Unity surveyed over 1,400 multiplayer gamers in the US, UK, Japan, and Korea to find out what multiplayer gamers want from their experiences so you can get a head start on planning your next project.Developing multiplayer games can require more up-front work to get running – like specialized expertise, ongoing service, and up-front capital and maintenance costs.In that sense, multiplayer game development is more of an investment than single player game creation – so you need to design the player experience right in order to find success.But what’s most important to multiplayer gamers? We surveyed players across the globe to find out.In each country (US, UK, Japan, Korea), we focused on two categories of multiplayer gamers: Casual and core.Casual gamers: Those who spend at least two hours gaming per week, of which at least 30 minutes is playing multiplayerCore gamers: Those who spend at least four hours playing multiplayer games in any combination of the following traditionally multiplayer genres: Shooter (battle royale, FPS, third person shooter), MOBA, MMO, racing, sports, or fightingWe collected responses from approximately 1,400 gamers, split about 50/50 between the core and casual groups. Here’s what we found.One thing we found is that demand for multiplayer games is massive, and people around the world are playing a lot of multiplayer titles without walled gardens. More than half the global population (52%) play games, and of those gamers, 77% play multiplayer games.Additionally, crossplay is a powerful tool that is helping fuel deeper engagement with multiplayer gaming – with those who spend the most time playing cross-play titles also being the ones spending the most time playing multiplayer games.Features that make playing with others easier are significant factors when gamers are choosing a new multiplayer title to invest their time in, and also impact enjoyment of games they’re actively playing.Players want to easily connect with their friends through shared gaming experiences. When choosing a new multiplayer game, the most important in-game feature is the ability to chat with friends.When it comes to how they like to chat, 52% of respondents prefer creating chat parties with menus inside of their games, while 25% most prefer using a separate device/software solution, and only 15% of respondents preferred using a separate device.This indicates that investing in a smart in-game player comms solution is a good move for your multiplayer titles.Also ranking highly in must-have features for a multiplayer game is a short wait to join a match, with 29% of gamers ranking this in their top three.Tip 💡 Invest in social features – like friends lists, parties, and in-game comms – for your multiplayer title to give reasons a player to choose your game and build a community within it.Most multiplayer gamers stay engaged with games post launch and will spend on content to keep their experiences fresh, with over half of multiplayer gamers (61%) reported having purchased some amount of multiplayer game DLC content in the last thirty days.When it comes to the breakdown between core and casual gamers, there are a few key differences in how they spend on extra content.Core gamers are almost twice as likely to spend 20 or more USD/GBP on DLC and casual gamers are slightly more likely to spend in the sub-20 USD/GBP band for their extra content.Tip 💡 Keep fresh content and experiences rolling into your game updates to increase the longevity of your game and keep your players coming back for more. They’re willing to pay if you’re willing to provide.Casual gamers aren’t relegated to specific genres like card and puzzle games. Aside from FPS, fighting, and sports – where more core gamers report having played a title within the last week – there’s a relatively even split of core and casual gamers enjoying games in every genre.In fact, on average, across all genres, there’s a less than 10 percentage point difference between core and casual gamers who have played a title within the genre in the last week.For example, 51% of core gamers played a role-playing game in the last week, versus 46% of casual gamers.As mentioned, FPS, fighting, and sports titles have the biggest difference in popularity with core and casual audiences, with a 23, 16, and 16 percent difference between the audiences respectively.Card games have the most even split of casual versus core gamers (43% vs 44%), with racing, simulation, puzzle, and RPGs tied for second place.Tip 💡 Don’t let your planned genre box you into thinking you’ll only reach a certain audience. Knowing that there are people out there for all kinds of games, across core and casual gamers, might just open up the opportunity for you to build your dream game for an audience you hadn’t yet considered.Dive deeper into the full findings of our 2022 multiplayer report by downloading the PDF.Starting on a new multiplayer game project? Get everything you need to create your game, connect your players, and empower communication from our Multiplayer suite of products.Unity is looking to equip studios of all sizes with both the knowledge and tools needed to deliver on these experiences for years to come. Get involved with us and the community by heading over to our Unity Gaming Services forum.

I recently developed a guide to Progressive Lightmapper troubleshooting in order to help developers get the most out of Baked Global Illumination (GI) in the Unity Editor. Here, I unpack five of the most common lightmapping problems and their solutions, supported by images and links to pages in the Unity Manual. For the full guide, visit the forums.If certain prerequisites are not met, the Progressive Lightmapper might fail to generate lighting in your scene. These conditions include, but are not limited to:No objects marked as GI ContributorsNo baked lights in the sceneShader issuesTo correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.Mark objects you want to lightmap as GI Contributors by following these steps:Select your GameObject.Navigate to the Mesh Renderer component.Unfold the Lighting header.Check the Contribute to Global Illumination checkbox.Doing so will enable the Receive Global Illumination parameter underneath. It contains two options:Lightmaps: Meant for static lightmapped objects – GameObject will receive and contribute GI to lightmaps.Light Probes: Meant for small props and objects not fit for lightmapping – GameObject will receive GI from Light Probes and will contribute GI to the surrounding lightmaps.Only Mixed and Baked lights can contribute to Baked GI. Select lights in your scene, then set the Mode to either Mixed or Baked in the Light component. Other properties that are worth checking include:Color: Dark colors will have low or no GI contribution. Choose bright colors for lights and use the Intensity property to boost or dim them.Intensity: The higher the intensity, the brighter the light. Ensure that your lights are bright enough for meaningful GI contribution.Indirect Multiplier: This property controls the intensity of the indirect bounce. Make sure that it is not set to zero. Otherwise, the light will have no contribution to GI at all. Note that setting this value above one will make the lighting in your scene non-compliant to the physically based rendering (PBR) standard.Visit No Baked Global Illumination in the scene forum In the Lighting window (accessible via Window > Rendering > Lighting), make sure that the Lighting Settings Asset field is not left blank. If there is no asset assigned, click on the New Lighting Settings button. This will create and assign an asset, unlocking the properties in the window for editing.Once this is complete, verify that:You have ticked the Baked Global Illumination checkbox, which enables Baked GI computations. This checkbox will also expose the Lighting Mode drop-down list.The Max Bounces value is not set to zero. The higher this value, the more the light will bounce around the environment.The Indirect Intensity slider is not set to zero. Setting this slider to zero will diminish all indirect lighting in the scene.Custom shaders could be the reason why GI computation has failed. For debug purposes, use the built-in shaders that come with the Unity Editor. Those are:Standard Shader: Available in the Built-in Render PipelineLit Shader: Available in the Universal Render Pipeline (URP)Lit Shader: Available in the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP)If Unity generates lighting after switching to one of the shaders outlined above, the problem might be with the custom shaders. In this case, make sure that the surface shaders contain the LIGHTMAP_ON shader keyword.Check out the Meta Pass page for details on how to further customize the Baked GI output using shaders.Other potential fixesIf the above steps have not solved your problem, consider trying these potential fixes:Select a different lightmapping backend in the Lighting window. If lighting fails to bake when using the Progressive GPU, but succeeds when baking with the Progressive CPU, this might be the result of a hardware or driver problem.Update the GPU drivers. Please refer to the GPU manufacturer’s page for the correct drivers for your system. (For Linux machines, check the Linux driver setup section in this forum thread).Ensure that your GPU meets the minimum requirements. Please refer to this forum thread.Clear the GI Cache. To clear it, navigate to Preferences > GI Cache and click on the Clean Cache button. Keep in mind that this will delete all lighting data present in the scene, requiring you to regenerate lighting.Certain objects that appear unlit or out of place might indicate a problem with the scene setup, which often reproduces when dynamic objects have no Light Probes to sample the lighting from. Furthermore, any glossy metallic material in the scene might appear as black if no local Reflection Probes are present.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.Dynamic objects – or GI Contributors receiving GI from Light Probes – need Light Probes to sample indirect lighting data. If none are present, objects will fall back to sampling the Ambient Probe (i.e., the Light and Reflection Probe that is always present in the scene).To mitigate this, set up a Light Probe network in the scene, adding more probes in areas of high importance. Make sure that there are enough Light Probes to encompass all affected objects, and generate lighting again to see the effect.Reflective metallic objects might still render as black, even after placing a dense network of Light Probes. To shade such objects, you need to place a Reflection Probe that encompasses the affected object. Generate the lighting again or re-bake the probe in the Reflection Probe Component by clicking the Bake button.If you observe black areas in the reflections, try increasing the Bounces count. This will increase the number of bounces, thus creating reflections within reflections. You can access this property in Lighting > Environment > Environment Lighting.Visit Objects are missing lighting forumIf performing the previous steps still does not solve the issue, inspect the Mesh Renderer component of the affected object. Under the Probes section, make sure that the Light Probes and Reflection Properties are set to anything other than Off.Pure black materials will absorb all direct and indirect light. This is physically correct behavior. In real life, no naturally occurring material is completely black. For example, one of the darkest natural materials, coal, measures at “50, 50, 50” on an RGB luminosity scale.Adjust your material color values to follow the physically based shading standards. In the Built-in Render Pipeline, you can use the Validate Albedo Scene View Draw Mode to determine whether Albedo values are PBR-compliant. You can use the Rendering Debugger in URP and HDRP to do the same.If you are working with multiple scenes, check that the scene containing lighting is set as the Active Scene. By default, Unity sets the first loaded scene as the Active Scene, which might have a detrimental effect in the standalone player builds.There are two types of issues related to emissive material rendering:Emissive materials do not appear as “glowing,” which indicates a post-processing issue.Emissive materials are not contributing to Global Illumination, which indicates an issue with object or material setup.To correct either of these issues, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.To create the impression of a glowing material, enable Bloom in your post-processing stack of choice. Refer to Built-in RP, URP, or HDRP documentation for tips on how to do this.If you intend on using emissive objects for lightmapping, make sure that:You have marked the GameObject in question as a GI Contributor. Due to the self-illuminating nature of emissive objects, you can set their Receive Global Illumination property to Light Probes. This will save space in the lightmap atlas.The Global Illumination property is set to Baked in the Material Inspector. This property is available under the Emission input. Refer to Built-in RP, URP, or HDRP documentation for more details.In the Lighting window, make sure that the Indirect Intensity property is not set to zero. Setting it to zero will disable all indirect lighting, including baked contribution from baked emissive objects.Visit Emissive materials not rendering forumWhen baking in Non-directional mode, the Unity Editor will not create a separate texture to hold directionality information. This will result in objects looking flat after baking.It is worth noting that low frequency normal maps are hard to capture using directionality textures. Such textures will appear flat when generating lighting using fully baked lights.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.In the Lighting window, set the Directional Mode property to Directional. This mode will generate a secondary texture that will store dominant light direction. Normal maps will have a good representation of relief, but will lack specular response.Visit Flat normal maps ForumMixed lights provide real-time specular and normal response. The Progressive Lightmapper bakes indirect lighting into a lightmap. This combination ensures the highest quality material response when using baked lighting.If your project allows for it, switch the light Mode to Mixed in the Light component. Note that Mixed lights have the same performance cost as real-time lights. Depending on the Lighting Mode used, Mixed lights will cast real-time shadows but not baked soft shadows.Probe-lit GameObjects will often have a better material response than those lit by Baked lights. If your art direction allows for it, set their Receive Global Illumination property to Light Probes in the Mesh Renderer component. Note that you can also use Light Probe Proxy Volume (LPPV) to add a spatial gradient to probe-lit objects.One of the inherent limitations of Baked lights is that they do not provide real-time specular response to materials. This means that glossy materials will lack specular highlights after generating lighting.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.Unlike Baked lights, Mixed lights provide real-time direct specular response to materials. If specular highlights are important in your scene, switch the light Mode to Mixed in the Light component.Visit Missing specular response forumIt is possible to imitate specular response from lights by using emissive objects. To do so, follow these steps:Place a Reflection Probe in your scene.Right-click in the Hierarchy panel and select 3D Object > Sphere. Select the newly created object and set its Static Editor Flag to Reflection Probe Static.In the Project panel, create a new material by right-clicking and selecting Create > Material.Select the newly created material and enable the Emission checkbox. Set the Global Illumination property to None.Drag and drop the material onto the sphere to assign it.Place the sphere in the same position as your light.Generate lighting.After following the above steps, you should be able to see the emissive objects captured in the Reflection Probe cubemap. You can hide those objects after baking or set up a Culling Mask in the Camera component.For more tips on troubleshooting the Progressive Lightmapper, check out the full guide in the forums. If you’d like to discuss this article or share other solutions, feel free to connect with me there or here. Finally, be sure to watch for new technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.

