There two kinds of announcements in the video game industry. One is huge and slaps consumers across the face and often sets the the Internet on fire. For example, PS3 Slim photos or mock ups of what a Microsoft hand held console might look like. The other type of announcement requires a little more thought and discussion before the true value is discovered. This is one of those announcements.
Flashy? No.
Important? Very much so.
Last Friday Shogun Gamer’s Vancouver staff was invited to attend a Unity 3D presentation at the swanky District 319. I also got to tag along for a follow up day long developer seminar the next day. Special thanks to J.Joly from DimeRocker for the invite! You can check out photos from the event and developer class below, but let’s jump right into the good stuff.
What exactly is Unity?
Unity 3D is a development tool that has been growing in popularity since it’s inception. Tom Higgens, the key note speaker and instructor for the following days class is one of the original five behind it and acts as the contact point between the development community and the Unity team.
Unity’s current user base consist mainly of mobile (iPhone) and browser based developers. But these aren’t just any browser games, they are actually good. Really good in fact.
The Unity 3D platform’s defining feature is the ability to create console-like gameplay within mobile and browser based platforms. The light weight player is a measly 3Mb one time install that does not even require you to restart your browser. But the goodness doesn’t stop there.
What I find most compelling about the Unity 3D platform is that it is even diverse enough to allow any game built on it to be easily ported to the XBLA, PSN and Wii Ware content delivery systems. This means that once you build your game for one platform, you can have it fully running on another within a week or so. Currently only the Wii has launched a Unity based game and has more in development. But the possibility for XBLA and PSN ports are completely possible and something Unity is very interested in.
The price of Unity Pro is $1499.00 USD. The basic “indi” version costs only $199.00 USD. With prices like this the direct benefit to the consumers is more interesting games. If more bedroom, graduate and small time developers can access tools that allow them to execute their creative and original ideas, we are going to start seeing some amazing games that would have never been built by a large studio.
Sure, massive block buster franchises like Halo, Grand Theft Auto and Mario will be in demand for years to come. But these games are usually the same old thing with new graphics and a few new features. It’s never anything really new.
This is where indi developers come in.
Indi developers are small companies and teams that can move faster and often take more creative chances than large companies. Small companies want to stand out, they want to be different and try something new. Games like Flower, Castle Crashers and Fat princess are defining examples of this concept working well. And thanks to tools like Unity, more developers can spend less time coding and more time on design, story and execution.
Here is a list of free games built using Unity 3D. Most of them are as fun as their titles are awesome!
We love supporting independent gaming initiatives and developers here at Shogun Gamer, so we will be tracking and reporting on the Unity platform as their community base grows and more games are published.
To learn more about the Unity 3D platform, it’s features and ever try a free demo you can visit their home page at http://unity3d.com.
I fully agree Diifii, I was at this event it was pretty bad ass. At first I was a little scared because i didn't want someone to start talking in C++ leaving me feeling like a newb. That didn't actually happen so I am pleased to say I could probably create a game with Unity with little to no problems.
Splume was addicting and I like how they added that challenging edge to the game when you get further into the game.
Yeah I really like Splume to. I'd like to see it with some really beefed up graphics. That was one of the first 2D unity games. Pretty fun though.
Thanks for the kind words about the event guys, it was a great weekend for me as well! Just to clarify though, we don't yet support XBox/PlayStation development but we're quite intent on doing so. We definitely support the Wii already, it's just that the others are something we're starting to work on and are a big part of why we've been staffing up this year (so we can drive the desktop/web, mobile and console agendas all at once with vigor!).
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Evangelist for Unity
a.k.a. The Reverend 
Ahh yes, thanks Tom. I amended the story above to make sure that's clearer. Thanks for having us down to the conference, keep us posted on others!
Thanks for the great article here. I have read about Unity 3D few times earlier but I haven't paid too much attention. Now I can see that this thing is serious. Creating mobile games as easy as it is announced will be a powerful feature. I am working in mobile industry for many years now and I must say that mobile phones will be more and more powerful soon so creating such games is a smart idea. I will keep an eye on your blog in the future too.
Regards, Graham from mobile development
I like this. I hope soon programming a video game will be so easy that we will not even need to take any three year university course. This is great for people like me, people that know nothing about C++ and still want to make a game.
Its really nice that they are making these programs more main stream.