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Comment by morley | Hacker News Reader

The full quote for context:

> Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots.

Their CEO is certainly not calling everyone an idiot, just that there are some in that group of people. And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.

The next thing he says in the interview:

> I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.

View on HN

I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "compulsion loops"... just, no.

Unity used to be famous for being the game engine of choice for creative indies. Games like Hollow Knight, Return of the Obra Dinn, or Ori and the Blind Forest. It seems to me very clear that Riccitello has no understanding of the value of tools for making games like that. He sees Unity as a way of pumping out endless shitty Candy Crush clones stuffed with predatory microtransactions.

EDIT: by the way, for the full context, this is the question he's answering:

> "Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is certainly an angle that has seen pushback from some developers."

The pushback the question is referring to is developers being disappointed in the ironSource merger. He's literally being asked about Unity focusing too much on microtransactions and ad technology, and in his answer to the question he refers to his critics (which, again, are his customers!) as "fucking idiots".

This guy should not be in charge of Unity.

I haven't seen much of what he says in general so I don't know if he has a really antagonistic trend in his he talks.

I interpreted what he said to mean "I have respect for devs who approach this for just the art, but if you don't consider monetization into your design from the beginning, you are self sabotaging your chance at business success".

He just said that with less politically correct talk, which is easily taken out of context.

Also there's this assumption in this thread and in HN in general that "monetization" always means bleeding people out of their money. Sure much of the industry does that, but I don't think that has to be the case

It doesn’t have to be “politically” correct to simply not call your critics idiots. Long long before PC was a term, it was never acceptable to use this kinda language in a business/work context. Not to mention the utter disrespect in calling someone (not the idea or criticism) a ‘fucking idiot’. Even worse when that someone is your customer.

Being decent and being respectful has nothing to do with politics. Strong language betrays the emotional state of the speaker than any valuable idea. All this conveyed to me was that he has very thin skin and easily triggered with no emotional maturity to rationally push back.

There should be no monetization design in a video game. The design should be make your game good so people will buy it.

How ridiculous would it be for other forms of art to have "monetization design".

A chef that styles their dishes in such a way that there clearly is a gap in the dish which should contain a nice piece of steak or something else. When you are eating the dish the waiter comes with that piece in hand and asks if you want it for a small price.

Or a painter that paints a picture with elements missing. If you want to experience the true masterpiece. Please buy these extra element and also for a small price you can have better matching colors.

How such behavior is acceptable in video games is truly baffling to me. But then again I have never bought anything using a microtransaction. I think it should be illegal to be able to ask a user to buy something when in game. You also don't get a pop up when watching a movie to please enter your credit card number to be charged $2 to watch this extra scene that was cut.

Hard agree. "Monetization design" is almost universally a euphemism for casino-style addiction mechanics whose sole purpose is to habituate users to continue feeding quarters into the slot so the good feelings don't stop.

I pulled my (meager) rev contribution out of their subscription service following the IronSource acquisition and this makes me confident that was the right call. All due to respect to the fine folks working on the platform, but it's not something I'm interested in using anymore.

> I pulled my (meager) rev contribution out of their subscription service following the IronSource acquisition and this makes me confident that was the right call.

Yesterday, I took a 5 figure loss on my Unity position to get out from under this horror show. Still feel fantastic about it.

If you are going to have casino monitization, it is still better to consider it earlier than try to bolt it on at the very end.

In principle I don’t entirely disagree that the pendulum has swung way too far towards monetization and away from pure vision in video game design, but it’s funny you mention chefs not compromising…the restaurant business is notoriously low margin and very many new restaurants fail quickly.

One of the more common reasons is that inexperienced owners don’t understand their food costs and therefore design delicious, lovely menu items that actually lose money when you calculate everything that goes into them. If you want it to be more than a brief experiment, you gotta get the spreadsheets out at some point…

I'm not saying don't charge what is necessary. I'm saying monetization shouldn't be part of the experience you are creating.

If you are going to have it, still better to consider implementation and mechanics early, opposed to try to bolt it on to a mostly finished game. I would agree that intentionally planning to do the latter is idiotic.

That's the answer to the wrong question. You shouldn't even be considering adding monetization into the game. Because you are "fucking evil" if you do.

But the question in the quote was about early versus late addition.

