Robot Gentleman dev of 60 Seconds! blasts Unity, switches to Godot and increases funding

It's likely Godot will absorb a huge chunk of the devs fleeing Unity3D, but I'm confident at least some devs in niches better covered by other engines and tools will find their way to those other tools now or later.

Remaking a game is a huge task. I expect most serious devs will spend some time making their due diligence to ensure the new branch they jump to isn't as frail as the one they are jumping out off.

GO!!!...... MIGHTY GODOT.....

Hopefully these devs (and others) make an effort towards native Linux versions as part of their switch to Godot.

Quoting: PhlebiacHopefully these devs (and others) make an effort towards native Linux versions as part of their switch to Godot.

AFAIK it's much easier to make a linux version of a game with Godot than with Unity3D.

At the very least there will be less linux-specific bugs in the native linux versions of games that opt for it. Unity was notoriously terrible in this regard and while the situation improved over the years it never got solved entirely.

IIRC Godot made also made it pretty easy to pack up android versions of games for testing and final deployment (I read an article once a couple years ago about how it works and why it was unusually easy), so mobile game devs might enjoy jumping ship more than they expected.

Quoting: dziadulewiczCould this really be the start of Godot's triumph? it is totally free, open source and Linux is number one. Just think about that.

actually this might be the opposite.

i think unity had more chance to compete against Unreal than godot.
and i think godot had more chance to compete against unity than against unreal.

godot isnt ready to fight against unreal, and without unity to "steal" money and marketshare from epic, unreal will grow even faster making it harder for anyone to enter their market, wich also make it easier for then to enter other business market.
not everyone will migrate to godot, a lot of companies will migrate to unreal.
so in the end this might end up being bad for godot , it will all depend on how fast it can grow now, how many people chose unreal instead.

and god, no one remember O3DE LOL.

-----------
let me try to put that into other words, to make it easier to understand:

imagine you are playing an rpg, eg pokemon or something, your character might be level 10 and be capable of defeating level other pokemons leveled 1~10 as well as some stronger than you, maybe level 15 for example.
this pokemon at level 15 might be able to defeat an level 20 pokemon.
but that dont means you can defeat an level 20 pokemon with an level 10.

(pokemon might be a bad example, we had things like an challenge where you have to defeat a level 100 chuckle with a level 5 ratata)


Last edited by elmapul on 21 September 2023 at 1:58 am UTC

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'm actually starting to feel sorry for some other open source projects that don't have as much name recognition and momentum as Godot. Everyone's reacting by supporting Godot (and in Terraria's case, FNA, which is cool) but Liam had an article listing quite a few other alternatives, some of which are both open source and seem pretty neat, and I hope some of those get a bit of love too.

"The reputation-game analysis has some more implications that may not be immediately obvious. Many of these derive from the fact that one gains more prestige from founding a successful project than from cooperating in an existing one. One also gains more from projects that are strikingly innovative, as opposed to being `me, too' incremental improvements on software that already exists. On the other hand, software that nobody but the author understands or has a need for is a non-starter in the reputation game, and it's often easier to attract good notice by contributing to an existing project than it is to get people to notice a new one. Finally, it's much harder to compete with an already successful project than it is to fill an empty niche.

"Thus, there's an optimum distance from one's neighbors (the most similar competing projects). Too close and one's product will be a ``me, too!'' of limited value, a poor gift (one would be better off contributing to an existing project). Too far away, and nobody will be able to use, understand, or perceive the relevance of one's effort (again, a poor gift). This creates a pattern of homesteading in the noosphere that rather resembles that of settlers spreading into a physical frontier - not random, but like a diffusion-limited fractal. Projects tend to get started to fill functional gaps near the frontier (see [NO] for further discussion of the lure of novelty).

"Some very successful projects become `category killers'; nobody wants to homestead anywhere near them because competing against the established base for the attention of hackers would be too hard. People who might otherwise found their own distinct efforts end up, instead, adding extensions for these big, successful projects. The classic `category killer' example is GNU Emacs; its variants fill the ecological niche for a fully-programmable editor so completely that no competitor has gotten much beyond the one-man project stage since the early 1980s. Instead, people write Emacs modes."

— Eric S. Raymond, 1999.

Edit: I forgot to say why I was citing that essay; additional funding for Godot will shuffle the prominence of different projects, but they'll still exist to fill whichever ecological niches remain.

cant compete, join then.
for exanple, renpy was made for people who want to write an visual novel, if they strugle to compete with godot, because godot can be used to make visual novel, maybe they can, instead, become one extension for godot.
that is basically what im doing, for another niche =P

Quoting: PhlebiacHopefully these devs (and others) make an effort towards native Linux versions as part of their switch to Godot.

i doubt.
proton made it unescessary, not to mention, they probably rely on a lot of middlewares

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: dziadulewiczCould this really be the start of Godot's triumph? it is totally free, open source and Linux is number one. Just think about that.

actually this might be the opposite.

i think unity had more chance to compete against Unreal than godot.
and i think godot had more chance to compete against unity than against unreal.

I'm not sure I believe that, and I don't think that likely works that way.
So the first thing is, right now Godot is competing against both Unreal and Unity. There is not going to be an instant change where Unreal has suddenly already grabbed all the space. So the question is, as Unity vacates space, how does it get split up? Unless Unreal takes 100%, Godot gets bigger than it was.