This is the third blog in our Games Focus series, which highlights key product development initiatives for the year ahead and beyond. Here, we cover the status, upcoming release plans, and future vision for profiling and performance at Unity.My name is Marika. I’ve worked in the video game industry for nearly a decade, and I’m currently the senior technical product manager for profiling tools and performance optimization at Unity.When we think about performance at Unity, there are three main areas where we believe we can help:Insight: Empowering you to dig into your game’s performance, identify bottlenecks, and pinpoint areas that would benefit from optimization strategiesExperience: Ensuring that creating your projects feels seamless by raising the performance of the Unity Editor and runtimeInnovation: Guiding you in new programming techniques and paradigms that have performance in mind from the ground upToday’s post focuses on the first two areas, covering recent updates to our suite of profiling tools and how customer feedback is shaping our roadmap for 2023 and beyond. It ends with a recap on best practices for optimizing projects.We’ll dive into the third area, performance-focused programming techniques and workflows with a focus on DOTS-based projects, in an upcoming post.We like to think of the profiling features in Unity as detective tools that help you unravel the mysteries of why performance in your application is slow or glitchy, or why code is allocating excess memory. They help you understand what’s going on under the hood of the Unity game engine.Our goal is to raise the performance of Unity tools and runtime through profiling and optimization, helping you to deliver smooth performance for your players across a broad range of platforms and devices.Memory Profiler is designed to make it easier to keep track of memory usage and composition. I’m happy to share that the Memory Profiler 1.0.0 is now a verified package for the Unity 2022.2 beta release and above (find instructions for download here). Thank you to everyone who shared their invaluable feedback on how to create a better workflow for this important feature.Many of you contend with the challenge of working within the memory restrictions of each of your target platforms. The Memory Profiler helps solve this challenge by providing you with a clear overview of the memory impact of assets and objects in one view. It also shows you detailed contextual information on which objects and systems the memory relates to.You can dig deeper into the capture through breakdown views and compare memory snapshots to identify potential leaks and unnecessary allocations that negatively impact memory usage.Refining the existing profiling toolsetIn 2022.1, we added the Frame Timing Manager, which enables you to capture and access frame timing data across multiple frames. If performance is lagging, use this feature to assess frames and analyze why your application isn’t meeting performance targets. Learn more about this in our documentation.If you’re looking to monitor low-level GPU metrics in the Unity Profiler, you can use the new System Metrics Mali package, which we released in 2022.1 through a partnership with Arm. This package allows you to access low-level system or hardware metrics on mobile devices. If you’re curious to learn more about how to ensure your content runs smoothly on mobile devices powered by Arm CPUs and Mali GPUs, this 2021 blog can guide you.Performance optimizationThe profiling tools highlighted so far are a great start to helping you identify areas where performance can be improved. On my team, however, “performance optimization” applies not only to your games’ runtime performance on their target devices, but also to how your team works – your productivity. We’re aiming to provide you with faster iteration times, fewer interruptions, and greater efficiency in the Editor.In Unity 2021 LTS, importing your assets is three to four times faster, and opening imported projects up to 8.7% faster compared to Unity 2020 LTS.I’m excited to share some of the improvements that are available in the 2022 releases as well:Improved material reimport for the Universal Render Pipeline and High Definition Render PipelineEditor workflow improvements, including: Faster save time for large scenesReduced stall time in scene pickingImproved performance in the Scene view when there are many LOD GroupsAn optimized animation rigging packageBetter Hierarchy scrollingImproved save workflow for large PrefabsImproved iteration time when working inside the Editor thru optimizations on domain reloadsPlay mode improvements, including: Improved static batching performanceOptimized process for how Addressables finds resource directoriesPrewarming particle systemsAgain, your feedback has played a vital role in many of these improvements. Please continue sharing your feedback on our future roadmap here, or contact the team on the forums. We’re particularly interested in performance-related issues, which we’re capturing here.For over a decade, we’ve stayed focused on ensuring that you can achieve the best performance possible using our profiling tools, and we will continue refining the toolset. This development has taken many forms, including all of the functionality we’ve already mentioned here.Another area where we’ve worked to provide significant performance gains is the Data-Oriented Technology Stack, or DOTS. Two of the core features integral to the successful delivery of DOTS are the Burst compiler and C# Job System. These were leveraged in our own internal engine performance to great results, and they’re available for all today. Coming soon, we’ll deliver on the third critical feature, Entities, which will turbo boost project performance in areas like networking, physics, and more. This is such an important aspect to our commitment to game development that we will dedicate a standalone Games Focus article to DOTS in this series, coming soon.For now, let’s take a look at a few improvements planned for upcoming releases.We’re working to cut time spent starting the Editor, to improve start-up time and help you stay in flow. Today, when you connect a target device to the Editor, you might experience instability such as disconnection or an inability to recover. We’re working on making Editor connections to mobile platforms more reliable and performant in the 2023.1 release.Additionally, we want to make it more efficient for you to identify bottlenecks with the Profiler and to know what to do next once you’ve spotted them. Our goal is to quickly direct you to the areas of optimization that will yield the greatest performance gains.We’re also looking to add memory insights based on the device you’re building for, so you can get platform-specific performance gains. This is in the early stages, and we’re actively looking for your feedback on this new feature, which you can provide on our roadmap page.Expertise with Unity’s suite of profiling tools is one of the most useful skills you can add to your game development toolbox. That’s why we’re working on creating more advanced content about best practices to help you get the most out of our tools.Several of my teammates recently put together our most extensive guide to date about profiling in Unity, in partnership with expert engineers from the Unity Integrated Success team and experts.I also suggest you download these additional advanced e-books that offer extensive platform-specific optimization best practices:Optimize your mobile game performanceOptimize your console and PC game performanceAnother handy reference is this flowchart, which provides a recommended approach to identifying bottlenecks in your project.Finally, this Profiling and optimization reading list, created by our content and marketing teams, includes key blog posts that will help you understand profiling concepts and methods, from basic to advanced.My team is working hard to bring you the solutions you need for your most ambitious projects, and we’re always eager to understand how we can help you better.Stay tuned to updates in our public roadmap page. This is also the best place for you to share feedback directly with the product team.Watch the blog for our next Games Focus update, which will focus on what Unity is doing to help you target more platforms and form factors with your game content. And, as always, share your feedback with us on the forums.

The demand for extended reality (XR) talent is increasing rapidly, opening countless new doors for the next generation of metaverse creators. To adequately prepare tomorrow’s real-time 3D workforce, educators and schools need to be teaching these desirable skill sets to their students today. In pursuit of this goal, Unity Social Impact and Meta Immersive Learning have partnered to increase access to AR/VR hardware, high-quality educational content, and other resources that will help educators create or enhance innovative XR programs.The Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant is one of the core components of this partnership, providing over $1 million in awards to higher-education institutions leveraging real-time 3D and immersive technology to make advances in teaching and learning, XR creation, and workforce development.Grantees were selected based on their proposals’ attention to inclusion, impact, viability, and innovation. Special consideration was given to institutions and programs that cater to or design innovative educational content for underserved learners.Today, we’re thrilled to introduce the eight recipients of the Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant. A team of over 60 judges from Unity and Meta selected the winners from among 276 submissions.