Game Geek Speak

(Yes, the titillating title of this post is meant to incite passion to get your attention. Please continue reading.)

I mentioned a little bit ago that Unity3d is releasing the authoring IDE for Windows with version 2.5. I read in the forums that they would release 2.5 no later than GDC, which is in March.

Unity is tempting me to completely ditch Flash. But there’s one factor making that a bad decision for the moment. Although I think eventually I will make games in Unity exclusively (assuming it all works out as dreamily as it seems like it will), Flash can’t be abandoned yet.

What’s so great about Flash?

Adoption. Everyone and their granny’s dairy goat has Flash installed. Adoption by itself, though, isn’t what makes adoption so great. Its really about…

…distribution. I can get a game in front of hundreds of thousands of eyeballs in a week using Flash. A lot of folks would think, “Gee, maybe you could make a few hundred dollars from ads. That’s not so great. Jason is stupid, and I hate him.” And then they’d go back and continue working on their C++ downloadable game. But I beg to differ.

It’s not about the ad money. It’s the traffic, ya silly persons! Why would I care about a few hundred dollars of ad money when I can get ten thousand visitors to my website each week or month? And I don’t mean putting Google ads on the site and earning from that, either. No, no, no. That’s still small potatoes.

I’m talking about harnessing the traffic machine that is Flash games and then upselling to those visitors with bigger ticket items, like stand alone games or (much more likely in my case) getting them interested in games that utilize microtransactions and/or subscription services. Now you’re talking about significant income.

Make money with ads? Pfft! I use MochiAds because I like their version control, easy encryption and especially their distribution network that sends games out to millions of people for me!

There are some other neat things about Flash, but the real reason I use it is because of distribution and other services that have risen up around it.

There’s this cool idea of sponsorship, where developers are in control, and portals pay us to show their ad to drive traffic back to them. (Did anyone notice these portals are driving traffic back to their sites? See! It’s about traffic, not ad money!)

The thing I like about this sponsorship arrangement is that it is in diametric opposition to how things work with portals that sell downloadable games. There, developers are like slaves who beg for any tiny piece of profit their own work can earn. Portals call the shots, make the money, and generally drive the industry into the ground to the point that now it’s going to be flailing around and coughing up blood for a long time until (hopefully) it finally dies some day. It’s just like the retail games business, where publishers lead developers around by the nose, take all the earnings, and drive the whole industry into the ground in the process.

(I have a lot of friends in the downloadable casual games industry, and I’m not speaking here about anyone in particular. I’m speaking about the industry and the patterns of business that are currently dominant. I certainly don’t mean that I want my casual games friends to lose their jobs! I just think that industry needs to and will evolve away from how it currently operates.)

Wow. Sorry, I was digressing passionately there for a minute.

So now here comes Unity.

Unity lacks that distribution power, and although technically it is a dream come true, the real dream come true is when that technical capability is coupled with distribution and reach on par with Flash. Now that is going to be a sight to see.

I hope that existing portals and services based around Flash will integrate Unity support. Then we can keep the existing structures in place and add Unity games among the Flash games. Oh, let me dream, would ya?!

Now. All that having been said… I am not convinced that adoption itself is a problem for Unity. I think any game that’s good enough will cause players to install the Unity plugin without hesitation. I don’t mean something like a Simon Says clone or some other shovelware game made in three days–it’ll have to be a good game.

Because of Unity’s appeal, which will make convincing players to get the plugin easy, I will start to develop with Unity as soon as I get my shaking-with-excitement hands on a copy. Building more games can only mean more adoption and, eventually, more distribution. Distribution = earnings = I make more games without a day job. Yuussssss!!1!