Posts by David Helgason

Without further ado.

The Year of Gamification, Part 1
We call the adoption of game technology and game design methods outside of the games industry “gamification”, and this is a really broad trend.

Unity and other game technologies are being used across more than a dozen sectors that have little or nothing to do with games. Architectural visualization is an obvious and older example. But apart from that we have some of the world’s biggest engineering and manufacturing companies, as well as several actual armed forces as our customers. TV production companies use Unity and other game engines to produce live TV shows and Machinima videos. Big corporations make employee training and simulation applications using Unity, and some of our customers have gone into online meeting and collaboration. Game technology being applied to all these areas means that Unity users are valuable to many and not everyone has to make a living from games.

Action item: Sell your skills outside the games industry. With a knowledge of other industries, you can create new and innovative products or businesses servicing these industries. The sky’s the limit.

The Year of Gamification, Part 2
A second aspect of gamification is that game design methods and strategies are being used outside of games to design better products and user experiences. A boring site like Mint.com has experimented with turning personal finance into a game, social networking experiment FourSquare maintains high-score lists for people who bar-crawl, and natural-language search startup Siri hired an accomplished game designer to design their user experience.

Action item: Learn game design and apply it to everything – how people sign up for a website, how people “succeed” in using your product, how customers share it with their friends and become leaders of user groups/clans, etc. Game design can be used for all of this.

Another Golden Age for Garage Developers
We are definitely going to see even more quality games done by small teams in 2010. With very little risk and by mainly investing their own time, a small team of 1-2 people can make a hit game that will sell millions of units. More importantly (and what makes this different than 4 years ago), there are now many more channels through which to distribute and sell such a game. Many such games are receiving world-wide acclaim.

Action item: Find an awesome partner and go create!

Publishers Continue to be Valuable
With casual, online and mobile games requiring smaller production budgets and eschewing retail (and thus expensive and slow) distribution in exchange for digital, the game industry was expecting to get rid of the publisher as a concept.

But as the iPhone ecosystem clearly proves (as well as the web somewhat less clearly with portals like Shockwave.com and distribution companies like Zynga and RockYou), the publishers stay. Though they may not be forwarding cash and fully owning the game IPs, their expertise in marketing, game design and online distribution metrics and strategies make them a valuable, if no longer totally required, partner to the game developer.

Action item: Consider working with a publisher. Fortunately with publishers’ leverage lessened, they are typically less demanding with regards to what they have to own (IP, sequel rights, revenue share). Or become your own publisher by building that expertise. This is not a simple task, but has been done by some of the top online game developers.

Everything Becomes a “Console”
This one is somewhat controversial. It seemed that with the move towards mobile and web, the closed ecosystems of the console world would be under siege and eventually collapse. What game developer (except perhaps the ones most entrenched in with the Nintendos-Microsoft-Sony trinity) hasn’t fantasized about this walled garden having its walls rammed down?

Well, welcome to the new world. The iPhone has proven that given the right amount of “openness”, neither consumers nor developers really mind closed platforms.

Even on the anarchic web (regions of which remind one more of a Mad-Maxian post-apocalyptical cyberspace than an enlightened utopia), Facebook is in the process of creating a closed environment within which consumers and game developers can meet and exchange fun and money (more or less) safely.

This section could also have been labeled “the Rise of the AppStore Model”, since it’s more the App Store than the gaming console which inspires this megatrend. And framed like that, it might have made people happy. But this is a problematic trend (to say the least) that should make us stop to think.

Action item: Make use of this. Or if you’re brave, build your own!

Facebook Wallet, Apple Tablet, Unity on Facebook
And then are the obvious ones.

Of course Apple will launch its tablet. We even know the screen-size and CPU make. The only uncertainly left is what day it launches. And its price.

Surely Facebook will launch a payment platform which in tandem with Facebook Connect will dramatically transform the face of microtransactions on the internet. If they do this right, it will finally enable the web-wide microtransactions which we’ve been dreaming of since the dot-com era.

And of course Unity will be big on Facebook. Several major games will get launched on Facebook, offering awesome games to hundreds of millions of people (not to mention significantly moving the needle on adoption of the Unity plugin).

Action item: Left as an exercise for the reader

What a wonderful Christmas present!

So, 2009 has been an amazing year. I won’t list out all our achievements, but they’ve been many, and some big enough that achieving just one of them would have made us very proud.