“Now, more than ever, we have a responsibility to equip young people with the skills necessary for future jobs – providing them with learning that translates to earning,” says Jessica Lindl, vice president of social impact at Unity. “I’m thrilled with the winners of the Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant and am confident that these institutions will continue to provide equitable access to education and workforce opportunities.”Read on to learn how these forward-thinking projects are increasing access to quality real-time 3D education.Arizona State University’s Center for Narrative and Emerging Media (NEM) in Los Angeles will open as a best-in-class teaching and research facility, focused on diversifying who can create and distribute narratives using emerging media technologies in the areas of arts, culture, and nonfiction.NEM will train and support storytellers, artists, journalists, entrepreneurs, and engineers who will build the stories, technologies, and policies of the future. This fall, ASU launched their flagship MA Narrative and Emerging Media program, a collaborative effort between the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication centered around the development of a creative practice and critical understanding of emerging storytelling and immersive content creation. Funding from the Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant will support student production, virtual production, staff training, and research.Country: United States of AmericaThe vision of California Community Colleges is to ensure students from all backgrounds succeed in reaching their education and career goals, with emphasis on improving families’ incomes and communities’ workforces. To achieve this, California Community Colleges aim to provide educational programs that highlight inclusivity, diversity, and equity while minimizing logistical and financial barriers to success.Cañada College will partner with various employers and California Community College districts to enhance XR apprenticeship programs, K–14 curriculum development, and XR job training programs designed for dislocated workers, workforce board clients, and underemployed individuals. Funds from the Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant will aid Cañada College in designing and sharing workforce readiness models for county education offices, community colleges and universities, and workforce training entities in California and throughout the U.S.Country: United States of AmericaThe Clarkson University Psychology Department plans to use their grant funding to develop a novel instructional tool that leverages both VR for accurate neuroanatomical renderings and modern pedagogical principles (such as social interaction and embodiment) to build an innovative and engaging neuroscience learning experience.By using this tool to enhance their psychology program’s neuroscience instruction and open-sourcing the tool for use at other institutions, Clarkson University hopes to positively impact psychology students – especially those from underrepresented backgrounds. And, since student training is integrated throughout the project, the development process will involve students from multiple departments, providing them with opportunities to work in VR, engage in usability testing, and learn about neuroscience.Country: United States of AmericaThe LED (Digital Experience Lab) at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Design (DAUD) aims to be a place for students and professors to explore new digital technologies and develop innovative solutions for real-world problems.The LED plans to use their Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant funding to outfit eight digital studios with hardware for running prototyping experiments in virtual environments. They’ll also acquire peripherals for interacting with AR and MR experiences, including projectors for SAR (spatial AR), Kinect sensors, and motion trackers, with the goal of exploring ways that XR technology can improve design education and project solutions. Finally, their team will drive development of LEDed, a free platform for sharing educational content and experiences in XR within the department’s community and beyond.Country: BrazilNorQuest College is Alberta’s largest community college, serving more than 21,000 students annually. Housed within the Research Office at NorQuest College, Autism CanTech! (ACT!)’s vision is to remove barriers that hinder meaningful and sustainable employment within the digital economy for individuals on the Autism spectrum.Through job-specific training in technical skills, employability skills, career coaching, and Work Integrated Learning (WIL) opportunities, ACT! works to fill industry gaps. ACT! also offers participants additional support through new assistive technology which allows users, career coaches, and supervisors to manage tasks, schedule work-related activities, and live chat. Funds from the Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant will support the development of a road map and team to adapt educator resources and XR courses for a neurodiverse audience.Country: CanadaEthọ́s Lab is a Black-led, nonprofit innovation academy for teens based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and accessible from anywhere in the world. To build toward a more inclusive future, Ethọ́s Lab takes a holistic, community-based approach to teaching S.T.E.A.M. that is partnered and has a long-term vision. The organization provides pathways to applied learning, mentorship, and access to emerging tech through weekly collaborative workshops, creative projects, and events. As participants, youth develop core skills for post-secondary admissions, future careers, and being the leaders of innovation.Centre for Digital Media (CDM) was established in 2007 through a ground-breaking partnership between the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia Institute of Technology, and Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Anchored by the flagship, multidisciplinary Master of Digital Media program, CDM is a mixed-use campus, home to Canada’s first Metastage studio as well as game studios and innovative startups in the healthcare and cloud-computing sectors.With the support of the Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant, Ethọ́s Lab and CDM aim to increase the representation of Black youth and girls in XR-based digital futures through development of an XR Media Lab program. The funding will enable the program to serve 300+ underrepresented youth and 190+ high school educators over five years.Country: CanadaUniversidad de los Andes was founded in 1948 as an autonomous and innovative institution pursuing pluralism, tolerance, and respect. It strives to raise consciousness about students’ social and civic responsibilities as well as their relationship to and stewardship of the environment.The XR Incubator Program (named “Vivero Virtual” in Spanish) is a two-year program focused on both workforce development and education innovation in XR. With Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant funding, Universidad de los Andes will launch three Massive, Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Spanish to promote learning throughout Ibero-America. Funds will also help implement a week-long XR Camp offering Colombian educators access to a variety of XR technologies, and an XR Mobile Lab that will allow those educators to show XR technologies to the public at their own institutions.Country: ColombiaThe University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences (FFHS) aspire to design an innovative, immersive tool that addresses challenges faced by teachers in underrepresented communities. With Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant funding, their multinational team will develop and test a VR prototype for pre-service teachers (student teachers working towards their teacher certification) in South Africa.The tool will allow future teachers to have authentic teaching experiences in a safe environment, aided by learning analytics that provide opportunities to reflect on their lesson delivery and prepare them for actual teaching. The University also intends the tool to help mitigate language barriers for students whose first language is not English. Broadly, the project will empower pre-service teachers to be agents in transforming science teaching, leveraging the potential of immersive technologies and preparing students from marginalized communities with 21st-century digital skills.Country: South AfricaOn behalf of Unity Social Impact and Meta Immersive Learning, congratulations to all of our grant recipients and thank you to everyone who applied for the Higher Ed XR Innovation Grant. Learn more about educator resources and tools for propelling real-time 3D in the classroom and Meta’s $150 million investment to transform the way we learn through Meta Immersive Learning.