Waiting until the end to add it in is both evil and idiotic

Hmmm...

Is that really so?

Sounds like pizzas where you can put things on it for additional price. Or when you buy house or car and pay extra for each little thing.

I agree that in modern games its way more intusive then it needs to be.

No it's not comparable to that. Adding things to the pizza/car is a decision you make prior to using/consuming the good. I have no problem with games doing the equivalent. E.g. you purchase any DLC or costumes or cosmetics or whatever BEFORE starting the game. The evil part is making monetization part of the game. I would also find it evil for a car to suggest "Buy the vacation increased range package for 49.99$ and have 50 extra kilometers of range for the next 2 weeks", while you car battery is at 10%.

Yeah, you are right. Intrusion level is different and way more peedatory.

"Less politically correct"? He called his own customers "fucking idiots" for not liking what he's selling. It reminds me of impotent men who blame feminism for their lack of a sex life, it's ridiculous. Perhaps you meant "irreverent," which is a more apt description.

What's ridiculous here is what it reminds you of, which makes you look worse than him.

He's just open and honest about his thoughts and feelings about some people, but you, on the other hand, are definitely, at least, weird.

The analogy is people who blame other's reactions to them on the people themselves instead seriously contending with the claim and at least looking inward.

Anyway, that was a bit off my point which I admit. The main point I am making is "irreverent" is more descriptive than "politically incorrect." Politically incorrect would be something not culturally sensitive or offensive to people with certain politics. He didn't make that sort of gesture, he just was crude about his own customers which is mean sure but also pretty unwise just from a PR perspective.

This the worst analogy.

It's hard to see what else it could mean in this context. I've seen a lot of cosmetic-based monetization strategies I really have no issue with, and in general they seem like a great way to let people who really like the game choose to pay more for it. But if you're considering monetization from the beginning, doesn't that mean your core design is making a tradeoff between fun and transactability?

No, it’s not a trade off because the 2 concepts are not mutually exclusive. Through innovation they can be greater than the sum of their parts.

Sure, in lazy/bad games there’s trade off, but that goes for anything. Bad games have existed for a long time for more than just money

I haven't worked with Unity, but I'm assuming they get a percentage of the money spent through microtransactions and monetized content? They're essentially a platform, kind of like the Apple app store, and taking a cut?

In that case, it's obvious why the Unity CEO would say this. He has a financial incentive to get game developers to try and milk gamers for profit (because Unity gets a cut).

I think that this could ultimately push gamers and developers to use other engines/platforms. If you try to milk gamers for profit, it will eventually lead to unplayable games where the only way to compete online is to buy a ton of virtual power-ups and accessories.

They don't get a cut. It's a per seat model. Everyone seems to think Unity has some incentive to push IAP and they don't.

Reading the full quote, I would not bet on Unity even having an option of a per-seat subscription in five years. They're moving to capture a cut of every microtransaction, looking at how they speak and the acquisitions they're making.

Nah, it's just that ads are a much better growth business, and gaming ads are super profitable.

Growth is generally king for tech companies.

Huh? I'm pretty sure that unity act as an ad server, and take some money from it. As do iron source, for that matter.

Honestly, this was always gonna happen post iOS tracking changes. Less data means worse ads and no measurement without substantial first party scale, which will tend to lead towards consolidation.

Edit: in fact, if you look at their S1, you can see that they make money from subscriptions to their game creation tools and also from operate services, to help customers monetize and increase LTV. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1810806/000119312520...

What is your point? My point is that they're not incentivized to push games towards abusive MTX like the parent hypothesized.

And you based that point on unity's licence being per seat, implying that they don't have a profit incentive to push for IAP/ads.

Their point was that this implication isn't correct, because unity does indeed have a profit incentive for ads and IAP, as they're providing a platform for such. It's one of the features unity mentions on the pricing page.

What do you think the IAP incentive is for Unity? It's just one of the cross platform features they wrap. It's surfaced on the pricing page because it sells the engine but there's no monetary incentive to Unity if you use it or not.

Unity takes a cut from its ads business but it just does not do that for IAP any more than the animation system.

So fundamentally, ad prices in the mobile game ecosystem are driven by life time value. IAP is the biggest contributer to LTV, this Unity care about this. I'd like to know which portion of their revenue is bigger, but I can guarantee that the ads business is growing faster.

