At my last startup, our product required information that didn't exist in the digital world - the table of contents of hundreds of medical books. So I used to spend nights and weekends visiting local Barnes & Nobles and university bookstores pulling down books and manually typing out the table of contents with chapter titles, pages numbers, etc. Quite possibly the most boring job ever! Most bookstores didn't mind my presence, but I did get kicked out of one (thanks Harvard Medical School!). I tried to use OCR and other techniques and it just wasn't accurate enough (this was a decade ago so the tech wasn't quite as advanced as it is now). Eventually the company got big enough where I could have dedicated staff to handle the process, but for a long time it was how I spent my free time.
Awesome! The 3D shooter course is in production now, and is looking great so far. We try to inject best practices in all of our courses as well as weighing tradeoffs when discussing different approaches to a problem.
Wow...I wrote up a whimsical account of what could happen after the price increases. I got the timing wrong (I thought it would take several months for the CEO to step down), but some of it is starting to come true: https://quiver.dev/blog/stepping-into-the-unity-ceos-calfski....
At Quiver, we’re building comprehensive, polished courses for Godot. We aim to take you from the basics to more advanced concepts. Our content isn’t free though, but we’re doing our best to make it worth the cost. You can check it out here: https://quiver.dev. (Disclosure: I’m the founder).
Totally agree, that's why I submitted this article. I'm personally invested in seeing Godot become successful, but this type of constructive criticism is great for the ecosystem (even though some people get very defensive). I think it's exciting that there's so much room for improvement and shining light into Godot internals is a great way to expose what needs to be done.
I'm less concerned about Unreal pulling a Unity. The bigger issue is just a lack of attention. The last numbers I saw was that Unreal was pulling in $100m a year for Epic. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what Epic makes off of Fortnite. In my experience, products that matter a lot to the consumer but not the company tend to stagnate. Just look at Google outside of search.
If anyone's looking for a quick intro to Godot 4, you can take a look at our video series: https://quiver.dev/tutorials/create-your-first-godot-4-game/. Disclaimer: this is offered by my company, but the tutorial is free and the code and assets are liberally licensed.
This move by Unity isn't completely unexpected if you've studied their financials. Smaller devs are basically dead weight for Unity, so it seemed like them putting the squeeze on them was just a matter of time. Bottom line: don't count on a public company to do the right thing if you're not helping their bottom line.
Disclaimer: I'm the founder of the company that produced this course, but the tutorial is free and the custom assets used in the tutorial are liberally licensed.
Depends how you define well-known. The Godot showcase lists some of the popular ones: https://godotengine.org/showcase/. I believe Dome Keeper did $1m+ in sales with a 2-person team and I assume Brotato and Cruelty Squad are probably in 7 figures as well. So far, the hits have definitely been on the smaller side, but I expect things will change with Godot 4 being released. Another big factor is that most of the games released so far have been developed by tiny teams.
That's not correct. They don't even mention the asset store in their annual reports or shareholder letters any more, but in 2020 the Asset Store revenue was part of a category that was less than 8% of revenue. Their main revenue drivers are their ad solutions and engine licensing for large studios.
Very possible! I'm in the process of building a C&C-like prototype, except 2D. I'm hoping to post a tutorial + code in a couple of weeks on our site (link in profile). If you want some assets to get started, you can use a free asset pack we released and the one I'm prototyping with: https://quiver.dev/assets/art-assets/outpost-assault-tower-d.... You'll definitely want to read up on the navigation system in the Godot and I imagine fine-tuning that will be a bulk of the work. If you have any questions, feel free to send an email (in my profile).
If you're just getting started, I'd recommend trying out a few engines to see what clicks (I find it usually takes at least an afternoon to get a feel for an engine). JS engines tend to be easier to get started with as a web developer, but you'll often run into limitations when you start building more complex games.
This article is pretty shallow, but I agree with the broad strokes. I'm personally betting on Godot reaching an inflection point (I have $$$ personally invested in a startup betting on this), but I think it's totally a great outcome if the market is shared between Godot, Unity, and Unreal. I think the most likely scenario is that Godot enters in the indie/low-end market and moves up the ladder, Epic continues to dominate the AAA market, and Unity is squeezed somewhere between.
With that said, none of this is guaranteed and will require significant commercial support to make Godot remotely competitive. Some problems are immediately obvious like the lack of tutorials and an asset store (that's what we're working on in the near-term), but it also involves more sophisticated multiplayer options, a better asset pipeline, and much much more, so it's going to be a long road.
But I'm optimistic about Godot's future. I'm currently putting together a simple 2D RTS game with Godot 4 beta to use as a tutorial and template and it's been such a joy. Despite the bugs and the warts, I've gotten so much done in just two weeks. If you squint really hard, you can see an army of indies in the future making simple, but great games with Godot in half the time they do today and that gets me really excited.
Our company creates Godot courses and while we have scripts for our videos, we’ve found it difficult to turn them into books. Game programming is just so visual, especially introductory content. Things like walking someone through the Godot editor is hard to convey in text. We’re working on it though!
I agree that Unity has a head start, but we're betting on Godot catching up, especially for indie developers. We're doing our part by helping to plug some of the holes in the Godot ecosystem by releasing assets, game templates, and plugins.