Is why actually Unity labs not making games? Its mind boggling why AAA engine company is not involved in any own game project. So how they know what should be done to improve their quality? Its like producing cars but using bicycle. I think its reason why a lot of things in engine doesn’t work well. Couldn’t find answer so asking here, what a reason they not using their own engine to test / see by themselves which way to go?
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Take a look at these videos:
( https://unity3d.com/pages/the-blacksmith )
( https://unity3d.com/pages/adam )
( Ein tiefer Einblick in die Entstehung von Unitys Book of the Dead & Book of the Dead )
While these are not games, they are made by Unity to showcase new engine features.
It doesn’t change anything, from cinematic trailers and movies like that to full game release is very long way. Not to mention it just showing graphic capabilities in very small scale and we won’t see graphic and effects like that in games for next several years. Anyway question was different, there is any reason why unity labs don’t want to involve studio in real 3d games production?
Edit.
What i mean in game development with unity u most likely gonna step into dozens problems even in pre production and without making games yourself is hard to see it.
Than if we look into other available engines they are always working on their own games. Even cryengine which is least popular from all, still working on their own games. Thats why i don’t understand why unity labs is not involved in any own game project since its probably biggest team from all available engines
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Tool makers aren’t necessarily always interested in being the ones who are creative with those tools.
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Only one company has been successful at both developing a commercial game engine and developing games with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games (Unreal)
On the other hand there are definitely multiple companies that failed to do both. Crytek is the easiest and best example of a modern game engine company that despite developing very successful titles has been perpetually in the red for years now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Realms (Build)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek (CryEngine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GarageGames (Torque)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software (Quake)
Multiple ways. At the very least Unity is in near constant communication with large entities that have purchased the expensive enterprise and source licenses. White papers are frequently published by developers that describe new techniques that have been developed.
Furthermore creating an entire game (let alone going through the release and marketing stages that a commercial game must have to be successful) is unnecessary. A vertical slice (eg a single level) can be sufficient. After all you aren’t going to radically change your approach with every single level.
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Because they make tools, not games. They iterate their product based on user feedback.
Unity doesn’t make games because they aren’t in the games making business, they are in the tools business. It would be like your local hardware store started building houses, or if Honda started their own taxi service.
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Ye, or like honda having racing team… oh wait
Not the same. Racing teams are part of product marketing, and creating a racing team doesn’t create a product that directly competes with the products created by their own customers like Unity making their own games would.
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Its same, u even explained it by yourself except they not competing with their customers but other engines.
This comes up fairly often and never leads to anything productive.
Unity doesn’t make games. They make technology and tools. It doesn’t really matter if you accept it, thats the way it is.
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It takes more than just an engine to race. The engine is a tool. so it’s not the same at all.
Analogy time! Unity is like a company that manufactures hammers for house builders. Creating an entire house from scratch is unnecessary for the hammer because you don’t use it for every task any more than you use a game engine for every single task. Instead you have a focus group, you give the focus group a selection of hammers, and you have them smack nails for a period of time in a variety of situations before asking for feedback.
Likewise Unity themselves may not make commercial games but their focus group (who amusingly enough pays them instead of the other way around) provides them with feedback and they use that feedback to better the engine.
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I think the analogies on this thread are a bit too simple. I think of Unity like a car factory. You put in raw materials (or pre-manufactured parts) and you hopefully get out a functioning car.
The underlying issue that I think derails these kinds of threads is that no-one seems to be very clear on what Unity are actually supposed to provide in the product. Some believe that they are supposed to provide an entire, universally flexible car factory that can produce anything from a Civic to a Ferrari at the press of a button.
Others believe that Unity doesn’t really have to provide anything except the land that your factory is sitting on, and everything else is a question of your own implementation. The problem being that if one is to equate the land that a factory is built on with a hard disk drive on a computer, then Unity aren’t even in the business of selling that and so then their obligation is to provide nothing at all at a premium subscription price.
Most people I believe (like me) fall somewhere in the middle, and probably have some idea of what is too much or not enough but are not able to exactly pinpoint the threshold within a very wide margin.
So the question of what Unity are supposed to provide can be debated, but for me the important thing is that Unity’s demos provide information and documentation on the stuff they do provide, including (where there are fairly hard limitations or difficulties in changing the boundaries) the best practices for working inside those boundaries. My biggest issue with the demos is that they are generally far too weak in regards to the capabilities of the engine and don’t reach the limitations that people might have trouble overcoming. Things like best practices of API use, optimising very heavy scenes, creating fantastic looking effects, stuff like that. I have good reason to believe that the demos actually don’t use best practices in a lot of things because it’s not necessary to do so for a small constrained demo. It’s hard to say for example whether the shaders and lighting used in the Adam demo could be extended to a full game running at 60fps and if not, where to start cutting down on things for the least visual impact.
Basically, what I looked for when I started learning Unity (and could not find, even on the asset store) was an example of a large, busy game setting (something equivalent to a level of Unreal Tournament or something like that) that was optimised, fast, and showed off a lot of different things at once with the implementation being somewhere near as good as it could get. That’s the sort of thing one can ruminate on for a long time and learn many things.
In terms of whether Unity should make games - it certainly wouldn’t hurt anybody, but might waste too much time. The problem is that although it’s technically possible for someone to design a good, flexible car factory without ever having made a car with one, the likelihood of everything coming out hunky-dory is not all that high.
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Tools make tools that make tools that make tools. They started with rocks and sticks. Simple analogies as arguments do break down. A game can be thought of as a tool for having fun.
A car is a product, a part of which is the aesthetic design to appeal to the user’s sense of look and feel but it can also be thought of as yet another tool do do something functional like transport or racing.
Making a toolset is a technical challenge but making a final product is often a design or artistic and marketing challenge.
Even Unity itself is both a toolset and final product based on design and marketing. They focus on what they think they can offer best.
While I agree with you that Unity should focus a little on shipping a second game a lot of developers do use unity for their own personal projects and are definitely aware of most issues.
I think a misunderstanding from your part is that Unity is a generic game engine, it’s purpose is to make it really easy to make your specific games engine. It’s one of the easiest way to build tooling within the editor itself to turn it into an editor for your game.
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I agree, I mostly use analogies for dramatic effect, and to draw dubious parallels with things that are a lot more fun to think about than the thing being discussed.
But I think that the question of what Unity are expected to provide in the game engine (and demos) is a good one. If this isn’t clear then threads like this will almost never get anywhere.
I would say that the main problem is that Unity’s demos almost never push the engine (except for graphics fidelity, presumably for marketing purposes) and I think both Unity and all of us would learn a lot from a vertical slice of a big, flashy and busy game. No doubt it would end up on Steam with a hundred different names but there are ways and means to prevent that if it’s really an issue.
Whats bother you is not about Unity create their own games, is the software quality.
I am sure Unity has enough awareness on this as one of the target talked in GDC.
Dogfooding is good for quality and usability, but also carry bias when comes to generic design.
e.g. If Unity owns a FPS game, their tools may has bias on FPS.
Unity can’t create all kind of games themselves, so #MadeWithUnity has done the job already.
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Coming up with good ones is hard. We’re waiting for Unity to make most of the analogy for us. 