With each evolution of communication, marketing and sales tactics have changed. The rise of print media gave us print ads, radio gave us radio ads, and this trend continued with television, podcasts, etc. So what does this mean for the metaverse? Think immersive, interactive, and customizable. In this edition of the Metaverse Minute, we break down some applications of Unity that could be a window into the future of marketing and sales techniques. Let’s see if we can sell you on them.The challenge of convincing customers to buy increases with price, making big ticket items a harder sell. For this reason, we see experiential metaverse technologies empowering luxury items and travel to sell themselves.If the price is $450,000, it had better be a good pitch! This is one of the reasons Virgin Galactic hired global innovation company Seymourpowell to design the world’s first commercial spaceship.Since design and development of the spaceship took place during the pandemic, virtual reality was critical to the project. A digital twin of the cabin was created so prototyping and production of the spaceship could stay on schedule.The usage of the digital twin didn’t end there. As Virgin Galactic began prepping for their marketing campaign they realized the best way to sell seats was to let people sit in them. The team from Seymourpowell converted the digital twin into an experience, and this sales tactic did not disappoint.Cars aren’t something that people typically buy more than one of, and once purchased they’re used for a long time before being replaced. This makes building a personal connection with customers a priority for automotive manufacturers. Visionaries 777 Ltd. created an experience for INFINITI that did just that.Customers start at an iPad station where they answer a set of personality questions and create a photo-based avatar of themselves. After choosing a setting, their avatars were placed next to a configured car that was best suited to their personality. Users picture themselves in their future car with a 360º camera, snapping a selfie.As a kid did you imagine your “dream house?” Remember how fun it was to try and visualize the space? Ordering kitchen cabinets and furniture as an adult is much more complicated. Taking the right measurements and working around physical boundaries adds a nice dose of reality to what you once thought of as a fun game of imagination. Virtual technologies have the potential to recapture the childhood experience of limitless creativity for homeowners once again. For this reason, we love what Volumiq and VOXBOX are doing.Imagine making that dream house plan once again and then converting it to a 3D blueprint with color and texture. Utopiq is working to make this possible. The team wants to simplify the process of home renovations into deciding on a shopping list, visualizing in 3D, and then placing your order.The VOX brand has created their own solution for the products their sales teams are using in their showrooms. Customers are bringing their home to the store. This makes recommending design decisions and products much easier and creates a compelling reason for purchases.Games offer a different, and sometimes more compelling, way for brands to build loyalty. Rather than being static, games offer an interactive way for marketers to engage with customers and give them an experience that sticks with them.This unique experience put together by Groove Jones demonstrates the power of Medtronic’s GI Genius™ and PillCam™ systems. The GI Genius™ intelligent endoscopy module is the first-to-market, computer-aided polyp detection system powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The PillCam™ COLON capsule endoscopy system enables direct visualization of the colon with a noninvasive capsule endoscopy procedure, supporting early detection of polyps. This game educates potential customers how AI-powered systems can improve the early detection of precancerous polyps along the lower digestive tract.In an era where anyone can order anything online, what differentiates one brand from another? Online shopping has put immense pressure on retailers to develop a competitive edge. This is why Mitchell Harvey of Deckers told us his team turned to real-time 3D for product rendering. “There are no limitations to what you can explore to communicate your brand and offer an unforgettable experience to your consumer.”The team from Smartpixels found the same thing when Church’s reached out to them to create a configurator for the 75th anniversary of their Consul shoe. If a product looks photorealistic online, you’re way more likely to buy it. If you’re able to customize a product to your tastes, that increases the likelihood of purchase even further. This held true as real-time 3D and photorealistic rendering allowed Church’s to make 35% more per purchase.Are you using Unity for sales and marketing?If you’re using Unity to get people excited about your products, give us a shout on Twitter.Follow Unity for Digital Twins on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. For more details on Unity for Digital Twins check out our recent demo or our new kickstarter package

The Unity for Humanity Summit is back for its third year on Wednesday, November 2, 2022. Join us for a virtual celebration of real-time 3D creators using Unity to change the world – registration is free and open to all.This year’s Summit includes an inspiring keynote conversation with actor and activist Rosario Dawson, who will discuss her sustainable fashion and nonprofit work, why positivity breeds innovation, and how technology can bring us all together around the virtual fire.In addition, you can attend a wealth of sessions led by artists, game developers, educators, nonprofit leaders, activists, and other changemakers across the core themes of sustainability, education, health and wellbeing, and inclusivity. Here are just a few of the exciting sessions on the agenda:Players first: Accessibility insights for creators features Dave Evans, Jazmin Cano, and Lukáš Hosnedl in a conversation about prioritizing accessibility in game development and the future of accessible gaming.From imagining to creating better worlds in RT3D brings together visionary creators Binh Minh Herbst, Katerina Cizek, Kathryn Evans, and Tony Patrick to discuss the process of translating ambitious visions into real-world action and impact.Create with AR Live and Unity Essentials Live showcase hands-on tools and resources for getting started in Unity and developing mobile AR experiences, led by Unity Learn team members Joy Horvath and Thomas Winkley.Activate your players: Nudging sustainable behavior and driving engagement provides insight into how game developers Hunter Bulkeley, Sheila Ndungu, Jude Ower, Galina Fedulova, and Jens Isensee are driving sustainability and empowering players to protect the planet through their games.Leveraging digital twins for sustainability in the built environment spotlights how organizations across the nonprofit, public, and private sectors are using real-time 3D for positive impact, hosted by Dr. Max Mallia-Parfitt, Dr. Sarah Whateley, and Ursula Smolka.Crafting Heroes: Students building the future using HoloLens 2 with Deidre LaCour and Sean Wybrant takes you straight into the inspiring XR work students are creating.Check out the full schedule and register now.Conversations with Creators are unique opportunities to meet fellow creators, ask them your burning questions, and immerse yourself in their stories, projects, and practical advice. Topics for these live Q&A sessions include:Addressing the youth mental health crisis with Cleo Barnett, co-creative director of AmplifierImmersive storytelling and impact with Gone to Water team Cat Ross and Marin VeselyThe world of immersive theater with Ferryman Collective cofounders Deirdre V. Lyons and Stephen ButchkoUnity for Humanity technical support Q&A with Andy Ellis, software development consulting manager at UnityDigital health and wellbeing with Gabriel G. Torres, creator of Haus of DustAR-tivism with Damien McDuffie, creator of Black TerminusPersonal storytelling for impact with Ondřej Moravec, Hana Blaha Šilarová, and Robin Pultera of DarkeningApplications for the Unity for Humanity 2023 Grant will open during the Summit, and we’ll be sharing tips for applying for the $500,000 available to bring your real-time 3D projects to life. Be sure to tune into the Unity for Humanity Grant Q&A session during the Summit to ask our program leads all of your questions, and sign up for the Social Impact mailing list to be notified of future grant announcements.Register now and join us at the Unity for Humanity Summit on November 2 to connect with social impact creators from across the globe and be part of the movement working towards a more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable world.

Are you looking to improve your gamedev skills? You’ve come to the right place. Below, we’ve curated a selection of courses and projects that are popular with our developer community and guide you through engaging, gamified learning experiences. Read on to discover five ways to reach new heights with your next project, no matter your skill level.This course is an exciting learning experience for intermediate creators, guiding you through the creation of your own game while emphasizing an inclusive design process focused on accessibility. We created Out of Circulation – a vertical slice of a point-and-click adventure game – as a case study, and we’ll explore how it came together as you work through the course tutorials.Take the course.This Unity Learn project is the second part of Introduction to Visual Scripting, so complete that first if you haven’t already! Here, you’ll develop several visual scripts to add a new level to Clive the Cat, a Sokoban-style game that follows the titular cat as he navigates a maze-like crypt in search of his food dish. Along the way, you’ll learn intermediate and advanced techniques in visual scripting, including super units, events, and State Machines.Start the project.In the John Lemon’s Haunted Jaunt project, you’ll discover how to create a stealth game as you work through 10 tutorials that explain the principles behind every step. This project is a great way for beginners to gain confidence in the Unity Editor and learn the foundations of game design.Start the project.This intermediate course on Unity Learn guides you through the essentials of C# scripting. Skills you’ll learn along the way include application scripting, programming theory, and code optimization, all of which will allow you to take your creativity to the next level.Take the course.If you understand the Unity basics and want to try out VR development, the VR Beginner: The Escape Room project gives you the opportunity to explore and create simple immersive experiences supported by the XR interaction Toolkit package.Take the project.Looking for more ways to boost your gamedev know-how? Check out the full Unity Learn catalog and keep your eyes peeled for future courses offering guidance on new skills.

