Archive for January, 2009

It’s a nice day for news as not only did Unity Studios launch a new website but the folks at Cartoon Networks went live with FusionFall, an in-browser MMO game developed with a Unity front end! I know that this project has been in development for quite some time and it’s involved people from many companies, teams and countries. Kudos to everyone at Cartoon Networks and Grigon Entertainment on the launch, I hope that you’re all taking a well deserved break! Go play today:

http://www.fusionfall.com/

The excitement of such a cool game being made for kids to play in the browser has been generating a lot of media coverage. Here are a few links for media coverage of the launch:

FusionFall – 5 Out Of 5, and A Raving Review Too
Fusion Fall : Fusion Fall Launches [sic]
Inside FusionFall, Cartoon Network’s New Kid-Friendly MMO

There is certainly more coverage than that, those are just some starter links to get you going. It’s definitely an exciting day for Cartoon Network & Grigon Entertainment, and for Unity Technologies and Unity Studios as well. Kudos to everyone involved!

As most folks know, Unity Studios is a sister company to Unity Technologies and they focus on content development using Unity. They grew from an internal (at Unity Tech) team to a full fledged development shop working on some really cool games. They recently launched a new website to promote their services and show off the work they’ve done and I think they did a great job. Give it a look and definitely get in touch with them if you think they can help you with your game or game idea!

http://www.unity-studios.com/

The new year has hardly begun and it’s already been incredible, I say that as it feels to me like Unity and Unity content are in the news a lot as of late. While I know that those of us at Unity Technologies have been firm in our belief that Unity is the best thing going in game development, I think a lot of the recent media coverage and content launches are helping to show that’s really the case. Given that, I thought I’d take a minute and point out some of the recent media mentions for others to check out and perhaps share some of your own. Enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Unity community,

I want to give you all a heads-up on a cool development at HQ. But let me first digress for a minute.

2008 was a wonderful year for Unity. We launched support for two major platforms (Wii, iPhone), our userbase tripled, there’s probably more than 10 times more games out with Unity now than in 2007, and some very hard-core teams started or announced they were doing extremely ambitious things with Unity (Cartoon Network, Funcom, Disney, loads of others in the woodworks). And with more business, we could afford to more than double the team: core development, platform development, and QA & support.

But another wonderful thing happened. On a trip to London in September, I was introduced to a guy called David Lau-Kee, and we decided to meet over coffee. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that we’re a week deep into 2009 I thought I’d share a few of my new year’s resolutions, at least those that pertain to Unity in particular.

1. I will post more regularly here on my blog. I’ve often found myself excited by various bits of information from the Unity universe yet I’ve not been good about coming here and sharing that info for all to read and enjoy. Some times that information will be tidbits I glean from public sources and in other cases it may come from internal sources and thus be “extra juicy” for those outside the company walls.
    
2. I will make sure that I’m more available to the community in general, specifically by being more active on the forums and the IRC channel than I was in the closing months of 2008. Customer service and contact with the community are two key agenda items for us and I’m the point man for those efforts so I’ll do better in 2009 and beyond.
    
3. I will focus on specific community building agenda, including things like trying to form and interact with local user groups, improve the forums (finally!), coordinate student related events, and on and on and on. The Unity community is fantastic, but as it continues to grow (wait for the stampede of Windows content authors!) we’ll need to do more to ensure that it continues to be a healthy, happy and productive.
    

There is a ton more to do in 2009 but I want to focus my “promises” on the above. I think that those three resolutions are ones that will offer the most “bang for the buck” and so I’m here to commit to them in earnest. I’m here to share information, support our users in every way possible and continue to build and strengthen an already awesome community.

Am I on track folks? And what are your Unity-related resolutions?

I wish everyone all the best in 2009, let’s rock!