Senior Vice President Product & Technology of Grow, Unity Software
Episode 307: Felix Reiseberg on Unity
About Felix The
Felix Herbst, Senior Vice President Product & Technology of Grow at Unity Software, has spoken publicly about Unity's package management system. In a September 2023 talk, he discussed the evolution of Unity packages, describing how his team at Needle moved from confusion about the system to building entire projects around it. He noted that his company operates its own package registries, with about 23 packages on the Needle registry and 40 on the Prefrontal Cortex registry, compared to over 250 public packages on Unity's registry. Herbst also described a project called Mirror that monitors Unity's package registry metadata to mirror new versions to GitHub for easier comparison and tracking of changes. In a 2018 interview, Herbst discussed his experience developing the game "Awesome Zombie Sniper" for the Windows 8 Store. He stated that his total investment in building the game was below $400, with a return of about $2,000 per month from advertising banners. He expressed the opinion that games should be made available for free and monetized through non-intrusive advertising. Herbst also noted that Microsoft was paying for Unity's license for Windows Phone and Windows Store platforms at that time, making it free for developers targeting those platforms.
Transcript (51 segments)
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Host0:32
My guest today is Felix Riza Berg. Feel excited. Hey, how are you? Say your name correctly. Yeah, absolutely, that is actually a very rare feat. Not many people are doing that. But you're German, right?
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Felix The0:44
I am, born and raised.
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Host0:46
And where do you live?
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Felix The0:46
San Francisco. I moved to San Francisco. The weather, 70, is way better over there.
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Host0:52
And I happen to know you have an awesome job because it's similar to the job that I have, and my job is awesome.
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Felix The0:56
Exactly. So I'm a Microsoft Azure developer evangelist in my day-to-day job. I always used to say that I help young companies to not kill themselves while trying to put something in those.
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Host1:08
Speaking of killing them, I saw you have a very popular game in the Windows 8 Store, yeah, called Awesome Zombie Sniper.
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Felix The1:20
Exactly. I can only urge everyone to download it. It's a fun project because at Microsoft we have this thing where we're supposed to keep learning, right? So every time we try something new, about half a year ago my manager decided that I should really get into game development. And I quite frankly didn't really know how to do that. I'm a web developer.
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Host1:45
So you'd never built games before?
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Felix The1:46
No. Now I have.
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Host1:48
Were you a gamer? Do you play games?
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Felix The1:49
I do play games occasionally. Back in the day with Half-Life 1, which I think came out in 1995.
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Host1:57
That's one of the strategy games, right?
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Felix The1:59
No, no. That was one of the first first-person shooters that had a major story and also essentially founded Valve, which is currently in Seattle, right on the road. Steam, Counter-Strike.
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Host2:16
Well, anyway, gamers living in my house.
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Felix The2:19
Well, I used to build some levels for that game when I was a kid, right? But ever since then, I was mostly doing things that actually my mind generated easier money, which was website development, IT admin stuff.
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Host2:35
So let's talk about the process of building a game. What tool did you use?
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Felix The2:38
Unity3D, which is in my opinion currently not only the best game engine I checked a couple of them out, but also the most popular one, which is what made the vote easy. There are a couple of major companies out there that give out amazing water conferences. Microsoft Studios is one of them. Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, has apparently ditched their own engine in favor of Unity, or they're going to rewrite. I think World of Warcraft is pretty much done to this point, but the next title is going to be written in Unity, the next bit of intellectual property. And then you have all the big names: Rovio with Angry Birds, Electronic Arts with Call of Duty and all those too. Whenever it runs on multiple platforms and it's not really the big game that is supposed to run on console, but more the casual game that is supposed to run on many platforms, it's probably Unity these days.
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Host3:36
Interesting. You said Angry Birds and then Electronic Arts. Angry Birds is very different than the games I've seen in Electronic Arts, which I think of the sports games and real 3D and first-person perspective.