If your game doesn't make money, your studio collapses and Unity loses a customer. They do have an incentive but it's indirect.

It’s obvious why he would think it; it’s less obvious why he would say it.

Everything is obvious when you don't look up the underlying facts that lead to the conclusion, I guess.

Godot seems to gain popularity. Maybe it has a chance to become the choice for indies.

I've been using Unity happily for 7+ years at this point, willfully ignoring all other engines because Unity is easy to use and has native C# support.

This merger has spurred me to try other engines. I keep hearing good things about Godot. That'll likely be the first one I try.

Godot has a big 4.0 release coming up, currently on alpha 11: https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-0-alpha...

Breaking changes expected still but should end with the beta, so if you're looking to noodle around with it they're probably close enough for you to skip 3.5 and start learning on 4.

Thanks for the heads up! Adding this to my learning bookmarks.

I've used Godot back when I was developing VR games. I've started out with Unity, and then switched to Godot, and never looked back. Godot makes developing games so much easier and more fun, and it's open source.

What's the current portability proposition of Godot? Unity and UE4 allow indies to cross-platform relatively easily.

Fully cross-platform for the usual suspects on desktop, mobile and web.

If you want to publish on consoles you need to pay someone who ported the engine to the console you want to target (or port the engine yourself). The code can't be open source because of licensing issues.

From: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co...

Except that developers do not take advantage of that, and here I am reversing UE Blueprint bytecode to make games working on Wine.

ori runs on unity? Why don't we have a linux native build?

The vast majority of Unity/Unreal games don't have native Linux builds despite the engines ostensibly having native Linux support. Developers don't see it as worth the QA/support hassle, especially now that they can do nothing and still get Linux customers thanks to Proton.

Valve are even pushing developers towards Proton by default because they'd rather have a well maintained Windows build running in a well maintained API wrapper, than a half-baked native Linux port that never gets updated, which is often what ended up happening during their earlier Linux-native push. I believe some games that did get Linux ports are now flagged by Steam to ignore that version and run the Windows version in Proton by default, because it provides a better experience than the port.

I seriously could not care less about proton, it is basically a gigantic and massive money sink hole and literaly disgusting software, actualy quite microsoft grade.

To make things even worse, proton is said to include a significant amount of software components directly copied from windows.

What actually worries me, is the devs from gcc and the glibc perfectly ignoring the fact that there has been games on "linux" for the last decade. The glibc devs have literaly a frenzy of GNU symbol versioning, breaking game binaries built on a recent glibc that on distro with a glibc no older that 1 year and half for no good reasons. Not to mention you still cannot properly libdl the libc itself, namely do a clean ELF dynamic load of it (maybe not true anymore, have to check). Unfortunately, many game devs have the c++ tantrum and the static libstdc++ from gcc does not "libdl" properly what it needs from the glibc/posix libs, and something tells me not to hold my breath at gcc devs fixing that.

So, I guess, I'll keep playing "linux" native games until windoz... I meant they force proton upon everybody for good, or until the glibc and gcc devs managed to make it near impossible to make reasonably robust in time and compatible across "linux" distros game binaries.

Actually, I got myself a simple C compiler and built a lean win64 with vulkan support from wine, useless, no windows game binaries are that clean, except maybe the ones from ID software.

at the microsoft game hackathon thing in 2019 at their HQ in NYC, godot was pretty common choice. I think i saw it more than unreal actually (anecdotally, I don't know the actual aggregate). seems to be gaining popularity.

It's very easy to get into, and very light weight so I'm not surprised. I'm not sure how well it'd scale into a large team or for a commercial project, but it's gaining heaps of steam.

Unusual!

He's been there for 10 years, made $1b, could have retired before he started ... and it's unusual that those SO POINTEDLY cruel words are being used by him, based upon my 6 years of experience listening to / occasionally talking with him while I was at Unity.

It appears to be unkind, maniacal, transactional thinking in my perspective. It deserves clarification. Without clarification the impact is kind of an evil one: From a people sense, it divides people up, chides them if they are non-binary about monetization.

Pivoting to talking about himself in the next breath smells bad to me too, like a slightly muffled narcissism that excuses self-misbehavior.

And Marc Whitten cleans up / enables just after, which is common to see around narcissists: "To double down on John’s point, Unity has democratised creation [...]"

