
War of the 3D Engines - irrlichthn
http://www.irrlicht3d.org/pivot/entry.php?id=1426
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socialist_coder
I hate when people say things like this, "prices for the apps drop, so far
that even 90% of the developers can't live anymore from their apps".

90% of developers are releasing shitty or niche games with no sense on how to
market or monetize to the audience. It's the #1 problem of the indie game
developer right now- they're building games that they themselves want to play,
instead of the games that actually work for the market.

It's the difference between a professional and a hobbyist. If you want to make
money, stop being a hobbyist and turn into a professional.

For professionals, none of these engines are cheap by any means. Unity is
$4500 per developer once you add Pro, iOS, and Android. Unreal / Cryengine are
potentially going to cost you a whole lot more than that given the 5% gross
revenue share.

For hobbyists, yes, the price is low and probably not sustainable, but for
professionals I think it's priced perfectly.

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luizpv9
I think it's perfectly reasonable to start a game development with "what would
I like to play?" rather than "what would the market buy?".

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jeremiep
Working in the game industry, I see "what would the market buy?" generating
much more crappy content than "what would I like to play?"

Usually it's a mix of both that makes it happen, you start with what you want
to play and adapt it so others want to play it too.

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k__
I've looked in the mobile-game market and most of the people I met told me,
they have to sell mini-games to publishers/sponsors to make money.

They have to think what the sponsors want, not what they or the players want.

~~~
jeremiep
Mobile is an entirely different medium with a completely different target
demographic.

They are most often targeted at casual gamers with a huge focus on micro-
transactions. Most hardcore gamers stay far, far away from such games.

Most of the mobile development I see is as you said, for the
publishers/sponsors to make money rather than for the consumers to enjoy.
Rather sad indeed.

~~~
cclogg
Honestly I'm kind of sad by this, being a player of mobile games. I've found
over the years there's just less and less interesting stuff, to the point
where I just haven't downloaded a game in months. I'm sure there's good ones
out there but it's tough to find given they're being drowned out by incumbents
with big marketing $.

And the top 100 lists have usually been an instant-avoid for me, as they have
tended to be either freemium-milk-the-user games, or brand-name-port of
something that would be better on PC. So I guess at the end of the day, I'm no
longer a target demo lol.

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fidotron
Characterising any of the Unity, Unreal or Cryengine trio as a 3D engine isn't
quite right, they are full on game systems with physics etc. and especially in
the case of Unity complete software ecosystems in their own right.

The further you get from utilising the core functionality of each engine the
harder of a time you're going to have, and this constrains the genres you can
work in. This is the main reason that a lot of 2D titles developed in Unity
purely for iOS <-> Android portability have performance problems (things like
the alpha cutout stuff goes a long way to helping here), while their showpiece
games, such as those by Madfinger, that simply use the built in physics run
perfectly. Sadly I can't be specific, but I have run into some amazingly
simple games that ran like absolute dogs thanks to their inappropriate choice
of middleware.

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Fasebook
3D engine is a subset of Game engine, so your comment is essentially
meaningless. You want to know what's "far from the core functionality"? HTML5
game engines.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/mozilla-and-epic-games-
brin...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/mozilla-and-epic-games-bring-unreal-
engine-3-to-the-web-no-plugin-needed/)

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thomaslangston
The comparison to app store pricing is ridiculous. A better comparison would
be with IDEs such as Visual Studio or IntelliJ. For each a free version
exists, but no race to the bottom has occurred. Instead the free version
provides students and hobbyists the ability to learn the tool, which provides
employers a greater pool of applicants which have experience in it. It also
provides startups a way to minimize their burn rate until after a mockup or
even a MVP is validated.

Afterwards, in each case when the economics make sense businesses pay large
amounts to buy additional premium version licensing, training, integration,
and add-on tools. As primarily customer hosted software the additional cost of
free riders is low, at least as low as the advertising costs required to grow
the paying customer base by the same rate.

