and the fact that I could so easily customise it to better suit my needs is a positive in my eyes.
     
  40. EternalAmbiguity

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    This would be a horrendous waste of time for my work. Glad Unity isn't like this.
     
  41. hippocoder

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    @nhold let's not forget just how important it is that Unity deploys easier than competing platforms. It's basically a click and it's on the store. That's pretty tight and important for the would be asset flip hero.
     
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  42. Billy4184

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    I think it's much more effective for Steam/Google Play/iOS Store to implement deterrents than for Unity to do so. Anything at all that makes game development harder in Unity will directly negatively impact what it is expressly designed to do, which is to make games - and that seems ridiculous to me.

    IMO, the problem has to do with the shopping experience. If gamers are having an issue with bad games, then they need to have a way to force the stores to do a better job of making bad games disappear, because the stores are the ones managing the ecosystem of publicly available games - they can technically make any game a non-starter if they decide to. The complete lack of competition with Steam for online games has created a system where Steam has little incentive to control their products, and consumers just rage in the comments or develop antagonisms toward 'Unity' because it is the only consistent link they have to the identity of these anonymous developers.
     
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  43. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Is that really what's done it? Lower consumer confidence also means prices get pushed down, which is bad for everyone in the long run. (In the short term it might be good for players, but in the long run I'd argue to the contrary as it'll impact what games get made.)
     
  44. neoshaman

    neoshaman

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    It's not the store only, else game like Recore, bomberman and Yooka laylee wouldn't have people angry about performance, and they qualify to get on the store.

    Bomberman is notable because the game was send to optimization to Hexadrive, people who are known as tech wizard who saved many franchise's remaster, yet their solution was to simply lower the resolution of a game that has no business having problem.

    Those are the damning smoking gun
     
  45. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    Well, I think there are two things a) lower consumer confidence doesn't have as much impact when there is no competition and b) with the greenlight thing Steam basically made it the gamer's jobs to police the store, which created a drama-centric system where it was easy for mob dogmas like "Unity games are bad" to grow.

    In the end, whichever way you look at it, the problem is at the point of sale IMO. Anyone can make a crappy apple pie but that doesn't mean they should be able to sell it at the local supermarket.

    Both Unity and Steam could argue about competitive advantage of doing what they do, but for me there is one crucial difference: Unity serves developers and Steam serves gamers. If gamers are having a problem, Steam is the only one who would be serving their customers by tackling that issue, and is in a much better position to do it.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2017
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  46. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Do what though? have billboard posters with WW2 style propaganda such as "Loose lips might sink engines!"
     
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  47. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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    Actually, even with Greenlight, Steam still had to decide which game got onto the store. They made have loosely followed the will of the Greenlight voters, but Valve still had to manually Greenlight each title.

    The local supermarket analogy is not applicable, because a local store has a finite shelf space. Selling software through a shelf at BestBuy would be more similar to food at a supermarket. Selling software through Steam is more similar to selling things through Amazon than to selling through a local supermarket.

    Steam has basically infinite shelf space, so there is no need to restrict the availability of products. Having said that, Steam should not have been blindly featuring every new Greenlit title on the front page of the store a couple years ago. What they do now (hide new stuff and use AI to try to only show what the user might like) is the right choice. Back to the Amazon analogy, Amazon does not automatically show each new product on the front page of the store. Amazon uses AI to try to show each person what that person is likely interested in.
     
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  48. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    Not sure really. I don't think there's anything they can do which would improve their sales while they are still pretty much a monopoly, so I would like to see more competition. That might force Steam to use vetting procedures that would otherwise not be worthwhile for them.

    The way I see game development is like this: anyone can make a game, but not everybody should be able to sell them. Any industry where there is a risk associated with low-quality products is regulated primarily at the point of sale - i.e. you can make something for personal use as an X but you can't sell it as an X. So even if bad games don't cause health problems, it makes sense to use the same methods to improve the quality.

    Although I like the idea of a free and open market, I think that it might be necessary to attempt some kind of regulation on online markets as people grow more dependent on them - for example as more people live the freelance lifestyle, or more small online-only businesses pop up. I think it's potentially risky in the long-term to regulate things online, so I'm hoping that the problem doesn't grow much bigger and maybe we can just live with it - but maybe it will be necessary.
     
  49. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    But it applies as a loose analogy to the supermarket, because the question of whether someone can sell something in a supermarket is not simply a question of shelf-space.

    No matter how easy it is for consumers to get a refund, it is still a negative experience, and not part of any kind of ideal transaction. So if you kept having to take products back to your local supermarket, even if you didn't have to go there to do it, it's still wasted time and leaves a bad taste. So when consumers run into a problem often enough where they have to get a refund, they will develop an antagonism toward whatever they perceive as causing the issue.

    So it's not enough IMO to just put everything on the shelf and 'let customers decide', with refunds as a safety net. It might work in some kind of fancy 'op-shop' experience where there is a bias toward seeing value in things, but not as the primary means of customers making transactions in a particular industry.

    If I had to summarize my point of view, it is that customers are somewhat frustrated with low-quality games, but they have nowhere else to go but Steam, who has no incentive currently to regulate anything because consumers have nowhere else to go.
     
  50. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I don't think anything is broken though. We have refunds. I think a key thing would be to prevent any discussion of a game on steam, optionally. Is that possible? People can still vote up and down as usual but the whole discussion thing just is rife with small people who seem to have vasts amount of time they spend trolling.
     
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