Interview with the creator of Unity Technologies

To say that Unity today is the most affordable, cozy and flexible engine means not to say almost nothing. Games of various genres work on it: wonderful Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, ambitious Endless Space, delightful Monument Valley And finally not released, but already damn beautiful The Forest. The list is really huge.

Many believe that the game graphics entirely depends on the engine. This, of course, is not the case. Some people think that the engine is nothing, just a technology that does not affect anything in general. These people are also mistaken. First of all, the engine, convenient in circulation, reduces the development time and allows the authors to focus on things that are important for the work: on a thoughtful gameplay, design, atmosphere and plot. Here is the main difference between a good engine and bad. Convenience.

At the Moscow DeVGAMM developers, we met with the founder of Unity Technologies David Helgason, To find out first of all, how did it happen that a small company actually without marketing and in the shortest possible time won the status of a giant software. Learned. And at the same time they explored and many more interesting things.

About the present

The fashion for the development of games in Russia is returning, albeit a little in the wrong form. It is unlikely that we will soon see a shaft of large projects like " Access code: Paradise " or " Silent Storm operation ", But the indie sector has already caught fire. This happened primarily thanks to Kickstarter and sparing affiliate programs from developers of game engines.

Unity Technologies finally officially came to our country. First of all, this means that when choosing a unity engine for your Indie game, you will receive the most complete and operational support.

With this, we started our conversation: what is it – to be a Russian company too?

[Gambling] In Russia, Unity managed to gain popularity – it is logical to assume that you already have a decent market share here here. So why do you need an office in Russia if things are still going well? What is your development strategy in our market, and whether it differs from strategies in other regions?

[David Helgason] In fact, there are no special differences. Many consider us an American or Danish company, but this is not so. Our largest office is in Denmark, but less than a quarter of all people work there. The next size of the office is located, it seems, in Shanghai or San Francisco-they are approximately the same in size. The unit in the USA is about 15% of our company, which is very few. Unity Technologies is a very large company, and our people were everywhere. Everywhere, except for Russia. Yes, we tried to work with Russian partners through our office in Lithuania, but we were not left to think about the need to physically be in Russia: to be able to support customers who regularly needed our help and often wanted to talk to us directly. We wanted to become a Russian company in the same way as before that became Chinese, Swedish and so on.

► Why this engine has become so popular? To our question about this, Helgason answered simply: "Good software sells himself".

[Gambling] Unity develops very quickly, which can often be dangerous. Does it scare you?

[David Helgason] Yes, we really grow incredibly fast, but the market does not stand still. Nevertheless, we always believed that stability is more important than rapid development. This does not mean that we do not risk at all. We just avoid stupid risks. Unity Technologies is very conservative. Now about 450 people work for us – twice as much as a year ago. We show such growth not every year, usually we increase somewhere by 15% every 12 months. Our applications become better and better, because the market grows very quickly, and we do not want to lag behind it. We should not overtake the goal of it, the main thing is not to lag behind.

[Gambling] It seems to us that the distribution scheme played an important role in your success, which is now adopted by large players like Epic and Crytek. You are afraid of them?

[David Helgason] Not at all. I think that the low price or, as in our case, the free version is natural things. How applications should basically spread. But we would not succeed, just offering a cheaper version of the engine. Everything worked out for us because we are really very good. After all, Unreal had a free version of almost as much time as Unity3d. The free model Unreal Development Kit was offered immediately after us, but they did not refuse royalties that our company does not believe in. The company can take a free version of Unity3D, make a game on the engine and release it without any payments and obligations. For example, a popular game 1000000 made on a free version of our engine without any costs for it.

About the prospects

When you begin to develop the game on your own and regardless of publishers, the issue of licensing the engine becomes very acute. Manufacturers offer the most different software and affiliate programs, but not everyone has a truly flexible product that can come up with a variety of needs.