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swalsh
"What we see here might be a begin of the phenomenon known from various app
stores: The race to the bottom, where the app developers try to undercut each
other, and prices for the apps drop"

What you see here is what's called "A healthy market" its an attribute of
capitalism, and its great for customers, and its great for their customers
customer. Another "phenomenon" that comes out of a "healthy market" is
innovation. People come up with better features, when price alone is not
enough to stand out, people will search for something new.

We're either going to see A. Bankruptsy from a bunch of old engines or B. Some
really great new features that make the product stand out in a unique way.

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bhouston
There was already a nuclear winter for game engines about 6 years ago when
Unity3D rose to prominent in the medium/low end niche. This is just a fight
between those that are still standing.

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baldfat
I find that this is ridiculous and missed:

Unreal / Cryengine = 5% (Negative responses of high cost) But they actually
provide the tools and are makers

Apple/Google = 30% for providing an app that lets you support their OS (What's
an OS without Apps)

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khc
Why is this ridiculous? Without Apple/Google, how would you distribute and
market your apps?

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k00pa
IF there weren't App Stores or anything, it would be possible to download
applications from websites.

So basically you would distribute the same way as in PC. You buy the install
files in physical/digital form and install it. Then enter cd-key or something.

And of course somebody would come and make some kind of store to make the
purchasing easier just like on PC. (for example Steam)

And yeah. Its ridiculous when Apple/Google take shares of the profits,
comparing to what UE4 for example takes.

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mcphage
> So basically you would distribute the same way as in PC. You buy the install
> files in physical/digital form and install it.

That's how you used to buy apps for phones. And you know what? Not many people
bothered; it was a pain in the ass.

And heck, you can still do that on PCs, but most people go through
Steam—because it's a much better buying experience.

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butabah
I love this. We need more of these powerful tools for cheaper prices.

UDK was a great platform, but the scripting language was hell. It was like
being given a helicopter and flying it with your feet. This was really the
reason why we moved to Unity, because it was so much easier to code inside
their sandbox.

Game tech companies need to realize that developers love fully featured
software, and we are willing to pay for it, we just don't want to pay out the
ass for it per dev. It looks like Epic sees this and is jumping on it, CryTek
following suite, I wonder how Unity will step up to the plate?

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orng
The way I see it with Unreal is that the 5% of your gross revenue is the real
price and in the article it is put in parentheses as if it doesn't matter! If
you are successful it could be a lot more than buying a license the old
fashioned way would have been! I don't know if that classifies as "cheap".

Edit: added a missing word.

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RyanZAG
Agreed. For an example, Mass Effect 3 is a relatively recent game on the
Unreal engine that sold over 1.5 million copies + DLC, probably for revenue of
something like $100mil. 5% of that $100mil per successful game should be
enough to keep Epic in business.

~~~
socialist_coder
AFAIK Every AAA game pays a flat rate per game (in the 100k-500k range), not
the rev share. The rev share agreement would only be for indie / non-pros.

Based on industry knowledge, the AAA flat rate game licencing costs don't seem
to be going down.

One reason might be that once you have a few Unreal engine / Cryengine games
under your belt, the cost to switch engines is HUGE. You're basically locked
in unless you want to re-hire / re-train the majority of your programmers.

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kayoone
Comparing the race to the bottom of consumer product prices with a freemium
(not really free i know) model for b2b tools doesn't make a lot of sense.
These engines will now be accessible by people who didn't have a chance
before. If you are an AAA dev (or hugely successful with your indie game) you
still have to pay huge sums, at least with Unreal Engine. To use CryEngine for
10 bucks, you have to qualify as an indie dev. So they are opening up to more
potential users to upsell to, which in todays booming game market makes a lot
of sense.

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xedarius
I wonder what position this puts existing development houses that have shelled
out $1 million dollars for use of the Unreal Engine.