If you have experience with object-oriented programming languages, then you’ve likely heard of the SOLID principles, MVP, singleton, factory, and observer patterns. Our new e-book highlights best practices for using these principles and patterns to create scalable game code architecture in your Unity project.For every software design issue you encounter, a thousand developers have been there before. Though you can’t always ask them directly for advice, you can learn from their decisions through design patterns.By implementing common, game programming design patterns in your Unity project, you can efficiently build and maintain a clean, organized, and readable codebase, which in turn, creates a solid foundation for scaling your game, development team, and business.In our community, we often hear that it can be intimidating to learn how to incorporate design patterns and principles, such as SOLID and KISS, into daily development. That’s why our free e-book, Level up your code with game programming patterns, explains well-known design patterns and shares practical examples for using them in your Unity project.Written by internal and external Unity experts, the e-book is a resource that can help expand your developer’s toolbox and accelerate your project’s success. Read on for a preview of what the guide entails.Design patterns are general solutions to common problems found in software engineering. These aren’t finished solutions you can copy and paste into your code, but extra tools that can help you build larger, scalable applications when used correctly.By integrating patterns consistently into your project, you can improve code readability and make your codebase cleaner. Design patterns not only reduce refactoring and the time spent testing, they speed up onboarding and development processes.However, every design pattern comes with tradeoffs, whether that means additional structures to maintain or more setup at the beginning. You’ll need to do a cost-benefit assessment to determine if the advantage justifies the extra work required. Of course, this assessment will vary based on your project.KISS stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” The aim of this principle is to avoid unnecessary complexity in a system, as simplicity helps drive greater levels of user acceptance and interaction.Note that “simple” does not equate to “easy.” Making something simple means making it focused. While you can create the same functionality without the patterns (and often more quickly), something fast and easy doesn’t necessarily result in something simple.If you’re unsure whether a pattern applies to your particular issue, you might hold off until it feels like a more natural fit. Don’t use a pattern because it’s new or novel to you. Use it when you need it.It’s in this spirit that the e-book was created. Keep the guide handy as a source of inspiration for new ways of organizing your code – not as a strict set of rules for you to follow.Now, let’s turn to some of the key software design principles.SOLID is a mnemonic acronym for five core fundamentals of software design. You can think of them as five basic rules to keep in mind while coding, to ensure that object-oriented designs remain flexible and maintainable.The SOLID principles were first introduced by Robert C. Martin in the paper, Design Principles and Design Patterns. First published in 2000, the principles described are still applicable today, and to C# scripting in Unity:Single responsibility states that each module, class, or function is responsible for one thing and encapsulates only that part of the logic.Open-closed states that classes must be open for extension but closed for modification; that means structuring your classes to create new behavior without modifying the original code.Liskov substitution states that derived classes must be substitutable for their base class when using inheritance.Interface segregation states that no client should be forced to depend on methods it does not use. Clients should only implement what they need.Dependency inversion states that high-level modules should not import anything directly from low-level modules. Both should depend on abstractions.In the e-book, we provide illustrated examples of each principle with clear explanations for using them in Unity. In some cases, adhering to SOLID can result in additional work up front. You may need to refactor some of your functionality into abstractions or interfaces, but there is often a payoff in long-term savings.The principles have dominated software design for nearly two decades at the enterprise level because they’re so well-suited to large applications that scale. If you’re unsure about how to use them, refer back to the KISS principle. Keep it simple, and don’t try to force the principles into your scripts just for the sake of doing so. Let them organically work themselves into place through necessity.If you’re interested in learning more, check out the SOLID presentation from Unite Austin 2017 by Dan Sagmiller of Productive Edge.What’s the difference between a design principle and a design pattern? One way to answer that question is to consider SOLID as a framework for, or a foundational approach to, writing object-oriented code. While design patterns are solutions or tools you can implement to avoid everyday software problems, remember that they’re not off-the-shelf recipes – or for that matter, algorithms with specific steps for achieving specific results.A design pattern can be thought of as a blueprint. It’s a general plan that leaves the actual construction up to you. For instance, two programs can follow the same pattern but involve very different code.When developers encounter the same problem in the wild, many of them will inevitably come up with similar solutions. Once a solution is repeated enough times, someone might “discover” a pattern and formally give it a name.Many of today’s software design patterns stem from the seminal work, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides. This book unpacks 23 such patterns identified in a variety of day-to-day applications.The original authors are often referred to as the “Gang of Four” (GoF),and you’ll also hear the original patterns dubbed the GoF patterns. While the examples cited are mostly in C++ (and Smalltalk), you can apply their ideas to any object-oriented language, such as C#.Since the Gang of Four originally published Design Patterns in 1994, developers have since established dozens more object-oriented patterns in a variety of fields, including game development.While you can work as a game programmer without studying design patterns, learning them will help you become a better developer. After all, design patterns are labeled as such because they’re common solutions to well-known problems.Software engineers rediscover them all the time in the normal course of development. You may have already implemented some of these patterns unwittingly.Train yourself to look for them. Doing this can help you:Learn object-oriented programming: Design patterns aren’t secrets buried in an esoteric StackOverflow post. They are common ways to overcome everyday hurdles in development. They can inform you of how many other developers have approached the same issue – remember, even if you’re not using patterns, someone else is.Talk to other developers: Patterns can serve as a shorthand when trying to communicate as a team. Mention the “command pattern” or “object pool” and experienced Unity developers will know what you’re trying to implement.Explore new frameworks:When you import a built-in package or something from the Asset Store, inevitably you’ll stumble onto one or more patterns discussed here. Recognizing design patterns will help you understand how a new framework operates, as well as the thought process involved in its creation.As indicated earlier, not all design patterns apply to every game application. Don’t go looking for them with Maslow’s hammer; otherwise, you might only find nails.Like any other tool, a design pattern’s usefulness depends on context. Each one provides a benefit in certain situations and also comes with its share of drawbacks. Every decision in software development comes with compromises.Are you generating a lot of GameObjects on the fly? Does it impact your performance? Can restructuring your code fix that? Be aware of these design patterns, and when the time is right, pull them from your gamedev bag of tricks to solve the problem at hand.In addition to the Gang of Four’s Design Patterns, Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom is another standout resource, currently available for free as a web-based edition. The author details a variety of software patterns in a no-nonsense manner.In our new e-book, you can dive into the sections that explain common design patterns, such as factory, object pool, singleton, command, state, and observer patterns, plus the Model View Presenter (MVP), among others. Each section explains the pattern along with its pros and cons, and provides an example of how to implement it in Unity so you can optimize its usage in your project.Unity already implements several established gamedev patterns, saving you the trouble of writing them yourself. These include:Game loop: At the core of all games is an infinite loop that must function independently of clock speed, since the hardware that powers a game application can vary greatly. To account for computers of different speeds, game developers often need to use a fixed timestep (with a set frames-per-second) and a variable timestep where the engine measures how much time has passed since the previous frame. Unity takes care of this, so you don’t have to implement it yourself. You only need to manage gameplay using MonoBehaviour methods like Update, LateUpdate, and FixedUpdate. Update: In your game application, you’ll often update each object’s behavior one frame at a time. While you can manually recreate this in Unity, the MonoBehaviour class does this automatically. Use the appropriate Update, LateUpdate, or FixedUpdate methods to modify your GameObjects and components to one tick of the game clock.Prototype: Often you need to copy objects without affecting the original. This creational pattern solves the problem of duplicating and cloning an object to make other objects similar to itself. This way you avoid defining a separate class to spawn every type of object in your game. Unity’s Prefab system implements a form of prototyping for GameObjects. This allows you to duplicate a template object complete with its components. Override specific properties to create Prefab Variants or nest Prefabs inside other Prefabs to create hierarchies. Use a special Prefab editing mode to edit Prefabs in isolation or in context. Component:Most people working in Unity know this pattern. Instead of creating large classes with multiple responsibilities, build smaller components that each do one thing. If you use composition to pick and choose components, you can combine them for complex behavior. Add Rigidbody and Collider components for physics, or a MeshFilter and MeshRenderer for 3D geometry. Each GameObject is only as rich and unique as its collection of components.Both the e-book and a sample project on the use of design patterns are available now to download for free. Review the examples and decide which design pattern best suits your project. As you gain experience with them, you’ll recognize how and when they can enhance your development process. As always, we encourage you to visit the forum thread and let us know what you think of the e-book and sample.

