Or the Unity of Norris and Lee.
There, all 3 things in one sentence.
This is my one and only concern with unity being free. I want to be the only person using unity (well maybe together with a few more people who would answer my questions when I need 
), so that I can have the edge over other game developers. Now that unity is free for everybody, where is my edge? I need to work harder and create better games to beat the competition… what’s up with that?
Or I will just upgrade to unity Pro 
Wait… I thought I was the only one using Unity and all of you were here just to provide me support?
I didn’t realize you were here this whole time destroying my competetive advantage.
People of the GG are just bias towards torque, just as many of use are bias towards Unity.
Having torque and unity3d users argue with one another is a ridiculous idea because eventually no one can give a better argument that “Unity is just better, good bye I have made my point” or the same with torque.
Right, but real gentlemen always bow at each other before starting a fight 
I have some mixed thoughts about Unity being free for myself. I’d like to state them here and would like to ask you what you think of it Just your two cents, no matter what it is, ok? I will not feel offended by any kind of opinion.
I use Unity for “serious” (no insult intended towards you game guys!) applications, not for games. Visualizations and marketing stuff and such.
I still feel a huge amount of rejection and fear against this kind of realtime 3D technology when talking to potential customers, at least here in Germany. They know what 3D is, they have bought renderings and animations and were quite pleased with what they were able to do with them. But “Realtime-3D” is still treated as a “toy”, especially since it is such a relatively new thing on the market of visualization and marketing, just like Flash was a few years ago and HTML was before Flash. Now those two are pretty much standard in any kind of business, nobody has to be explained these technologies any more, anyone knows what to do with it.
And now there’s Realtime-3D. Three years ago, when I was starting to use Quest (Unity was not quite as perfect and versatile as it is now back then), it was pretty much impossible to pitch a Relatime-3D driven app to an industrial company because it’s almost impossible to explain to them what it is exactly. They just refused to wrap their heads around it, to get behind that.
This has changed a little bit since then. The technology we use is a little more known and even though there still remains a serious fear about using such a new technology, they at least have heard about it. That’s the upside of a huge market impact like the one we were witnessing the past three days.
But now comes what I am seriously afraid of: Look at what has happened to HTML and Flash. Every damn kid out there knows ho to make websites. An incredible large amount of them know how to produce things with Flash. That ruined the market, to be honest. No company wants to pay real money to some specialist for a new website when they get it for next to nothing from a young shaver.
A few years from now it might get pretty hard for us “real” Pros to keep the worth of our work, to get payed what it’s worth.
And just take a look around what these hobbyists are producing. Most of it looks pretty cheap, and it mostly is. It doesn’t work well, looks badly designed and just isn’t fun to use. This also might ruin the reputation that I’m trying to establish with my clients, that Realtime-3D doesn’t only look better than 2D, it is also much more fun to use.
I’m no worrywart per se. I know that a whole lot of these 6500 guys and gals who activated Unity the past days will not stick to it but just take a look at the technology, because they can and it is free and stuff.
What do you think? Does market saturation concern you, or does the possibly higher rate of competition? Do you share my concerns or do you think there’s no need for that? I’m really looking forward to hear your thoughts.
Now you’ve given me something else to be concerned about. 
Sounds like you and I come from similar backgrounds and are targeting similar markets. I agree with just about everything you’ve said except this:
I also started with Unity 3 years ago after having looked at Quest, and decided just the opposite. Not trying to pick a fight, but it’s funny how people perceive things differently.
In addition to the other concerns I’ve voiced recently, here’s another and you touched on it in your comments, and that pertains to the type of games and simulations being developed with Unity. Since the release of the iPhone version, I’ve watched Unity’s users go from focusing on visual realism to something that looks more like 2D than 3D. I’m concerned that the iPhone’s limitations are now limiting what Unity users are doing and that if the majority of users only develop 2D or 2.5D applications, then that’s what Unity will become. If the vast majority of Unity users are creating simple 2D games with it, then how motivated will UT be to invest money into things like cloth physics, high end shaders, or a built in dynamic ocean and skies? Granted, Unity has historically grown with more higher end features, but business is business and if the market doesn’t demand it why would UT do it?
Talking about Quest3D, I just visited their website and looked at finalists of their recent competition. Then I visited Unity’s site and looked at the results of their recent competition. It certainly becomes clear, to my eye at least, where each product’s focus lies.