So to avoid the pathological dead-end of being considered a narcissist, he ought to restate this.

I am puzzled. I wildly guess he could be creating an "out" as CEO for himself. IDK what this is.

What would have been better messaging here? I'm not a C-level / executive and don't have a clue.

It's an important life lesson for anyone to learn that money is not success. An artist who makes enough to live but doesn't produce works of art specifically to make money is a success. They have many things to teach you about your craft, though true you would be a fool to ask them how to get rich.

Money has diminishing returns on "success" if you define it in literally any other way than "accumulation of money" which only a narcissistic child would.

Yep.

I mean, there's absolutely a market for the stuff, but it should NOT be our goal to make every game the same cookie cutter formula for "how to maximize money".

In fact, I think there's a bigger problem at hand here.

It's something about how people want to find a formula for X, so they essentially don't have to be creative and think about how to make something interesting and new.

I don't know what it is exactly, but I've been trying to pin it down for a while now.

he used to be pretty high up in EA. He also worked at a PE firm that especialized in media, although I think better of PE firms than most people. Point being is that I am not surprised at his revenue driven perspective.

He's the Larry Ellison of games.

Less a functioning human and more like a mid-sized neural net trained only on making game company short-term stock evaluations increase.

He's the game dev equivalent of Nick Bostrom's paperclip maximizer thought experiment.

As an aside, Universal Paperclips is the best clicker game I've played and has zero monetization.

https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/

He was president and COO from 1997 to 2004 and CEO from 2007-2013.

Well, that and the fact that their rendering engine isn't really competitive with Epic, who do get it ....

I think it does do him favors.

He isn't saying stuff them full of microtransactions and addictive behaviors.

Idealism can just as easily be not paying attention to any form of making money, which you know full well that lots of developers do, especially passionate game developers.

Have you ever tried to help someone make a game? Have you ever tried the finance side with them? When that CEO says some of them are fucking idiots he is absolutely right.

> He isn't saying stuff them full of microtransactions and addictive behaviors.

I mean, he is talking about the importance of tuning "compulsion loops", whatever those are supposed to be.

Sounds to me, he isn't advocating addictive behaviours because he's already taking that point for granted.

That's just sticking your head in the sand and pretending that you can't see all of the indie devs that are wholeheartedly using microtransactions and injecting ads into their games. You can opine about how Unity should be a pure game engine for pure-hearted indie devs who make games out of passion, not filthy lucre. But that doesn't match reality, I'm afraid.

I wouldn't call these business-first, ethics-be-damned people "indies". Not because no true Scotsman, but because of how they self-identify, which from my experience tends to be temporarily embarassed CEO fatcats.

I mean, like it or not, it kinda sounds like this is the guy who should be in charge of Unity. Strong leaders are willing to tell people things they don't want to hear. Weak leaders regurgitate PR and marketing softball garbage and have no vision. To him, with all the data and knowledge he has, it's probably night and day obvious the difference in sustainability between studios that incorporate a recurring revenue model and those that don't. I don't think he's saying "no game should ever not have micro-transactions". I think he's saying "in this day an age, if you're serious about building a sustainable studio, growing to the type of success fledgling studios imagine, and leveraging the Unit platform to help you do it, you're gonna need some recurring revenue component somewhere in your portfolio and that's why we have invested in tools to make that easier for people".

Strong leaders are willing to tell people things they don't want to hear.

Right, we get it. But if they can't manage to do that without being condescending to their customers (and like this guy, generally sounding like a bit of an asshole) -- they shouldn't be in charge of anything.

We’re talking about gaming here and the fact someone said “fucking idiot.” You’ve just used asshole is your response, so collectively we should get off our high horses, and recognize that in the real world people swear constantly. It’s not even like this was laser focused at one specific person, in my opinion this title is more evil and misleading than what he said.

We haven't been talking about the mere fact of someone saying that -- but rather the context in which it was said, and to whom it was addressed.

These being very, very different things.

Easy to say, for sure.

It's also pretty easy to do, actually. The not being an asshole part, anyways.

Is the dude an asshole? I don't know anything about him other than this discussion here. I'm certain most people have said something to the effect of "those people are fucking clueless" in their lives. Does that make them assholes?

Does that make them assholes?