David Helgason especially notes that Unity is suitable for a wide variety of platforms and genres. “Until recently, large companies made big games, different versions of which were often engaged in different teams. Now one team can make a game for one platform, and then quickly transfer it to five more, ”says Helgason. However, he himself prefers mobile games for which the sofa and TV do not need.

[Gambling] You are one of the first to offer full -fledged means to develop games on mobile platforms, predicting the needs of the market. That, in your opinion, you should expect from mobile platforms in the future?

[David Helgason] It seems to me that nothing in the world will develop as quickly as mobile games. You heard that in the next five years the number of smartphone owners will increase to five billion? Already today more than two billion people are using smart phones. I think the audience will continue to grow rapidly until it reaches approximately 2/3 of the population of the planet, and then slow down the pace.

► Unity interface is slightly more complicated than the Photoshop interface.

[Gambling] What will happen to the market of personal computers?

[David Helgason] The PC market, as you know, is reduced. Games still feel good there that very good. Games from computers will not go anywhere, but we will not see serious growth. On the PC in general, the situation is completely calm, but this market will not show explosive growth and will not climb to the sky behind the stars. But mobile platforms slowly began to do it. The consoles have always had wonderful indicators, but here no one expects great height. The console market is still very large and important, but does not show outstanding results.

[Gambling] Whether we will see new consoles, or the eighth generation will be the last?

[David Helgason] It's hard to say, but my intuition suggests that this is still not the last generation of consoles. Somewhere in secret laboratories there is already some kind of work on new iron, but the companies only released their prefixes, so it’s too early to talk about their heirs.

Once upon a time, everything was in the hands of PC-gaming, and then the console prevailed. PC games did not die, but the market has greatly decreased and lost large investments. Someone managed to work with the platform, others were on the verge of death due to piracy. In Russia, many played a PC, but in the West this platform was greatly lagging behind. Then there was an explosion associated with Facebook : if you are not there, then you are out of the game. Then everything went too far and swelled to a huge bubble, which almost completely went to Zynga. And then everything burst. Of course, everything was not so bad, I thicken the colors a little. Then mobile devices came: if you are not there, then you are a dead man. And I remember that I have met a lot of people who prophesied the death of everything that is not a mobile phone. It’s stupid to think so. No fashion is eternal.

[Gambling] What do you think about Oculus Rift?

[David Helgason] It's too early to talk about something too early. Say, now there are 50 thousand Oculus Rift in the world – this is nothing. Even if each owner buys a game specially designed for the device, the figure will not be comparable to Steam sales and on mobile platforms. But after the release of the commercial version of Oculus Rift, the device will be very popular.

► Speaking about Oculus, Kinect (and Xbox One can now be bought without it) and Project Morpheus, Helgason assures that these niche devices are successful. But, of course, not on a scale like mobile phones.

[Gambling] What about Smart TV and microcopensels?

[David Helgason] These are fascinating things, but it seems to me that they did not show themselves much. In my opinion, the main competitors of SMART TV and microconditions are not traditional home consoles, but mobile devices. Micronsol should be at least something better than a mobile phone in your pocket, and this is not so simple.

We have concluded a partnership with LG and Samsung, and many games for these TVs are created on Unity. Nevertheless, this is a niche category that can hardly be called very important. It is good for people who publish games there, but it is hardly something big. However, the volume of the Smart TV market will still grow.

About unity

David Helgason offers to save time and money not only thanks to a flexible and convenient engine. There is also an Asset Store store where for a small amount you can purchase 3D models, animations, sounds and scripts for your game. Create all this, of course, third -party developers. According to Helgason, this is profitable for both sellers and customers – developers save time, buying, say, a set of scripts that are responsible for the behavior of the camera in shooters, and the creators are made a significant profit.

[Gambling] Tell us more about the store. Does it bring more profit in Europe?

[David Helgason] Since we give 70% of sales to sellers, our company does not receive very much. This is a small part of our business, but nevertheless we appreciate it very much, because the store helps the developers a lot. From the very beginning, we did not doubt this idea, because we clearly saw the benefit that it carries in itself.