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Felix The3:49
That's absolutely right. So with all those companies, it seems to me a development that is either slow, but it's certainly going into the direction of Unity. The original Angry Birds was apparently not made in Unity, but all the consecutive titles, there's apparently a title called Angry Birds: Bad Piggies, which I personally never played, it's the follow-up, and that one is built in Unity. Bottom line is, people started using Unity for all kinds of different reasons, right? Not only because it's a 3D engine, you can also do 2D. Pretty much as long as you can think about a game, you can probably build it in Unity. And the amazing thing about it is you can use C#, you can use open source stuff. It's very straightforward and runs on every single platform. Most importantly, Unity is so inexpensive, right? There's a free version that allows you to publish completely free. And even if you do want to go with the professional AAA title version, that is still, at this rate, it's currently $75 a month or $1,500 for the full license. Whereas other engines, for instance the Unreal Engine, I think if you make more than $50k in revenue, they demand a cut that is somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. I forgot the exact terms.
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Host5:11
So they give the software away free, they just want a piece of your business.
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Felix The5:14
Yes, a substantial one, right? And they take the pre-app store cut. So it's Unity by far cheaper than many of the other engines out there.
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Host5:25
Talking about the experience of developing with Unity, you said you can code with it.
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Felix The5:27
Yes, it's basically File New and then start typing C#.
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Host5:33
No drag and drop?
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Felix The5:35
Not exactly. You kind of have to do both. So basically, if you think about game development, it works a bit different than the event-driven development we all know, right? Usually you go on to putting a button somewhere, putting an event handler on it, and then we do whatever logic we might want to do. Unity is more putting you in the position of a movie director, because they have scenes, they have cameras, they have light sources, they have objects. What you do is you set up your scene in a very much drag and drop environment. It's three-dimensional. You set up your scene and you literally have camera objects that represent what the player sees, your perspective of the player. You have light sources, and what you do is you attach scripting to whatever agent you want to attach the script to. So let's take a camera, right? Let's say you want to move the camera. What you do is you attach the script to the camera, and then you open up the code window, and then you don't necessarily write an event on that. What you do is write a function that is being run every single frame inside a game.
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Host6:35
And that function can be written in C# or another language?
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Felix The6:38
Exactly. So it is Mono. Mono is essentially at this point an open source implementation of .NET, so you can find systems or collections and many other things that you're used to from the classic .NET.
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Host6:53
And it runs on multiple platforms as well?
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Felix The6:55
It does. The beautiful part is that the compiler runs on all kinds of platforms. Unity itself runs on literally anywhere: iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Blackberry, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 3, Wii U.
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Host7:12
So we're Microsoft guys, so what's the process of getting it out to Windows 8? Does it just build your game and then it runs, or is there a compile step after that?
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Felix The7:18
There is another compile step after that, which is pretty amazing. The most important part is that it's free, I guess. That's pretty cool because for some of those platforms, if you do want to go with a professional license, this is what makes the licensing a bit difficult. If you want to go with a professional license, you have to pay an extra amount for each platform that you're targeting. For instance, $1,500 for iOS, another $1,500 for Android. In the case of Windows, Windows Phone and Windows Store, Microsoft is paying for that license, so it's completely free to the community, which is pretty amazing. But essentially what you do is once you hit Build inside Unity, it gives you a ready-made Visual Studio project. You open it up in Visual Studio and then you just need to hit compile. You can completely automate the process.
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Host8:18
So you create a .sln file, a C# project?
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Felix The8:23
C# classes, or C#. You can also do C++ if you want to, but it's usually C#. And in the case of Windows 8, for Windows Phone it's essentially the same, with the exception that you can also compile the whole executable for you, leaving out that one mouse click you need for Windows 8. But it's essentially two.
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Host8:47
Interesting. There is one thing that is usually interesting to a lot of people, and that is the gap between Mono and whatever we have now, WinRT, that is really difficult because they're surprising. That actually makes Windows Store and Windows Phone publication a bit more tricky than some of the other platforms.
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Felix The9:04
Because if you go with Windows, there are two things that happen. You compile once using Mono in Unity, and then you get basically your Unity executable, and then you have to compile that again. Now if you have things inside Mono like a hash table, those have been deprecated in the past by Microsoft for various reasons. For instance, a hash table is not very performant. Very valid reasons to remove those types. However, there is still in the source code that's only if you've coded that right. That is only if you use that. Some people, it's available inside Unity and some people use it. If you know you're going to use Windows 8, you probably should not be using deprecated functionality.