This sort of thing has actually happened several times, and I don’t think there’s much to worry about. For example, desktop publishing a couple of decades ago: suddenly everyone with access to a Laserjet and a Mac could be a publisher, and later it became even more widespread. So now that everybody could be a designer, people who had actual skills were going to be forced out of their jobs, right? Well, no…after the initial surge of haphazardly thrown-together explosions of fonts, things settled down to what we have today, where you need more than the ability to launch InDesign to be successful, and people with ability are (generally) hired and people without are (generally) not.
With Unity being free, yes, everybody has access to a professional 3D engine now. It used to be you needed major programming skills and lots of knowledge to do a good 3D engine, but not anymore–you can just use Unity for free. But just like being able to throw multiple fonts in text boxes isn’t enough for real designing, the “ooh, look, three-deeeee!” factor isn’t going to be enough anymore since anyone can do it. The people who should worry are those who do things like take the iPhone examples and publish them as-is on the App Store. People who have actual talent and can make something good will still be sought after.
–Eric
This is a very valid point and frankly the only thought that keeps me from REALLY being concerned and looking out for another job focus.
Maybe I didn’t point it out well enough (my not-so-great english and everything ) but being better than that huge mass of kiddies starting to stroll around will keep serious Pros from drowning in the masses. But it will definitely get a lot harder, I think.
I’ve mentioned my little after work pint I had with Tom two months ago and this topic also came up. I asked him what UT thinks about the future, what path they plan to take: Being more of a game engine developer or a versatile 3D engine developer. His answer was as frank as it was clear and direct: Right now, Unity is a game engine. The main target is to supply a tool for small and middle-class game developers. But, and he lend weight to that, this is NOT what they plan for the future. The game market is what brings in the money right now, but they plan to direct Unity in a more versatile direction, just like it is with Flash in 2D. They want it ultimately to be like that: You want to do something in realtime 3D? Just take Unity, no mater what you want to do. They want to become the one and only major tool for realtime 3D crafts.
I sure don’t know how much of his answer was just to please my ear, but that’s not how I felt it that evening, it sure didn’t feel like a sales pitch. Tom was very clear and direct, so I guess
that is what we can expect from them in the years to come.
I didn’t take a very close look at Unity when I was evaluating engines for the company I worked back then. It was more like the selling point of Quest to prototype your Apps node based instead of scripts.
The time of Quest is definitively over. They hat their chance and blew it with very bad costumer relations and bug fixing policies. I just hope that UT knows what they do right know. But this topic was also talked about at the meeting with Tom. He was able to clear my concerns about that as well.
Edit: And I forgot to point out that it was the node based prototyping thing that initially let me chose Quest over Unity was the very thing that drove me away from Quest again and towards Unity a year ago in the end. It might be a great way to get fast results, but I failed to see that it limits you way to much in achieving the result and quality you want.
The node based “programming” of Quest was also a topic I discussed with Tom. He mentioned that they think about implementing something similar at a very far away point in the future, with the ability to pack your own scripts and code into nodes or prefabs and quickly reuse and reconnect them. I know that this is already possible, but he especially pointed out that it would be node based, similar to Quest or Maya’s Hypergraph/Hypershade. But I might misunderstood something or overrated it in my mind. If you read this after your bike trip to Mexico, feel free to correct me, Tom.
I think I Love you For Posting That.
To be honest your concern is 100% correct.
Remember when Maya was 30K+ back then if you where a Maya guy you could charge what you want and you would get it…
Then came the $2k a seat Maya the industry got flooded now you got people working on minimal wage…
Sure if your good you will get good pay no doubt about it… But saturating the market has a very negative impact on what people can charge as the competition becomes crazy (self defeating in some respects).
I have often had the same concerns but ultimately, if a person’s competetive advantage, comes from the fact nobody else can afford to learn what they know, then the “serious pro” badge is a little flattering.
If it comes from being genuinely good then they can ride the wave and rise to the top, while newcomers get on with doing those once difficult tasks which have become routine. It isn’t right or realistic to believe charging high figures for routine tasks is sustainable.
It’s just the way the cycle goes.
Valid concerns, but I still believe the opening of tools to the masses is a good thing.
I work in the animation industry and there was a time when cels had to be hand-painted. Then along came digital ink paint (animo, usanimation, etc.) and a whole department got canned. Next came Flash and we found that a lot of shows don’t look so bad in Flash as opposed to traditional 2D. Two years ago we retrenched and traditional 2D was sold off (along with the beloved light desks). We are now working purely in Flash.
We had several animation directors and the one that was left stayed because he sat down and learned the tool and became proficient. He’s still one of the best animation directors ever, because he was classically trained. No freelance kiddy today, trained only on computers, can beat his skill.