No -- in this guy's case it's the other things he's saying, and the broader context which brings him into that territory.

This guy gets it.

Fortunately and unfortunately (we likely won't see him be burned at the stake) he'll be out of the game soon. Throwing shade at the devs as well as pissing off the consumers, pure marketing GeNiUs

Key words are "earlier in the process".

If you are going to have monetization mechanisms, ignoring them during development and trying to bolt them on at the end is indeed idiotic.

Who should be in charge of Unity?

> "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!"

As someone who has worked at a start up that really took off, didn't truly think out monetization and prayed at some point the free users would be willing to play assuming we gave the right features and benefits, I would say you're incredibly naïve. So in retrospect, this isn't that poor of a take.

Yes, if you go freemium, you better have the mium part figured out. But this insult clearly also extend to anyone who simply sell their games.

He's right one should think about monetization earlier in the development process.

But it's a poor take because the kind of monetization he's talking about taps into an addicted person's dopamine pathway.

Most run of the mill SaaS work like utilities instead as far as monetization goes.

> As someone who has worked at a start up that really took off ... I would say you're incredibly naive

You don't really have the standing to preach here.

He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful. As a gamer I reject that and have been with my wallet for a while. There are hundreds of dev teams producing great stuff below the AAA level that only ask me to buy the game once not every day.

IMO it's not clear just from the immediate context in the article that he's actually advocating for MTX or ads.

If he is, then he deserves all the flak. If he's simply talking about having a market fit so your game sells at all, then IMO that's just talking about the viability of the game as a product - and in this case it's just about whether making the game makes financial sense, not whether you can juice the customer for more money.

He just executed a merge of his company with a company that produced know malware delivery platforms for installing scamware.

I think we can guess where his intentions lay

Having read the full context on the original article on pocketgamer.biz, he is, in fact, making the assertion in this post title -- that game creatives that aren't working with sales and publicity teams from the beginning to build in monetization are idiots.

Original article: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource...

Edit: I say this because I don't understand how it's not clear that he's driving for monetization in every game.

The confusion is over what is meant by 'monetisation' here.

Is is "making sure the game is at all commercially viable so I can afford to keep myself alive and well fed", or "making sure that every drop of money is juiced from the customer".

Without a clear statement that he meant the latter, I decided to give him some benefit of doubt unless I have additional context (I never heard of the guy before).

I think using the term “compulsion loop” when taking about monetization is a pretty clear sign that he means the latter.

Making a game that can pay for itself doesn’t really need to trick people into it. Look at stardew valley for instance, or factorio, or minecraft

But Minecraft has a really solid compulsion loop, it’s what makes it so easy to start playing and then realize it’s nightfall. You never have to wait for anything because there’s always something else to do, you get mild gentle pressure from the environment to do things like hunger, night, mobs that inject variety. Every step of building something is set up as a reward, and there’s tiers of progress that reward basically every action. Mining and drops is literally lootboxes.

You picked basically the most addictive game in existence that uses every trick in the book as your shining example. Minecraft just hides it well.

I’m straight up talking about the connotations of using the term “compulsion”. Last I heard these described by game developers they were referred to as “game loops” or “core loop” if they were referring to the main part of the game.

Using the term “compulsion” to describe it instead comes from a certain mindset that I believe is centered around making skimmer boxes

Sad panda, that Microsoft is doing their damnedest to shift Minecraft out of this category.

Just in case there is further confusion here he is talking about how cool it would be if you could charge per reload in shooter.

https://youtu.be/ZR6-u8OIJTE

"You are really not that price sensitive at that time"

That's just effing evil.

There are some real dark vids from GDC and the like talking about the psychology behind manipulating people into MTX and real money economies in games.

Having worked under Ricitiello at EA, I am fairly confident his brain is not capable of distinguishing these concepts. I don't think he even understands the concept of "enough money".

>Is is "making sure the game is at all commercially viable so I can afford to keep myself alive and well fed", or "making sure that every drop of money is juiced from the customer".

yes, because teams typically undertake complex, expensive, and difficult projects for charity with no intention of being paid or making any financial gain

It looks like the intent is to offer tools for taking money from customers. This means that the extent and character of monetization would be up to developers. It might mean adds, it might mean in game purchase opportunities. It does not necessarily mean a choice between two extremes.

