Heimblog

Unity is cool. It’s a 3D engine that runs in your browser. It gets decent framerate (unlike its competitors) and it looks like the tools are pretty well developed. Check out the demos if you’re bored — that’s the future of web gaming right there. Low-requirement, hardware-accelerated 3D.

I would love to take this for a spin. But I can’t.

Although the Unity plug-in works on all the major OSes and browsers, the development tools are only available for the Macintosh.

The Macintosh.

I don’t own a Mac — I have nothing against them, but they are just too expensive for me. And the thing is, neither do most game companies. This is a pretty big limitation! Huge, even.

I wrote to them, and got a response from Unity’s “evangelist”, who said a PC version was coming. He said I could count the time before the PC version launches “in months rather than in years” but then took pains to make sure I understood that any number of years could also be represented in months…

Honestly, I think this misstep may be what kills them. They’ve been around a while but their adoption rate is itsy-bitsy tiny because nobody can run the IDE. Sure, in six months or a year they will finally be accessible. But Flash Player 10 finally has hardware 3D primitives. How much you want to bet Flash 10’s adoption rate will be near 95% after a single year? Sure, Flash 10 won’t come with any useful tools for 3D world modeling, but somebody will build them.

Unity’s website talks about how adoption rates aren’t the end of the world as long as the install process is clean and easy enough. And the install process was easy for Unity. But… you go to a random web page, it says, “To play this game you need to install Unity, click here!”… and you’re just going to go to some other game page instead.

I am rootin’ for you, Unity… at least in theory. I haven’t actually played with the IDE so I can’t tell how good it really is. But even a mediocre 3D editor is infinitely better than what we’ll get out of the box with Flash 10. But … you need a killer app, right now before Flash 10 catches on. Can you do that? I don’t think you can.

I’m working with a lot of web-game developers recently at FlashGameLicense.com, and find that a great many developers are over-protective of their ideas, prototypes, and even finished (but unsponsored) games, for fear that someone will steal their idea and make a clone. Not because someone will steal the game itself — that can be protected against — but that somebody will steal the idea and steal their glory.

I’ve been in the games industry a long time now, and only newbs are over-protective of getting their ideas stolen. Sure, lots of big companies are also over-protective of their ideas… I’ve done consultation jobs for huge teams where I’ve had to sign NDAs in order to even hear what the job is about. After I sign the NDAs, I’m all excited to find out what the secret is… and it’s always just another obvious game idea. When that happens, I know the team lead is a game development newbie. (I make an exception for unannounced IPs, which often really do require an NDA.)

This is especially true for Flash games and the like. Three reasons.

1) On the web, nobody really cares if somebody made this game before, especially if the idea was made 4 months ago or more. If a game is a SUPER smash hit, sponsors may not want to be involved with a competing version for a few months… so they’ll just wait. But after a few months, most gamers will have forgotten anyway… and the ones that didn’t forget will be ready to play a new, better-quality version of that game.

If somebody else’s version is much better than yours, it doesn’t matter if it comes first or second. If you have a great idea but make a poor implementation of your idea, you lose anyway, because somebody will make a better version of your game and get more money.

2) Game ideas are worthless. Only game implementations are valuable. No reputable sponsor or publisher EVER wants to see a “game idea” by itself without at least a partially complete game, because anybody can come up with good ideas. It takes skill to make ideas into games worth playing.

If your web game involves any of the following, your idea is extra super worthless:

• Bouncing balls against paddles, walls, bricks, or other surfaces
• Spotting hidden pixels
• Moving a guy around the screen while he shoots things
• Working through a giant maze
• Matching colored bricks
• Trying to keep something from touching some other thing
• Moving a jumping guy across platforms

No matter what twist or turn you add: physics, mouse support, keyboard support, 3D, whatever… the idea by itself is worthless. It’s an incremental twist on an old standby. When people play it, they’ll think, “Oh it’s just a so-and-so with such-and-such added on.” Coming up with these kinds of incremental improvements is the most trivial kind of game design possible. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game! It could be the best game in the world. But the idea alone? No value.

3) These are web games! These ideas often take an expert coder less than a month to implement. So how much of a head start can your game possibly get? If you launch it, and it is fun but has some minor flaws, someone else can just launch a better version in a month anyway.

Plus, no sponsor is going to say, “Oh I would have bought this awesome game, but I already saw a mediocre version a few months back, so no thanks. Not original enough.” Your game is only as good as the quality of your game. The “polish level”, I mean. The fun level.

Quality can’t be mimicked quickly. Say you have a new twist on an old chestnut… I dunno, how about you’re combining Break Out with Space Invaders, plus a twist of lime. Whatever. But you play-test it for hundreds of hours. You make each level really fun and really beautiful and really surprising. Your game is high-quality.

In this case, it doesn’t matter if people know what you’re making. They can’t steal your quality, and that’s what makes your game valuable.

In my opinion, the only time you need to be really secretive of your game idea is if you’ve got some unannounced business partner, IP, or awesome graphics resource. If you’ve struck a deal with Coca Cola, you should keep that deal under wraps until it’s official. But a typical game? The concept is valueless. The implementation is the only valuable thing.