Co-founder, Unity Software
Unite 2013 -- interview with Nicholas Francis, co-founder of Unity and framebunker
Nicholas Francis co-founded Unity and was CCO at the company for many years. He left Unity in 2012 to start up his own games studio, framebunker. With characteristic enthusiasm, he talks about getting back to his passion for graphics programming and the refreshing experience of using Unity to make a game.
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About Nicholas Francis
Nicholas Francis, co-founder of Unity and later of the indie game studio framebunker, spoke at Unite 2013 about his return to hands-on game development. He described the experience of using Unity as a developer rather than a creator, stating that working with the tool gave him a new appreciation for it. Francis noted that he could "mix and match" between using Unity's built-in components, assets from the Asset Store, and custom code, allowing him to focus on graphics programming, which he described as his primary interest. Francis also shared advice on game development and company building. He argued that "if the game isn't actually fun, then it's not going to sell," and recommended that developers focus on both their greatest strengths and their greatest weaknesses, saying that one should "focus on what you do best because that's what drives you forward" while also "fixing what you're worst at because that's the thing that's crippling you."
Transcript (7 segments)
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Nicholas Francis0:10
Founders of Frame Bank, a small Indian game studio. Before that, I was one of the founders of Unity. So I'm giving a talk on advanced shader programming. We found that on tablets today, you can actually pull off some quite amazing stuff, as long as you're willing to sort of rework some bits of Unity. So I'm giving some talks about some of the tricks we're using and other ways of making sure that your game on a tablet actually looks as good as it can.
It's funny because I'm one of the people who have actually worked both on Unity and working with Unity. It occurred to me the other day that working with Unity, the users actually have the far better deal of these two groups. When you're developing it, you see all the errors you always... something, and I was amazed at just what an awesome tool we built. I have known for many years we built a really good tool, but to actually sit down and use it was absolutely fascinating. It was like I could beat it about and smash it and twist and bend it, and it didn't break. It's kind of fun because having worked on developing it, I always knew where all the breakage was. So I'm absolutely loving being a Unity user, having so much fun with it, and finding this incredible productivity. It's funny because that's like the drug I've been peddling, but now suddenly found out, 'Oh God, this is such an awesome drug.'
So developing with Unity... then you say, 'This other area is going to be this key focus area for our development,' so I would sort of sidestep Unity in this focus and just re-architect my own system, and just ignore what Unity is providing, and then you sort of get the customization you need to make your game stand out in that area. And then you have sort of the in-between: we have the Asset Store. Somebody else might also have some place where they say, 'We need for our game, for Unity to be able to do this, so we're going to do it and do it right,' and then you get the asset. So you have these three paths, and for each technical problem you need to pick: do you want to go the easy, proven route; do you want to sort of find something on the Asset Store; or is it something where we think this is important enough to our game that it's worth spending a couple of days actually implementing ourselves?
It's interesting where I can deliver the most value and where I can sort of really have fun. I'm a graphics programmer originally, and that's where I put a lot of my focus. So we're not using a lot of Unity graphics functionality because we're just rolling our own there, but for all the other stuff, we're just taking what's straight out of the box and just using that because it works just fine. You can skip a lot of the pain and then just focus and immediately dive into the meat of what you want to do. I think that's a very fascinating way of working.
If you want to get started as a game developer, I think there are a few pieces of advice. One of them is: don't try to make a game. I've seen a lot of people want to start out in game development, and they have five great ideas, and they try to shovel them into one game.
You want to explore this dynamic and then sort of dive into that, take that all the way, and then ignore some of the other distractions. Then I think the next thing is that there's nothing that will sell like a fun game. You can have great graphics, great story, great sound. If the game isn't actually fun, then it's not going to sell. There's a story from one of the Rovio founders: before they did Angry Birds, they had been making games for, I think, 18 years, and they all bombed. But then they had this small prototype, and they showed it to their mom, and they couldn't get the device back from the mom. That's when they knew this is going to be our hit. So you actually have to have the game be fun. If the game is not fun, it's not...
That particular thing is probably the thing that is going to make sure your game is a success. The other thing you need to focus on is the thing you do worst, because that's the thing that's crippling you. Always try to improve what you're best at, and fix what you're very worst at. After a while, there'll be something else you're worst at, and then you sort that out. So basically, focus on what drives you forward, and focus on not getting too crippled by your greatest weakness. The rest will sort of take care of itself.