High And Deep Level Of Communication Between Developers And Unity Team

I’ve been hearing about Unity for years but only started using it in the past few weeks, and I have to say that the most impressive thing about it is actually not the flexibility and usability, but is the amount of communication between the users and the makers. You guys are huge with people working for you across the entire planet, at yet you act like a little indie studio of three guys personally answering emails. It’s amazing.

I kind of worry how sustainable it is, though: I worry that you might start to get burnt out on it at some point. There are so many stupid questions here…some of which are from me, I admit, and I’m starting to learn which questions of mine are actually stupid so I can ask better questions. But when I ask something dumb about…say, the new UI system…and somebody who actually wrote that code answers me directly, I actually feel a little ashamed of myself: This is not some chucklehead being paid to answer questions, but someone who took the time away from MAKING UNITY to deal with my noobiness.

It’s so wonderful. I’ve already recommended Unity to a fellow who works at the university in my town who’s interested in mobile development, and I’m hoping that this first game I’m working on can make a few bucks so that I can start working my way towards a pro license, so I’d like to think I’m doing my part here. It’s just my natural tendency to see things going so well and start to worry when the other shoe is going to drop.

I suppose my rambling just sums up to the point that I hope the developer interaction here doesn’t end up frustrating people to the detriment of the project. Ideally, and what I hope to see, is for this level of interaction to remain indefinitely, but if it comes to one or the other, I’d rather see it taper down a bit rather than harming morale and causing stress.

There are other solutions to the “startup indie dev” problem out there, but this is really what takes Unity far above those and really gives every random person on the planet the ability to “just sit down and make a game”, and I hope to see it prosper in a calm, steady, and stable way.

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Let us hope that there will be no more footwear to drop.

You can thank @ for she has made an effort to get the developers to interact more with the community.

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Unity’s been doing this for like 10 years, and the community survived the “Windows explosion” (the flood of noobs when the Windows version of the editor was first released and the customer base grew by like 5x overnight). If they’re not burnt out yet, I don’t think they’re gonna be.

Communication is the most important thing that Unity can be doing. We’ve hopefully come through a bit of a lull in that department recently, and it’s nice to see that the change of attitude is evident to newcomers. I don’t believe that less communication translates to greater productivity or quality. (If the last couple of years are an indication!) Communication is extremely motivating for both sides—developers get to hear what’s important to users, and users get to feel like they are acknowledged and supported by the developers. When so much happens behind closed doors, as it has done occasionally, it’s easy to feel like the features that come out of that process are solutions catered to the very privileged and unrepresentative few that have Unity’s ear.