As longtime Unity creators know, we regularly share updates and feature improvements, alongside tips and best practices, across multiple channels: on our blog, in the forums, and at events. This open, multichannel dialogue is a central part of our community’s roots.Sometimes, however, it’s nice to have a complete overview, or inventory, of what’s available for your specific expertise or area of interest. That’s what our new e-book, Unity for technical artists: Key toolsets and workflows, aims to provide for experienced and technical artists alike. While the original version of the e-book was based on the 2020 LTS, this latest iteration reflects what’s available in 2021 LTS.The first of its kind, this new guide compiles detailed summaries of all Unity systems, features, and workflows for experienced technical artists. Use it as both a source of inspiration and a reference for accessing more advanced creator content to expand your skill set.Through compact yet visually rich sections, Unity for technical artists highlights the vast possibilities for graphical quality and breadth of style that you can realize with Unity.But inspiration is not our only goal here. Each section includes links to instructional, in-depth resources, so you can learn how to use the toolsets that are most important to you, your work, and career path.Based on feedback from individual creators and professional teams we’ve worked with, technical artists are expected to have a broad understanding of what’s possible to achieve on various target platforms with the Digital Content Creation (DCC) tools and game engine they’re using. In light of this knowledge, they inform the art director and other artists of any limitations and opportunities surrounding the target hardware.Many technical artists address their team’s most complex artistic needs, from character rigging to writing shaders, or proposing new workflows and creation tools to accelerate their processes. Overall, they play a critical role in ensuring that the visual quality of a game or other application meets the standard set by their team.Unity for technical artists spans a multitude of toolsets, pipelines, and workflows, reflecting this range of expertise required of technical artists.The e-book serves as a useful resource for users who want to expand their skills in Unity. Maybe you’re a programmer looking to specialize in graphics programming, a designer who wants to refine game content by scripting interactivity in Unity, or an artist learning to create shaders either through scripting or with the Shader Graph.Keep this e-book handy for onboarding new team members – those who have worked with Unity in a limited way previously, or those who’ve worked with a different engine entirely. This guide will help them pinpoint the Unity tools and related learning resources that can benefit their creative work.Let’s take a look at some of the major sections in the e-book.The chapters on assets cover topics such as building a non-destructive asset pipeline, importing assets, roundtripping with DCC tools, and the Asset Database.In this guide, we review the latest capabilities of the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), as well as pointers on how to choose the best rendering path for your particular project. Other topics covered include dynamic resolution and upscaling methods.Additionally, we unpack the lighting workflows used to simulate Global Illumination (GI) with the Progressive, CPU, and GPU Lightmappers, as well as differences between Real-time GI, Ray-traced GI, and Enlighten.Unity provides a complete set of tools for building and designing rich and scalable 3D and 2D worlds. These chapters dive into key workflows for grey-boxing levels with ProBuilder and Polybrush, while showcasing the latest iteration of the Terrain sculpting tools, and sharing details on how to create sky, cloud, and fog visuals in URP and HDRP.Visual Scripting comprises visual, node-based graphs that non-programmers can use to design final logic and create quick prototypes. An introduction to Unity’s Visual Scripting system explains how you can use it to define game logic for your Unity projects without writing traditional code.An extensive appendix outlines the process of creating digital humans for the Unity demos The Heretic and Enemies. From data capture and processing to creating the skin, eyes, and hair visuals, this section discloses how such effects were achieved.There’s much more to discover in the e-book, including sections on the animation system, creating cutscenes and cinematics, and the 2D toolset.We hope that you enjoy this latest technical guide. We encourage you to share your feedback on the forum.For more advanced content, you can browse our recently published How-to hub, which gathers Unity e-books, instructional articles, documentation, and more, all in one place.

On most of the projects I’ve seen, there are a lot of tasks developers go through that are repetitive and error-prone, especially when it comes to integrating new art assets. For instance, setting up a character often involves dragging and dropping many asset references, checking checkboxes, and clicking buttons: Set the rig of the model to Humanoid, disable the sRGB of the SDF texture, set the normal maps as normal maps, and the UI textures as sprites. In other words, valuable time is spent and crucial steps can still be missed.In this two-part article, I’ll walk you through hacks that can help improve this workflow so that your next project runs smoother than your last. To further illustrate this, I’ve created a simple prototype – similar to an RTS – where the units of one team automatically attack enemy buildings and other units. With each scripting hack, I’ll improve one aspect of this process, whether that be the textures or models.Here’s what the prototype looks like:The main reason developers have to set up so many small details when importing assets is simple: Unity doesn’t know how you are going to use an asset, so it can’t know what the best settings for it are. If you want to automate some of these tasks, this is the first problem that needs to be addressed.The simplest way to find out what an asset is for and how it relates to others is by sticking to a specific naming convention and folder structure, such as:Naming convention: We can append things to the name of the asset itself, therefore Shield_BC.png is the base color while Shield_N.png is the normal map.Folder structure: Knight/Animations/Walk.fbx is clearly an animation, while Knight/Models/Knight.fbx is a model, even though they both share the same format (.fbx).The issue with this is that it only works well in one direction. So while you might already know what an asset is for when given its path, you can’t deduce its path if only given information on what the asset does. Being able to find an asset – for example, the material for a character – is useful when trying to automate the setup for some aspects of the assets. While this can be solved by using a rigid naming convention to ensure that the path is easy to deduce, it’s still susceptible to error. Even if you remember the convention, typos are common.An interesting approach to solve this is by using labels. You can use an Editor script that parses the paths of assets and assigns them labels accordingly. As the labels are automated, it’s possible to figure out the exact label that an asset will have. You can even look up assets by their label using AssetDatabase.FindAssets.If you want to automate this sequence, there is a class that can be very handy called the AssetPostprocessor. The AssetPostprocessor receives various messages when Unity imports assets. One of those is OnPostprocessAllAssets, a method that’s called whenever Unity finishes importing assets. It will give you all the paths to the imported assets, providing an opportunity to process those paths. You can write a simple method, like the following, to process them:In the case of the prototype, let’s focus on the list of imported assets – both to try and catch new assets, as well as moved assets. After all, as the path changes, we might want to update the labels.To create the labels, parse the path and look for relevant folders, prefixes, and suffixes of the name, as well as the extensions. Once you have generated the labels, combine them into a single string and set them to the asset.To assign the labels, load the asset using AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath, then assign its labels with AssetDatabase.SetLabels.Remember, it’s important to only set labels if they have actually changed. Setting labels will trigger a reimport of the asset, so you don’t want this to happen unless it’s strictly necessary.If you check this, then the reimport won’t be an issue: Labels are set the first time you import an asset and saved in the .meta file, which means they’re also saved in your version control. A reimport will only be triggered if you rename or move your assets.With the above steps complete, all assets are automatically labeled, as in the example pictured below.Importing textures into a project usually involves tweaking the settings for each texture. Is it a regular texture? A normal map? A sprite? Is it linear or sRGB? If you want to change the settings of an asset importer, you can use the AssetPostprocessor once more.In this case, you’ll want to use the OnPreprocessTexture message, which is called right before importing a texture. This allows you to change the settings of the importer.When it comes to selecting the right settings for every texture, you need to verify what type of textures you’re working with – which is exactly why labels are key in the first step.With this information, you can write a simple TexturePreprocessor:It’s important to ensure that you only run this for textures that have the art label (our own textures). You’ll then get a reference to the importer so that you can set everything up – starting with the texture size.The AssetPostprocessor has a context property from which you can determine the target platform. As such, you can complete platform-specific changes, like setting the textures to a lower resolution for mobile:Next, check the label to see if the texture is a UI texture, and set it accordingly:For the rest of the textures, set the values to a default. It’s worth noting that Albedo is the only texture that will have sRGB enabled:Thanks to the above script, when you drag and drop the new textures into the Editor, they will automatically have the right settings in place.