> He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful.

Come on, that's clearly not what he's saying in that quote. I don't like microtransactions either, but it makes your position weaker to get hyperbolic.

He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. To me this seems so obviously true that it's almost a product design axiom, let alone a priority for businesses. The question is how it should be done, and how well it will be done, which he says nothing about in that quote.

To me, "monetization" means everything except for just selling your product for an upfront sticker price. When it comes to games, that means subscriptions, ads or microtransactions. Arguably, the latter two aren't inherently scummy, but I find it very distasteful when a game's design is fundamentally changed to push them.

This is the reason I completely avoid F2P games to begin with. I can't deny it's financially very lucrative though.

I think the confusion is in the art vs business part of the conversation. Some people are not making games for business purposes, they are 100% focused on the creative pursuit. Does that make them stupid? Of course not, they're competent adults who made their decision not to prioritize money over the experience of the game. I think it's pretty clear that's who he's talking about as well, with the "pure, brilliant.." comment.

> He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist.

What's wrong about monetizing your game by, I don't know, selling copies of it?

That only gets you some of the customers’ money, not all of their money.

> I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that.

Few people have driven as many once-successful studios into the ground as Riccitello.

> ”And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.”

There is this desire for “authenticity” in the current zeitgeist. You see it everywhere, but mostly in how the crowds love people like Trump and Elon Musk.

I think this is an understandable reaction from being lied a lot by polite PR-trained people. Politicians and businesspeople mostly.

But I think there are two very relevant types of bias that people who praises this apparent authenticity:

1 - Thinking people who use an aggressive, unapologetic tone do not lie. They do lie. I see no evidence that they lie less than “polite” people. The thing is that the mainstream is smaller and much much less dominant than it was decades ago. So you can get away offending a lot of people, because there will still be a lot of people left that will adore you. So you can use unapologetic tone that offend a group of people. It pays to offend a group, as long it is not your group. It gives you credit to lie to your group without getting caught.

2 - Thinking polite people are always lying. The other side of the coin. We see so many PR-trained people lying emulating polite people that we start to equal politeness to insincerity. But a lot of people are genuinely polite, considerate and kind. They tell the truth and try not to offend anyone.

These biases, equaling offensive tone to authenticity is, I believe, a misleading and dangerous way to see the world. You use a flawed heuristic that leads you to believe in liers while bragging you are avoiding liers.

I think there is another angle to it beyond Truth vs lying.

There is also content and clarity. A lot of generic PR speak is devoid of actual content, it doesn't mean anything.

In this example, he is making a clear claim, like it or not. There is no ambiguity or double speak.

I think a lot of people are willing to tolerate disagreement and even lying if it is done in simple language opposed to evasion.

If you disagree, you know it. If they are lying, it is also clear because their statements aren't stuffed full of weasel words.

I find that sort of ironic because Unity's very own press release, in which they announced this merger was stuffed with some of the most vapid and nonsensical PR bullshit phrases I have ever seen.

As in, they couldn't even get out a straight line about what ironSource's actual product is.

What exactly is Ironic?

To be clear, I was making a comment and speculating on the publics attraction to blunt language.

It seems like you are agreeing with me - you are sick of vapid and nonsensical PR bullshit.

I don't think anyone is in favor of the PR bullshit, except the people who hide behind it.

Wouldn't you prefer something more direct?

I guess so. My point was that neither Unity nor John Riccitiello can take credit for being particular direct in this whole affair - they produced the exact same vapid PR phrases just one submission earlier.

Also, what another poster said still applies: "blunt" language may appear to be more honest, but it really isn't. You can lie or misrepresent while being blunt just as well as with twisted PR phrases.

E.g., maybe it's John's deep belief that game devs should build their games around monetization from the start and so he made the merger to empower his users to do that - or maybe, he made the merger because it was a lucrative business decision for Unity and his "blunt advice" is just him trying to sell that move to his userbase.

I was making a comment more about the general reaction to Blunt discussion. not the company or the individual. That said companies and obviously speak more bluntly or less and are not consistent

Very nice thinking regarding ultra popular folks like Musk.

However, IMO it doesnt hold truth for others which risk rage and clearing from insulted. Insulting people is always risky buisiness but if you want to show that you give a shit that shouldnt stop you.

