Hello All,
As a developer, an artist, a designer, a programmer, a hobbyist, a small indie team, small studio, or even a AAA Studio…as the title asks…
Why did You choose Unity?
I’m looking to spark a good discussion.
Personally, C# and accessibility. I came from an XNA background (dabbling) but I’ve been a .NET developer for a lot of years. For me Unity was very accessible when I got into it. There was a free version available, a great community, C# support and while game development is definitely no cakewalk, a pretty intuitive and easy to pick up the basics engine and editor. Probably the #1 seller for me though has been the community.
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Excellent support for a vast range of platforms (especially mobile) with little to no consideration or effort to deploy to different platforms. It’s almost a write once, run everywhere platform.
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Cost model that allows us to start developing and release a game and to build our business and profit before we need to hand out $1000’s for the software.
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Large community.
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And don’t forget, no royalties.
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Well, I like the idea of having hundreds of developers helping make my game with me, even though it’s in a rather indirect way.
Granted, many of them are working on things that aren’t directly relevant to my game. But quite a few are! And for quite a good price.
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The theme so far seems to be… The Community, and athough I’m just learning, I have to agree.
Reading through the threads here alone there is a wealth of information, and there appears to be a great number of helpful people.
The tutorials that are available are really well done.
While I haven’t used anything yet from the Asset Store, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the products there, it seems every time I’m window shopping there I see something that makes me think “If I was making that type of game, I would want to use something like that… what else does this person produce?”
C# yes C#, I’m just a learning programmer, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about C#. I will take the experienced programmers word on it.
And the Cost? I agree the cost model is fantastic, with the no royalties even better.
I had never heard of Unity until around November 2013. XNA development stopped so I looked for the next thing. I spent a lot of time researching looking for something that I thought would be around for many years. Because in IT there are always new things coming out so I am constantly learning BUT I get tired of having to do the same for my personal time with game dev. Getting into a game API then it dies. Then another. And another. And another. So many times now.
Anyway, I found a link to Unity on some website some place. Checked it out and was surprised how it could be around for so long and yet I never heard of it. I think maybe it was just MAC at one time maybe because it is weird I never came across it before. Anyway, longevity and the fact that it supported so many platforms.
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I chose Unity because Unity developers get all the girls.
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@GarBenjamin this is very similar to myself, except I do not have an IT background. I just discovered Unity only near the end of April this year 2015. And apparently it’s been around since 2005!
I found out about it because I’ve been learning web development, which led to wanting to learn programming, and then somehow I found myself here.
And XNA, I had never heard of that until I was researching alternatives to Unity.
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That sounds legit
There wasn’t really anything else for the Mac (or at least nothing all that great) back in 2006. I’d heard of Unity before, but for some reason I thought it was a modeling app like Blender. Once I actually realized what it was and tried it, I was like, “Whoa. Dude.” Also there was no free license back then; you had the choice of $250 for the Indie license or $1500 for Pro. There was a 15-day trial though. The platforms were OS X, webplayer, and dashboard widgets. Also Windows, but you had to buy Pro for that. You could actually read all the posts on the forums at that time, too. Once I learned Unity, I’d answer questions about “how do you access variables on other scripts” because back then it wasn’t trivially easy to find that out with a simple search (of which there are about 10 million answers to now, probably 25% of those being mine).
–Eric
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Unless the girls are models you make then yes. 
Doesn`t seem to work for the real ones, sadly.
But for the topic:
- Portability
- Extremely easy to use, it`s like now being able to make games with almost no knowledge
- C# language support, great use in Game Industry and in pogramming general (Unlike GameMaker engine with its GML - something horrible)
- A lot of functionality for indie developers. Don`t have to get into complex CryEngine for normal games we make.
- Intuitive UI, (though horrible light skin), but very easy to make game prototypes and test them
- Great support, community
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When I started with Unity it was the only decent engine around that had a free version. I wanted an engine that had a scene editor, and let me get deep into the coding, Unity was the only thing I could afford that fit. This wasn’t that long ago, only a little over a year ago.
Sure, now there are freeish alternatives like Unreal. But that’s a whole new work process to learn. And looking over the documentation there it doesn’t seem worth the switch. I mean, who wants to go back to C++ after learning C#?
So these days there is a bit of a sunk cost component in the decision. But I still think Unity is the best all round engine out there at the moment.
Oh, and the community. I have a bit of a competitive streak. Got addicted to karma chasing on answers. Then like chasing here. Now it’s view chasing on YouTube. One of these days I’ll implement a decent analytic system my game and start chasing plays.
Oh, and as to the girls, I already caught a good looking one who plays halo before I discovered Unity. So far my addiction to Unity hasn’t broken our relationship. But if I ever do disappear from the forums for a few months, that will be why. No game is worth losing the girls.
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When I started with Unity (2.x … may have been Unity 2.1) it was Mac only and had no Free version. The thing that became the first free version was unity Indie and cost roughly 300,-€. I did not have a Mac of my own when I first used it because I partly used it for my thesis at University and was using university hard- and software by then. When that was over I bought an iMac and Unity Indie because it was the first engine that provided most of the features of the competitors but was actually user friendly.
The community was super small back then but everybody was super helpful and friendly.
And so over the years I just kept using it. I still love the software and I know that Unity did most of the things we take for granted now (free engine, features accessible to non programmers, easy and flexible scripting without being a one trick pony like some game creators…).
There is more competition now which is a good thing for the users. And I like having more alternatives. But in the end I sort of grew up with Unity over the last few years despite being an artist and in the first few years not having any scripting capabilities whatsoever.
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In part because of what Eric said, as a Mac user, it was one of the few options. Mainly because I liked the flow. I am always trying out tools and when I got around to trying Unity, I just liked it. A big reason professionally, is the multi-platform aspect. I have ported several games to other platforms, I really dislike it. It seems silly to re-build the same game on other platforms. With Unity I can just focus on building the game and less about deployment.
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Lots of reasons:
- AAA tools
- Easy to learn
- Highly flexible
- Asset store
- Extensions
- No royalties
- Tons of platforms to choose from
- Easy porting
- Friendly community
- And the last but not least…
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I became aware of its existence after googling “I have an idea for a game”
Before I got too heavily into it, I researched the differences between Unity, UE/UDK, and CryEngine.
Unity seemed an easy choice, it’s free with no royalties, there is extensive documentation and an abundance of tutorials. Lurking the forums revealed an outstanding community, and that clinched it for me.
Now that I’m close-ish to finishing my first game, I feel like it was an excellent decision. Just wish I had more discipline and spent more time making games and less time playing them…
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I wanted to make a real game, and I am trying it even now. I started with Unity 3.5. It was not as complex as Blender, nor a total drag and drop like Sploder!, which is maybe why. I wanted a challenge. Now, I have been using unity for 2 years. Also, It was free
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I tried a few other engines, Hero, Multiverse, etc, but they all sucked in their own way. People were talking about Unity or Cry, and looking at Unity forums; UMA was an idea in the WIP thread. So I picked Unity, and I’m glad I did.
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- Unity is the only engine where I’ve felt enabled to work as I wish rather than forced to work in a certain way.
- The APIs are very easy to understand and are not bloated.
- C#.
- Great performance, even on mobile devices.
- The pricing model suits me well.
- Most popular engine and biggest community - lots of support and documentation.
- Thriving asset store.
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