But just in time for the Holiday season, Unity Technologies has been selected as one of the 5 top gaming companies by Game Developer Magazine. According to them, this puts us in a pretty interesting family of Apple, Epic, Valve and Zynga. A cute detail is that we’re by far the smallest. And (apart from Zynga) also the youngest.

Without gushing too much I want to thank you my incredible colleagues (who worked so hard to make this all happen) and our users for this.

Both groups have more than tripled this year, so there’s a constant stream of new faces, new histories and backgrounds, and of course amazing new skills being added to the mix. I guess that part is what makes me love my job the most.

Thanks.

Short answer: yes!

Long answer: read on

At the Unite 2009 conference we just announced that Unity Indie would be discontinued and that a new version of Unity (called just “Unity”) would be made free. Of course this requires some explanation, and since the forums (as well as Twitter and the rest of the interwebs) are aflame with speculation I think I better get started explaining.

Unity Indie no more

Unity Indie was a cool product. It was very featureful, enabling production of rich 3D games and other interactive content for the web and standalone PC and Mac builds too. And it was a commercial product too: it cost $199 and you were explicitly allowed to sell your work and make money with it. This was no “hobbyist” or “noncommercial” license.

But also it’s not been a significant part of our business at all: Unity Pro, Unity Wii and Unity iPhone for the bulk of our (rapidly growing) livelyhood.

However what we liked about Unity Indie was that it allowed many many people to get started with Unity. These people are hobbyists, students, professional and amateur independent developers, as well as teenagers and kids. And many of them are really valuable to the community.

Instead, a free Unity

Today we launched a new product called just “Unity”. It has the same features as Unity Indie had, and the same license (and can thus be used commercially). The only difference will be that it’s free of charge. No time limits, no trials. Just a registration and a download, and you’re good to go.

This new product won’t do anything funky or strange. There’s no forced advertising, there’s no new requirements to share your revenue with us, and there’s no “crapware” or “adware” installed with it.

Indie customers, expect an email from us

Secondly, we understand that people who recently bought Unity Indie might feel really unlucky. Every single Unity 2.x Indie license owner will be offered to upgrade to Unity Pro or to add Unity iPhone Basic to their license for a big discount. And everyone who bought Unity Indie in the last sixty days are alternately being offered full refunds if they don’t wish to upgrade.

These emails are going out in the next couple of days so please bear with us while we’re inundated with excitement and while we try not to make our severs overheat

Feel free to discuss this here or on the forums (http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=34991), and we’ll try to answer your questions although we are also really busy at the conference (it’s awesome by the way, so many great people).

UPDATE: A few people asked if this move had anything to do with our new investors. It’s a fair question, but we had been thinking about this much longer. However when we told them, they were very supportive of the idea.

UPDATE 2: Thanks for the comments. A few questions have been asked repeatedly here and in our forums, so I addressed them here.

Today we heard that the .NET based engine Blade3D is being shut down, and dramatically at that. Blade3D was offered as a subscription service, and as such will be shut off 6 months from now.

We feel terrible about those people left in the cold, so we’ve decided to bail out any Blade3D users who want to adopt Unity.

The bailout consists in us crediting subscription fees a Blade3D customer has paid towards any Unity license, up to 50% off its full price. Just forward your Blade3D invoice(s) to blade3dbailout@unity3d.com before September 28th, along with a note about which license you wish to purchase.

Unity is of course different from Blade3D, but we think you’ll like what you find.

Since Blade3D used C# for scripting just like Unity can, anyone well versed in Blade3D will be right at home in Unity.

Also, Unity is a more professional solution, with a user community of around 10,000 developers building everything from full-scale browser-based MMOs, through online casual games, iPhone games, and Nintendo Wii games, to hundreds of simulations, training experiences,virtual worlds, the works.

Welcome to all of you who decide to accept the offer.

PS. Depending on the volume, it might take a couple of days for us to handle requests, so please bear with us and use the free trial in the meantime.

A bit over four years ago Unity 1.0 entered beta, and was subsequently released June 6th, 2005. Since then we’ve released 20 updates, grown from 3 to 34 people, seen hundreds of games and other products released (as well as thousands of demos and throw-aways).

But what is this all about anyway? (more…)

Me, Tom Higgins and Joe Santos will be driving off to Hamburg in a couple of hours (and staying through Thursday). See you at our booth at Casual Connect, in Hall G silver table 9.