I pesonally dont like to work with polite people very much because I know they always euphemize the truth. Some things are so shitty that if you frame it in polite way you simply lie.

Those are very fair points, and I agree.

For me personally, authenticity is more about choosing to speak vs. laying low on certain topics.

Sure you can still lie when you speak to it, but at least you're being truthful on your desire to express.

You can lie..but at least you're being truthful?!?!

Care to enlighten me on how to achieve this?

It's more about reacting to being called a liar, I think. React with evasions or moving goalposts, and people will think you're a slimeball trying to fool them, even if you're not. Double down and stick to your guns, and people will respect you, even if they think you're an idiot, a liar, or batshit insane.

Very well put, Sir!!

Sorry to see the new generation falling for these con-artists.

My humble advice as a nobody is look at things objectively and understand that words have unintended consequences so make a conscious effort to not insult others.

Hopefully I'm not putting words into their mouth, but the implication here is that those people are idiots because they're not making as much money as they could be by using the techniques he believes in. The second implication is that they are doing this unknowingly. That's a pretty naive outlook. Some people are either not in it for money, or don't care about the money more than they care about the integrity of their product and experience of their customers.

I’ll be as blunt as he is.

With the full context … he still sounds like an asshole.

Admittedly an “authentic” asshole I genuinely believe that’s how he feels, but he strikes me as a corporate suit wearing asshole … a real Bobby Kotic (I think his name deserves to be a pejorative for assholes in the gaming industry)

He can talk nice about it, but he’s saying anyone who isn’t focused on the money is and idiot, the stupid thing about that is that he clearly thinks “pay once” is for fucking idios and just let the mask slip to show this disdain for customers that want quality games that aren’t trying to productise the players. He’s saying if you don’t want to be sold, avoid anything built with Unity. Which is to bring it full circle… fucking stupid of him.

Why should Ferrari move on to something other than clay and carving knives? I really can't see a render on a computer screen of any size giving you the same visceral understanding of how a car looks walking up to it and moving around it, which is absolutely critical for a premium product like that. Maybe a VR rig might be useful in prototyping, I don't know.

That comment makes him look even more like a short-sighted asshat.

It does, or ignorant at the least. All the auto manufacturers use clay, not just for Italian sportscars.

Automotive technical surfacing in CAD is stupid hard, and is a waste of time for the design staff. The clay models are easier to work with in every sense - easier to change, easier to refine, easier to show and discuss, etc. Designers can apply reflective film to the clay which shows reflections much as the finished product would, and can even be painted. The final surfaces are reverse-engineered from scans taken from those clay models.

.. and it loses any Unity Ferrari business.

Is there positivity somewhere in this kind of talk, like will it somehow win Unity more business? I am not seeing it.

> It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand.

The thing about a decent monetization model is that is _has_ to be thought about and structured from the very beginning.

If you are going to have a live team creating content for a game over the long term, then the game has to make money over the long term as well. If you try to hamfist that monetization model at the end, it looks like a hamfisted monetization scheme that players are _very_ attuned to.

Bad monetization design is like bad game design, it makes the game worse. Good monetization design can allow you to support your game for _decades_.

League of Legends would have died years ago if not for a monetization model that worked over the long term.

Oh please, defending predatory, manipulative behavior and calling others fools for not indulging in such morally corrupt actions? There are "baked in monetization" practices that went so out of hand, that have become illegal in several democratic, and free countries. Let's just think about that for a second.

I'm ashamed to even have to reply to this.

These "brave", utterly perverse statements, given out by these decadent businesspersons, shouldn't be met by anything other than criticism, and disbelief.

He's totally calling out for developers to embrace these ill practices. It's fucking disgusting, manipulative behavior.

> And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.

I think a lot more CEO talk frankly than we give credit for. The difference would be that many of them are polite and considerate, and their baseline isn’t abrasive language. NPR had an interview of toy maker about Prime day, and it was pretty frank and natural, with pretty emotional topics, without calling anyone fucking idiots.

I think he says "the biggest fucking idiots" in the way some of us say, "aren't thinking of all the angles".

If folks are getting wrapped up in the insult, they're not reading his tone correctly. He says it lovingly, and even if you disagree with that kind of tone, it's disingenuous to say he's literally calling these people "fucking idiots".

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