Coming Together In Unity

Imagine this, you wake up one morning wanting to work on a game but you can’t because a lot of software in that industry costs a lot of money. You pool resources, you get backing, and you even hire a design team. You are all ready to begin work but you still haven’t paid for a game engine to start building. Hello, my name is Tyler Roop, and I am here to share with you some of the benefits of being an indie designer and using the tool known as Unity. I personally have been using Unity over the past 5 months and have loved it ever since I tried it.

Unity 5 is a free-game development engine that allows anyone to make and design games. It allows for a number of cool features to be introduced, such as global illumination and state of the art animations. It also ships with a full audio mixer.

However, the real draw to Unity is the platforms it allows designers to make games on. Unity 5 features “industry-leading multi-platform support with smooth deployment to all of the platforms that can bring you more players and success” (Unity3D, 2016). This means as an indie developer you are able to design games for a larger audience, which in turn, brings you more money.

One really big draw I have to Unity is that it is free. Being free means that you can focus on making your game without worrying about the cost of running the engine or paying for the necessary software. There is a professional version that costs money, but you don’t have to download it to get all the platforms to work on. Using Unity means that, if you are a student like me, you can begin working on games now so that you have experience later on when you want to get into top companies like Blizzard or Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft has recently decided to include Unity developers into their ID@Xbox initiative. Developers who are involved with the initiative will receive a Unity license for free.

Microsoft is providing a middle-ware add on for Xbox One that gives indie developers advantages. International Business suggests that, “The advantage here would be that the Unity add-on program will support all the elements related to Xbox One, even Kinect and SmartGlass, and will even be made available for the Windows and Windows Phone” (International, 2013).

Being able to make a game for multiple platforms is one of the biggest draws to Unity, and Microsoft is looking to continue to help smaller companies achieve their goals. In fact, a number of Unity games are already on or are heading to Xbox One soon. These games include Superhot, Cuphead, and Ori and the Blind Forest. Still don’t believe me that Unity is a way to expand your audience and write for multiple platforms? Then take a look at some of the top games that have been released using the Unity engine: https://unity3d.com/showcase/gallery.

Because Unity is so easy to use and it’s free, the number of indie developers using it will continue to increase as we go deeper into a new generation of designers. The tides are changing and if you want to board the boat to success in the industry as a game designer or student, then download Unity today and give it a shot.

I personally will continue to use it to boost my abilities and my experience using a tool that is prevalent in the industry today. Unity has my vote, now it is time to cast yours. If you are interested in downloading the free version of Unity, click on this link: https://unity3d.com/get-unity.

References:

International Business, T. (2013, November 6). Xbox One: Cloud Updates Could

Disrupt Gaming; New 'Halo 5' Leaks Appear; Unity for Xbox One Free for ID@Xbox. International Business Times.

Multiplatform. (2016). Industry Leading Platforms [Screen Capture]. Retrieved from: https://unity3d.com/5

Real Time. (2016). Real-time Global Illumination [Screen Capture]. Retrieved from: https://unity3d.com/5

Unity3D, (2016). Unity 5 – Multiplatform. Retrieved From: https://unity3d.com/5