We’re also hosting a bar meetup on Wednesday night, done in conjunction with the Nordic Games folks. Whether you’re attending the conference or not, join us at Zoé 2 / Sofabar, Neuer Pferdemarkt 17, Hamburg. The event starts at 7:30pm until late.

http://europe.casualconnect.org/

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. (more…)

With our recent iPhone announcement having my mailbox boiling over, I’m so happy that I’ll be spending a long weekend in Berlin. I’m flying out to Berlin Wednesday evening to meet up with my whole family – arriving from London, Reykjavik, and Halle – and to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday, eat good food, and have intense conversations about what we are up to.

If course I’ll take the time to meet with a few interesting companies while I’m there – amongst others, people doing hardware instead of software… I’ve met so few of those, it’s going to be exciting to learn about their no-doubt very different business models, and see where Unity can be a fit.

So, anyone else I should be meeting up with? As I’ve written before, the authorized way to meet up in foreign cities is dopplr.com.

We haven’t been making a lot of noise out of Unity Technologies HQ lately, but things have not been at a standstill. We’re having daily conversations with top people at the biggest companies in our space (game developers, publishers, huge brands, search, engineering, …), with some pretty wildly awesome things in the pipeline. If only I could tell you, even just 5% of the big things that are brewing. Huge products, big brand entertainment, … auwww how annoyed I am at the secrecy of this industry: why can’t we just all tell everyone what we’re up to!? Just some of the things? Like, right now

Okay, what can I tell you? How about:

– 2 x full blown MMO being made with Unity
– 5 x virtual worlds being made with Unity
– 3 x well funded game portals being made with Unity
– several VC funded projects that we haven’t even been told what are about
– And of course thousands of Unity licenses being used for things that we know nothing of

… and that’s not mentioning all the evaluation projects and projects pending funding. 2008 will be a wild ride.

A very common question we get is “what is the penetration of the Unity plugin?”

There’s several ways to answer that question. It’s in the millions. It’s also growing, and the rate of growth is increasing. And this year there’s a long line of very major and high-profile game releases planned, which will accelerate this even more. But while the future may be good (and with Unity, the future is good), it’s not now.

But why did you ask that question? Most likely it is to figure out the risk of using Unity content on your site. That you’ll have lots of visitors, many of which who don’t have and won’t install the plugin and leave for somewhere else.

Of course plugin penetration is very important to this, but if a technology doesn’t have >95% ubiquity, the plugin installation process is just as important.

We spent a lot of effort figuring out how to make the plugin install process for Unity as simple as possible. And it’s a lot easier than that of the Shockwave player (not to mention other sub-par technologies). Well, parts of the install process took effort and thinking… but how much effort goes into not requiring registration and pushing adware?

– The whole plugin is 3MB download for everything
– And it is delivered from a Content Delivery Network so all users get a fast download
– The installation doesn’t require a browser restart on any platform
– And it even keeps the user on same the site without even a page reload
– There’s no user registration required
– And no Google toolbar or other adware
– Unity supports Microsoft Vista and Intel based Macs
– And doesn’t crash on old/ancient graphics card and driver combinations

Our statistics tell us that for people who don’t have the plugin already installed, over 60% complete the plugin installation (this differs between different types of content, and just as importantly, based on the presentation of your content… that is material for another blog post).

Depending on where you deploy Shockwave content, it is commonly believed that 50% of your visitors have the plugin installed already. Of the remaining 50%, you’ll lose some because of the plugin installation process. Because of the reasons outlined above, for Shockwave we believe it is around 40%. So do the math:

Shockwave:
Preinstalled: ~50%
Successful plugin installs: ~20% (50% x 40% success rate)
Total successful views: ~70%

Unity:
Preinstalled: ~1%
Successful plugin installs: ~59% (99% * 60% success rate)
Total successful view: ~60%

As a solid proof, R/C Laser Warrior recently was the most played game on shockwave.com for 2 weeks straight, with up 40.000 simultaneous players, and is still listed as a Top Online game there. And that’s on a site dominated by Shockwave games.

Still, you might worry that using the Unity technology is a bit daring, and early-adopter-ish. A couple of weeks ago, a Massive Media Conglomerate called Disney released a Unity-based game online game, Sooga Mountain. So I ask you, can you be as agile and daring as those guys?