Second thing is, as I understand it Unity was particularly used by indies as being somewhat more lightweight (and cheaper) than Unreal. I don't think people cast adrift and looking for something somewhat more lightweight, and cheaper, than Unreal, are going to instantly want to pick . . . Unreal. Godot fills that niche rather better, I would have thought. So in the context of Unity losing share, Godot competes with Unreal very well. It can't yet compete well with Unreal's core market, but it doesn't have to at this point.

Third thing is, open source solutions that get past a certain level of mind/market share win, almost always. Godot really seems to be headed in that direction. Like, there are three kinds of open source software. There's the kind that's wonky and barely maintained because there's like one or two devs and they don't happen to be driven geniuses. There's the kind with a solid niche, like "Desktop Linux users", that is much smaller than the market share of the closed dominant software, and which is developed to a solid extent, so it's good enough and in some ways superior but generally lacks some of the more advanced features of the proprietary alternative, and may suffer from file incompatibility issues and such. This is where you find things like LibreOffice and the GIMP. They are at an equilibrium where they can basically keep up as long as they keep their 2-3% user share, but cannot become compelling enough to push past that share.

And then there's Free Software that through some happenstance bumped up to like 10%+ share. It got momentum, it had some compelling killer feature and everyone went for it, some big pockets company/ies got behind it, the commercial software cost a mint so people abandoned it in droves, whatever. When this happens, it does not stop there. Once a piece of Free Software reaches the point where it is a credible competitor to the main closed software alternatives, it eats them. Its mind share is big enough that it has plenty of development resources; it gets developed faster than the closed competition and its open source nature stops the inclusion of anti-features and it generally costs zero dollars. Closed software in the niche can't compete; it will continue to exist, but will become the minority. The winning free software's dominance will only be challenged by open source competitors. In this area you find things like Blender, open source web browsers, open source compilers, open source server software, Linux in most OS roles outside the desktop, and so on.

I think it is quite plausible to say Godot is in the process of reaching that point, where it has enough momentum that it will become very hard to stop it from eating closed competitors.

At this point, I think Unity can say whatever they want. The damage is done, and the trust is gone. Primarily from the developers, but as soon as your average gamer realises that in order to pull this off, Unity would have to install what amounts to malware in every runtime...

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: dziadulewiczCould this really be the start of Godot's triumph? it is totally free, open source and Linux is number one. Just think about that.

actually this might be the opposite.

i think unity had more chance to compete against Unreal than godot.
and i think godot had more chance to compete against unity than against unreal.

I'm not sure I believe that, and I don't think that likely works that way.
So the first thing is, right now Godot is competing against both Unreal and Unity. There is not going to be an instant change where Unreal has suddenly already grabbed all the space. So the question is, as Unity vacates space, how does it get split up? Unless Unreal takes 100%, Godot gets bigger than it was.

Second thing is, as I understand it Unity was particularly used by indies as being somewhat more lightweight (and cheaper) than Unreal. I don't think people cast adrift and looking for something somewhat more lightweight, and cheaper, than Unreal, are going to instantly want to pick . . . Unreal. Godot fills that niche rather better, I would have thought. So in the context of Unity losing share, Godot competes with Unreal very well. It can't yet compete well with Unreal's core market, but it doesn't have to at this point.

Third thing is, open source solutions that get past a certain level of mind/market share win, almost always. Godot really seems to be headed in that direction. Like, there are three kinds of open source software. There's the kind that's wonky and barely maintained because there's like one or two devs and they don't happen to be driven geniuses. There's the kind with a solid niche, like "Desktop Linux users", that is much smaller than the market share of the closed dominant software, and which is developed to a solid extent, so it's good enough and in some ways superior but generally lacks some of the more advanced features of the proprietary alternative, and may suffer from file incompatibility issues and such. This is where you find things like LibreOffice and the GIMP. They are at an equilibrium where they can basically keep up as long as they keep their 2-3% user share, but cannot become compelling enough to push past that share.

And then there's Free Software that through some happenstance bumped up to like 10%+ share. It got momentum, it had some compelling killer feature and everyone went for it, some big pockets company/ies got behind it, the commercial software cost a mint so people abandoned it in droves, whatever. When this happens, it does not stop there. Once a piece of Free Software reaches the point where it is a credible competitor to the main closed software alternatives, it eats them. Its mind share is big enough that it has plenty of development resources; it gets developed faster than the closed competition and its open source nature stops the inclusion of anti-features and it generally costs zero dollars. Closed software in the niche can't compete; it will continue to exist, but will become the minority. The winning free software's dominance will only be challenged by open source competitors. In this area you find things like Blender, open source web browsers, open source compilers, open source server software, Linux in most OS roles outside the desktop, and so on.

I think it is quite plausible to say Godot is in the process of reaching that point, where it has enough momentum that it will become very hard to stop it from eating closed competitors.

I think you've pretty much summed up the entire mindset of the Godot community. We've always been waiting for the push since 4.0 released and now that it's here, we're hoping for it to become the Blender of game engines. At the very least, the momentum gained from this should allow all the major bugs to be dealt with at a faster pace.

It's still early days and we're nearing a 4.2 release so it's hard to know exactly how many people are jumping onto the Godot ship but the developers themselves are saying that the traffic has been far bigger than ever.