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Something I noticed in these two weeks of Unity discourse is that developers are so immersed in their specific practices that struggle to grasp how different genres are dependent on, and entrenched in, currently available technologies.
8 bit platformer dude: "Just switch to Godot"
ascii game dude: "Just make your own engine"
Third-person shooter dude: "Unreal is clearly the best choice now"
Ok dudes (it's always a dude) but... it depends?
When Adobe killed Flash people were like "good, we have html5 now" which is certainly true for web development, but a whole set of games that were enabled by Flash simply stopped being made, or were made with less frequency because they suddenly required more expertise/budget.
As more indie devs adopt Unreal I'm starting to see extremely Unrealy/blueprinty gameplays...
For beginners, non-programmers, and low budget studios, the engine defines the boundaries of what's possible (and plenty of experimentation can happen within those boundaries).
There is no direct interchangeability because so many design choices have been predetermined by the available tools.
@molleindustria True! But there's always another option!
@sos Yes, but that's a kind of programmer thing to say. At the moment there is no alternative that maps perfectly to Unity, so a switch, for many game makers, would entail reconsidering the kind of games that can be made within their particular timeframe/budget/expertise
@molleindustria @sos So something I've been saying for years: Unity's post IPO behavior has been very loss-leader-y. The reason to do that is to edge out competition, or make people reliant on you. So if we had games being made that relied on multi-billion dollar companies bleeding out money then it was only a matter of time before they changed the dials in their favor anyway. :(
@sos You provide two great examples: a game like McPixel (mechanically speaking) could have been made in 2005 in Flash with very little programming knowledge, now not so much.
Moshpit Simulator is (among other things) an exploration of Unity's possibilities and limits, I don't think it would have existed with the same immediacy outside of it. It would have been... a different punk game.
@molleindustria @sos You might be forgetting Game Maker and a few other beginner-friendly tools in that comparison. Pretty sure Game Maker is easier (and more flexible) than Flash ever was.
@molleindustria > For beginners, non-programmers
To survive and make money - you learning whole life.
Human-person can not stay "beginner" whole life.
Human-person must learn programming/architecture/design/art/color-correction/marketing and million other "skills" to create product that can be sold in modern market.
> design choices have been predetermined by the available tools.
market dictating everything, if market consume it - then it enough
@molleindustria it’s a little weird that unity wants to be the answer to all those… plus the person who wants to make films and architecture visualizations etc