So the lesson learned is that we should always be open to learning new tools and becoming proficient in them, but at the same time not be too dependent on any tool since the market can always change. Instead, we should all remain ‘classically-trained’ and be good in core competencies such as object-oriented programming, and design aesthetics.
So do I in fact I also believe that tutorials and books should now become free,because it will be cold in that unholy place before I pay for any of it again.
Tutorials produced by UT are going to be free based on previous experience and I doubt that’s going to change. Why would books produced by third parties be free now, too?
I have to put my 2 cents in about Unity Indie going free as well. While I’m not delighted, Unity really had no choice. As we have all seen since the original internet boom, IT is fast becoming an extremely cheap commotity whereby only massive corporate entities take the lion’s share of the benefit while workers get commodity wages. To survive Unity must get big and fast.
My opinion is that as various game engines and 3D creation enviroments become cheaper and even free all of these things and the skills needed to create them will be commoditised as well.
A game’s reach will mostly depend on ad budget and money spent on creating interesting environments using these tools. The early days of iPhone tat making big money are over. The creation of these environments by the big houses will be outsourced as the most cost effective way to bring the cost in line with the other commoditised resources.
They’ll be a few independent hits here and there but they will become increasing fewer and further in between. You’ll see something akin to the way Hollywood dominates everything today in this field.
The game engines themselves will have the same look and feel as resources get shared across them in an effort to save development time and money.
This will produce an ubiquity of bland games used as advertising delivery agents.
To create more interest you’ll see techiques whereby gamers can import 3D models of themselves, family, and friends using 2D to 3D mapping techiques (such as FaceGen uses) directly into games to create a personalized gaming experience and create more interest in otherwise cookie cutter games such as boxing or what-not.
Talk about a feature that would draw the interests of advertisers. You think Maybelline doesn’t have interest in girls being able to experiment with how their lines of makeup look when painted on virtual 3D models of their customers’ faces on the iPhone?
You think Target or Walmart wouldn’t be interested in virtual changing rooms whereby potential customers could see how clothes looked on their virtual 3D self before they bought them?
Walmart for example has already taken warehousing and production to the extreme. What with RFID tags and all. To further optimize production a virtual changing room could be setup like this: A person is scanned on entry to the changing room and long virtual clothes rack on each side of the customer is made available. On the left, next season’s proposed fashions, on the right, this season’s available fashions. At the end, a pseudo mirror that shows how the customer looks in each bit of clothing they ‘try’ on, already in the correct size. Returns are reduced for obvious reasons and because the customers chose only proposed fashions for next season’s clothing fashions to try on Walmart would have the ability to intelligent choose which fashions to produce based on what the customers chose most often.
To further enhance customer loyalty, this scanned model of the customer could be made available at Walmart’s online site where the customer could further try out different fashions and such.
This is not mentioning customers would wind up getting better fitting clothes as Walmart would have an accurate survey of the sizes and shapes of their customers.
Those are 2 slap in the face obvious applications of 3D game engines and hardware platforms such as the iPhone and rumoured iTablet.
Later you’ll see importation of city and landscape models as a game environment the gamers can choose themselves (e.g. their hometown) from open source projects such as OpenStreets.org.
You like birding? Or are you a biologist or forester or archeaologist surveying the field? Can you imagine using a version of Unity designed to import these 3D spaces on a GPS enabled iTablet in which you could easily, cheaply and rather accurately do your survey?
Or maybe you are a soldier, firefighter, EMS or whatever running a disaster simulation in your tiny hometown and before this hypothetical future version of Unity to develope such simulation software was prohibitively expensive. In the US, connected cronies are awash in money from the Department of Homeland Security. Develop a means of easily creating disaster simulation training programs for the multiplicities of backwater towns here in the US and you could be awash in money.
It’s all about who’s ear has your voice. To get heard you need to think with empathy about problems that are not your own and suggest solutions for them. If you’re not heard you won’t be successful.
Things will move fast and you’d better be prepared to innovate some creative and original gameplay to get noticed and make money before the field is overrun with the corporate players turning all of this into commodity work.
Already in the US most IT jobs available are only through the government and who wants to work in such a mind numbingly boring and arrogant environment such as that?
I don’t mean to spoil the party but we need to be realistic here. Stop complaining. Noobs dream of escaping the 8:00 - 6:00, 5 day a week grind by writing games the same way anyone else here does. The main thing is to have fun first so you won’t notice the competition is gaining on you.
Blimey.
Actually, no professional ever lost out due to the flood of wannabe cg artists. There is no comparison between a professional 3D artist and an “enthusiast” (or Prosumer).
Goat:
Bleak, very bleak. But probably true.
Psmith