Each of the six thousand buyers saved at least three days, which in a total of the saved working time spilles in the 16th years of the age of 16. One person spent three days on code, and then a month to write accompanying documentation, and saved this for more than sixteen years for other developers! This is incredible! The next year, six of millions of different goods are downloaded from the store, on which the developers would have spent, for example, on average. We are talking about billions of saved dollars a year.

[Gambling] But someone can come to work every day, download everything from your store, and to say to the boss that he did it ..

[David Helgason] Surely somewhere it was. Nevertheless, we created this store primarily for independent developers. After all, as you know, a lot of skills are required to develop a game: you need a programmer, artist, animator, designer. And if a large company with a huge budget is easy to assemble such a team under one roof, then independent developers in the team rarely have more than two people. And these people can not always do all the work on their own. This is where the idea of ​​Asset Store was covered by the idea. Nevertheless, large companies love our store no less: why should they spend time on what you can buy for a few dollars, if there are much more complex and important tasks?

► Now Helgason is actively promoting the EVERYPLAY service, which is easily embedded in any game on Unity and allows users to record gameplay and share it with friends. To our question about the successes of the service, the founder of the company answered this: “Every five seconds, the service downloads a new video every five seconds. Of course, many videos look at no more than a couple of times, but some gain millions of views ".

About the future

Speaking about the future of his company, David Helgason is predictably optimistic. Indeed, there are no reasons for excitement – the engine is in good demand, the Asset Store store is clogged to the top, and the game promotion system created by developers is gaining popularity.

The latter Unity Technologies, by the way, pays as much attention as possible now. “Thanks to this system, players find games without any effort and costs that they could like,” says Helgason. – You just share your users because your products are designed for similar interests. This is a cross-process ".

[Gambling] You started as a game developer, but soon realized that the creation of tools for developing you more like. Do not want to partially return to the original concept and release a couple of games?

[David Helgason] Personally, I do not. But we are now working with tens of thousands of studios, with many of which we meet from time to time, we are discussing something, and our engineers cooperate with them. Of course, we help not so much with games as with various technologies, and often we learn from someone else's experience to make Unity even better. For example, recently we collaborated with Madfinger Games from the Czech Republic – a very talented studio that does not need to be taught to make games. Their experience helped us in the development of new functions and the development of technology. We can say that to some extent we are already developing games through thousands of studios around the world. And, frankly, this is much better than making some kind of game every three years.

► “We want to be a company answering the question“ How can I make a great game?", Including a bunch of smaller ones (expediency, multi -platform, performance, necessary functions), and the question" How can I find an audience for it? "Says the founder of Unity Technologies. Still, it’s not enough just to make good software, services https://euphoria-wins-casino.co.uk/ are also very important.

[Gambling] So we talked about the future, about what the market will be and everything else … And what do you see your campaign, say, in five years?

[David Helgason] I would like to believe that in five years we will be about the same company that we have been left for 11 years. It is unlikely that we will change something dramatically. We started with a simple task: popularizing video games. We wanted to provide a convenient, fast and flexible multi -platform environment for developers so that they spend less time and money on the creation of amazing games and can quickly adapt to the changing needs of the audience. For example, it turned out that in most cases to make a game for only one platform is a very bad idea. And the ability to almost instantly transfer the game from one platform to another not only allows you to save a lot of money and resources, but also often helps to avoid fiasco. This is what we have achieved in Unity from the first days.

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Translated into Russian Unity means "unity". Corresponding to its name, David Helgason’s company unites everyone under the wing of: tiny independent studios and mastodonts of the video game market, creators of computer dimensions and serious shooters, adherents of mobile games and developers of hardcore games for consoles and PC.

“We live in a golden era! We have been in this industry for a little over ten years, but I have a lot of acquaintances who have been boiling in it for about four decades, and they excitedly claim that the gaming industry has never been in the best form than now, ”says Helgason, and we It seems to agree with him here.