Has the indie revolution kinda petered out at this point? This forum used to be interesting and kinda dynamic, but over the last year or so it’s gotten really kind of…dull.
Are the more extreme hobbyists gone, either having their dreams crushed or having graduated to professional work?
For example, I haven’t seen a “UE vs Unity” battle, or any real intense argument over lighting or whatever in ages.
Seems more likely to see some veiled political argument than an argument over best practices or automated testing.
What happened, is the excitement dead, or have the mods just gotten more efficient at running a tight ship?
The hordes of “I wanna be an indie!” from a couple of years ago realized it was hard and left. A lot to the people still hanging around are just folks who build games are too busy to spend their valuable time playing with engines and whining online about it. I have said it before, you can spend your time making games or spend your time talking about making games.
There needs to be a 1 day amnesty on religios threads or UE vs Unity threads. It’ll be 24 hours of mayhem but it should liven things up for those who are bored.
My God vs Your God vs His/her God vs their God vs that God vs all the Gods vs UE vs Unity.
I’ve found that message boards in general have seen a significant downturn in activity over the last few years. It’s not just a Unity thing, it’s everywhere. And I think social media is a big part of this. These days, no one really cares about posting on message boards. They’re all off trying to groom their Facebook presence, or trying to drum up Twitter followers. That’s where their on-line time goes to.
I’ve always preferred more long-form discussions, which is why I gravitate more toward message boards. But for a significant portion of the internet crowd, message boards seem to be done.
Yeah. Some places I go the ‘critical mass’ required to keep up discussions was no longer sustained, which only further accelerated the decline. Been ongoing for at least 15 years, with some places surviving and thriving against this trend, while others have only reached the loss of critical mass stage in the last few years.
There are parts of the Unity forum which are better than I have ever known them to be, in terms of timely and vital communication with specific Unity staff over specific areas of the engine or, more likely these days, a package. So its far from all doom and gloom from my point of view.
There is also the official (and various unofficial) Discord thing, although from what I’ve seen of the Unity one its hasnt exactly stolen a huge percentage of the traffic that used to go to the forum instead.
As for engine v engine things, some of the most frequent and sustaining debates have a mix of over simplicity and complexity to them. Some people need the low barrier of entry that the ‘overly simplified’ arguments offer in order to join in and sustain these arguments. A lot of the overly simplified comparisons between Unity and UE4, eg obvious strengths and weaknesses, dont exist now in the way they did in the past. Graphics comparisons are a lot harder to make for all manner of reasons, and we are still in the middle of an era where graphically sophisticated and/or pleasing video showcases shoot forth from Unity more than once a year. Shadergraph removed another obvious comparison and various discussions about having to rely on the asset store for this sort of feature that some consider a core essential tool. etc etc. And unlike some years back, we are not in a period where new engines & toolsets for public consumption are being freshly launched and touted by relatively large companies (eg Lumberyard, Stingray).
Oh man, I hate Discord and Slack and all those gimmicks. No one would have time for those. To quickly scan through the forums (topics which I’m interested in) and take notes where to answer is okay, sink in in real time chat is not. I have neither time nor patience to use Discord. And I think the async communication on these message boards is substantially better than what can you have on Discord.
I look into them because in middle age I am concious of a potential generation gap and I kind of want to avoid that chasm if I can, and I have an unusual amount of time available quite often. So I think its perhaps too easy to underestimate just how much time some people have for some things, I could be amazed ow much time people watch other people playing games or developing or going other things on twitch etc, but I suppose I’m really not.
What does my head in about Discord etc isnt the realtime aspect, its the lack of threading, no matter how many specific narrow ‘channels’ there are, the lack of specific topic threading makes my head hurt. And thats why I’ve always loved messageboards.
Yeah, I don’t understand the point of large discord servers at all. By the time you type your response the conversation has moved on to something else. I’m a member of 2 or 3 and they’re all useless to me.
Another factor that may influence forums eventually is that Unity increasingly sees and markets itself as a realtime development platform, where games development is just one of the segments.
However, I have a feeling that questions relating to what percentage of Unity users are working in these other areas, how this will or wont change over time, and whether many of them will be attracted to the idea of posting in the general forum wont be answered quickly.
Some of that might be influenced by whether Unity evolves the forum to reflect any of that other segment stuff. For example right now this general forum is described specifically as a place to ‘Discuss Unity and game development’. I believe the intent so far with regards other sengments has been to try to fit them into technology-specific forums where appropriate. For example the Cinemachine forum is described as ‘Join discussions on Cinemachine and using Unity for Film.’ I usually find such forums to be completely dominated by technical talk, which is understandable and good in itself, but perhaps one day there may be room for more generalised, abstract, philosophical etc talk relating to Unity for Film to blossom elsewhere on the forum?
And yes I should acknowledge the fact that although Unity only started overtly drawing much attention to their non-gaming uses in recent years, there will always have been people on these forums who were not using Unity for games. I have at various stages been one of those people myself although unfortunately I’ve not had that much I can say about it on these forums, most of my posts have been technical or spouting my opinion about something that would apply equally to games and every other segment.
damn right… can’t stand discord or slack etc for the same reasons… its not that they aren’t useful for quick questions or discussions over things or just general chat… its going back to those topics of discussion … its all just realtime and flowing, nothing that good redesign on how those things worked couldn’t improve things… but I think it will be a while before something better is out to use.
It does just make more sense to ask questions and have conversations on a forum, its archived and searchable better, its easier for others to come in and add to the topics… its just running your own forum is something most can’t even be arsed to do… while setting up a server on discord etc or using social media is a piece of piss…
I use discord fine but it’s really not a replacement for forums, in fact Unity’s own staff often tell people to make a forum post on their own discord because it’s a sticky and better medium for examining facts where discord is more of a skype replacement. Slack has it’s own place in business as if you had office rooms.
So it’s not about liking or disliking really but tool for job.
Indeed. I like the forums (and used to like answers) for the same reason. When you first learn Unity, or something new comes out, likely many people will have the exact same questions. I don’t have a lot of time (because I am making games). It is way more effective to just read responses to the others who have asked before. I learned most of what I needed to know about unity from the forums and answers and pretty much never had to ask anything. It was all there. Then started answering questions. Big public discord/slack channels are just pointless. They aren’t effectively searchable and 99% people asking stupid questions that could be answered with a simple google search or rtfming. Those people will be gone eventually because they don’t have any of what it takes to be a game developer. There are are several people whose opinions and knowledge I value, and I generally chat with them directly or in much smaller channels. Forums allow that.
Mostly because those are stupid. We try to shut them down before they get started. If you are a game developer, you can easily test and research and pick the tool that suits your needs. If you then feel the need to defend or argue your choice online with others (instead of just getting on with creating), then you aren’t a game developer, you are a moron. I literally give zero craps what tool anyone chooses to use. I have little enough time discussed actual issues/ideas with friends and peers, let alone read the rantings of internet morons. (yes, I recognize the irony in accepting a mod role in an online forum)
Yeah, engine vs. engine battles were always dumb and pointless. Especially these days, where the constant competition has honed most engines to being far better than they’ve ever been. It’s a good problem to have, needing to choose between a bunch of great options.