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Host9:44
Exactly. If you are using Windows 8, you should make sure that whatever you use is supported by WinRT. But that's really the only thing people have to think about. Now I saw your game and it looks real. It's a beautiful game.
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Felix The9:57
Thank you very much.
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Host9:59
Are you an artist?
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Felix The10:00
No, no. I bought every single thing in the game. I bought the zombies, I bought the rocks and the trees. I'm a developer myself. I do use Photoshop, I once built a 3D object myself, but usually I'm pretty bad at it. I'm a coder. The nice thing about Unity and the whole economy right now is that the whole internet seems to be set up to support people that want to build something and don't have a lot of money. The whole sharing economy is pretty amazing right now, and that also works on the prices that you find for objects. Unity itself has an Asset Store that kind of looks like an app store for anything you could potentially use to create a game. The prices there are amazing. In a demonstration I did a couple days ago, I showed a set of eleven beautiful characters that seemed to be coming out of an Indiana Jones movie: a professor, a World War I general, a beautiful lady adventurer, the typical characters. That set alone is $10 including animations, which is less than $1 per character. It's pretty amazing. In my case, my total investment was below $400, maybe even $300. I got the game engine for free and bought the characters, the zombies, the guns, the landscape objects.
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Host11:18
And your return?
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Felix The11:20
My return is about $2,000 a month.
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Host11:22
You're making that on your game?
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Felix The11:24
Yeah.
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Host11:25
How are you selling?
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Felix The11:26
The game is free. I very strongly believe that if you have a game, you should make it available for free. But there is an advertising banner that is being displayed sometimes when you have internet connection between loading scenes. So as soon as you load the game, while the game is loading in the background, it will also show you a banner while you just wait for your game. It doesn't get in the way of the game. For me, that is successful. I'm very honest about what the game is about. So if you download it and go into credits, I'm basically telling you the whole story: this is my moonlighting project, I'm not a professional, I'm alone. If you have any ideas for improvements, shoot me an email. People love that. People have the idea of me building my game for them to enjoy. The feedback from the community is so much, it's unbelievable. I try to bring that into new versions as good as I can. Some people are very creative and have amazing ideas for things that I wouldn't really know how to implement properly without requiring a ton of performance on the computer side. Getting feedback is probably one of the most fun parts about it. Getting those nice emails from people telling you how much they enjoyed the game, which things they enjoyed the most, where they found errors, where the bugs are. It's extremely nice to have a community built around something you built.
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Host12:47
How do people get started then? If somebody's watching this show and they say that sounds awesome.
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Felix The12:51
I would recommend just coming to Unity's home page. Just type Unity into any given search engine, you can find Bing for instance. And then on the website of Unity3D.com, you will find the download button. You literally click that, download Unity. As soon as you open up Unity, it will offer you that you can run the whole thing for free, whether or not you want to test the professional version for 30 days. But whatever you go with, you can essentially build right away. On the same website, there's also a Learn button. As soon as you hit that, you can very easily follow one of the tutorials, even a very elaborate one. So you can build whole games, and those are really good quick starts. I assume that many people who follow your podcast probably already do have some affinity with technology, they certainly have internet access. Unity is extremely open. We were talking about C#, but you can also code in UnityScript, which is essentially JavaScript. It's Boo, which no one does, but if you feel so inclined to code in Boo, that is also open and available to you. Unity will run on a PC, it will run on a Mac, it will run on pretty much anything that has a flickering screen.
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Host14:00
One on one presence?
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Felix The14:02
Yes, I do. FelixRieserBerg.com. Oh wait, wait, more important: SniperZombies.com. I couldn't believe that domain was still free. But Felix, thank you so much.
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Host14:35
If you enjoy technology in any way and you once enjoyed a game in your life, which I'm pretty sure you have, I really urge you to go head down on Unity. I don't know anything that builds games. There are many frameworks out there, and just go ahead and try it out and build something. Your friends are going to enjoy it, everyone else is going to enjoy it, and more importantly, you are going to enjoy building a game so much.