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Unity’s new “per-install” pricing enrages the game development community | Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry. (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s to c/technology

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Unity’s new “per-install” pricing enrages the game development community | Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.::Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.

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[–] tabular 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could it be said many game companies attempts end in alpha but communities' failures are just more transparent? A lot of games are clones of others games with just some differences? I feel the desire to create something new but don't mind creating clones if that can work.

I've focused a lot on implementation but if you're right then I think I aught to learn more about game design. It has been fun to think about designing gameplay in the past but I've never studied the basics.

I've recreated a game myself as I'd outgrown what I wrote (and rewrote it in an incompatible updated language). It's just "connect the dots" game as a few learning experiences but I will be posting the first alpha release soon, and hopefully isn't much after that (if one was harsh it's basically an asset flipper).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Could it be said many game companies attempts end in alpha but communities’ failures are just more transparent?

Maybe but it's rare for a company to put out products at alpha level unless they go bust before the game is finished. Sometimes games are launched at beta level and fixed later but that's not the same than the eternal development limbos of open source projects, where something almost playable is released to keep people engaged but it never really gets much better than that.

It has been fun to think about designing gameplay in the past but I’ve never studied the basics.

I'd say the most important thing about making games is gameplay design. While good game engine design is a big thing, what actually makes a good game is the user experience, not the technical details of how they implement things. It's also what is the problem in a lot of open source projects. I had a friend who implemented a very nice javascript browser based game engine. There were very cool features like particle physics and complex light effects in it. But in the end nobody wrote an interesting game with it. What matters is the content of the game, not so much which engine implements the content.

Good game design is also something that PhD theses are being written about. Not simple at all. I found the nintendo talk about designing zelda botw world very interesting. How much thought goes into things like the psychology of the player and how he reacts to what he sees and how to steer the player where the story wants him to go while giving him the impression he makes the choices himself is mind blowing.