“Channel packing” refers to the combination of diverse textures into one by using the different channels. It is common and offers many advantages. For instance, the value of the Red channel is metallic and the value of the Green channel is its smoothness.However, combining all textures into one requires some extra work from the art team. If the packing needs to change for some reason (i.e., a change in the shader), the art team will have to redo all the textures that are used with that shader.As you can see, there’s room for improvement here. The approach that I like to use for channel packing is to create a special asset type where you set the “raw” textures and generate a channel-packed texture to use in your materials.First, I create a dummy file with a specific extension and then use a Scripted Importer that does all the heavy lifting when importing that asset. This is how it works:The importers can have parameters, such as the textures you need to combine.From the importer, you can set the textures as a dependency, which allows the dummy asset to be reimported every time one of the source textures changes. This lets you rebuild the generated textures accordingly.The importer has a version. If you need to change the way that textures are packed, you can modify the importer and bump the version. This will force a regeneration of all the packed textures in your project and everything will be packed in the new way, immediately.A nice side effect of generating things in an importer is that the generated assets only live in the Library folder, so it doesn’t fill up your version control.To implement this, create a ScriptableObject that will hold the created textures and serve as the result of the importer. In the example, I called this class TexturePack.With this created, you can begin by declaring the importer class and adding the ScriptedImporterAttribute to define the version and extension associated with the importer:In the importer, declare the fields you want to use. They will appear in the Inspector, just as MonoBehaviours and ScriptableObjects do:With the parameters ready, create new textures from the ones you have set as parameters. Note, however, that in the Preprocessor (from the previous section), we set isReadable to True to do this.In this prototype, you’ll notice two textures: the Albedo, which has the Albedo in the RGB and a mask for applying the player color in the Alpha, and the Mask texture, which includes the metallic in the Red channel and the smoothness in the Green channel.While this is perhaps outside the scope of this article, let’s look at how to combine the Albedo and the player mask as an example. First, check to see if the textures are set, and if they are, get their color data. Then set the textures as dependencies using AssetImportContext.DependsOnArtifact. As mentioned above, this will force the object to be recalculated if any of the textures end up changing.You also need to create a new texture. To do this, get the size from the TexturePreprocessor that you created in the previous section so that it follows the preset restrictions:Next, fill in all the data for the new texture. This could be massively optimized by using Jobs and Burst (but that would require an entire article on its own). Here we’ll use a simple loop:Set this data in the texture:Now, you can create the method for generating another texture in a very similar way. Once this is ready, create the main body of the importer. In this case, we’ll only create the ScriptableObject that holds the results, creates the textures, and sets the result of the importer through the AssetImportContext.When you write an importer, all of the assets generated must be registered using AssetImportContext.AddObjectToAsset so that they appear in the project window. Select a main asset using AssetImportContext.SetMainObject. This is what it looks like:The only thing left to do is to create the dummy assets. As these are custom, you can’t use the CreateAssetMenuattribute. You must make them manually instead.Using the MenuItem attribute, specify the full path to the create the asset menu, Assets/Create. To create the asset, use ProjectWindowUtil.CreateAssetWithContent, which generates a file with the content you’ve specified and allows the user to input a name for it. It looks like this:Finally, create the channel-packed textures.Most projects use custom shaders. Sometimes they’re used to add extra effects, like a dissolve effect to fade out defeated enemies, and other times, the shaders implement a custom art style, like toon shaders. Whatever the use case, Unity will create new materials with the default shader, and you will need to change it to use the custom shader.In this example, the shader used for units has two added features: the dissolve effect and the player color (red and blue in the video prototype). When implementing these in your project, you must ensure that all the buildings and units use the appropriate shader.To validate that an asset matches certain requirements – in this case, that it uses the right shader – there is another useful class: the AssetModificationProcessor. With AssetModificationProcessor.OnWillSaveAssets, in particular, you’ll be notified when Unity is about to write an asset to disk. This will give you the opportunity to check if the asset is correct and fix it before it’s saved.Additionally, you can “tell” Unity not to save the asset, which is effective for when the problem you detect cannot be fixed automatically. To accomplish this, create the OnWillSaveAssets method:To process the assets, check whether they are materials and if they have the right labels. If they match the code below, then you have the correct shader:What’s convenient here is that this code is also called when the asset is created, meaning the new material will have the correct shader.As a new feature in Unity 2022, we also have Material Variants. Material Variants are incredibly useful when creating materials for units. In fact, you can create a base material and derive the materials for each unit from there – overriding the relevant fields (like the textures) and inheriting the rest of the properties. This allows for solid defaults for our materials, which can be updated as needed.Importing animations is similar to importing textures. There are various settings that need to be established, and some of them can be automated.Unity imports the materials of all the FBX (.fbx) files by default. For animations, the materials you want to use will either be in the project or in the FBX of the mesh. The extra materials from the animation FBX appear every time you search for materials in the project, adding quite a bit of noise, so it’s worth disabling them.To set up the rig – that is, choosing between Humanoid and Generic, and in cases where we are using a carefully setup avatar, assigning it – apply the same approach that was applied to textures. But for animations, the message you’ll use is AssetPostprocessor.OnPreprocessModel. This will be called for all FBX files, so you need to discern animation FBX files from model FBX files.Thanks to the labels you set up earlier, this shouldn’t be too complicated. The method starts much like the one for textures:Next up, you’ll want to use the rig from the mesh FBX, so you need to find that asset. To locate the asset, use the labels once more. In the case of this prototype, animations have labels that end with “animation,” whereas meshes have labels that end with “model.” You can complete a simple replacement to get the label for your model. Once you have the label, find your asset using AssetDatabase.FindAssets with “l:label-name.”When accessing other assets, there’s something else to consider: It’s possible that, in the middle of the import process, the avatar has not yet been imported when this method is called. If this occurs, the LoadAssetAtPath will return null and you won’t be able to set the avatar. To work around this issue, set a dependency to the path of the avatar. The animation will be imported again once the avatar is imported, and you will be able to set it there.Putting all of this into code will look something like this:Now you can drag the animations into the right folder, and if your mesh is ready, each one will be set up automatically. But if there isn’t an avatar available when you import the animations, the project won’t be able to pick it up once it’s created. Instead, you’ll need to reimport the animation manually after creating it. This can be done by right-clicking the folder with the animations and selecting Reimport.You can see all of this in the sample video below.Using exactly the same ideas from the previous sections, you’ll want to set up the models you are going to use. In this case, employ AssetPostrocessor.OnPreprocessModel to set the importer settings for this model.For the prototype, I’ve set the importer to not generate materials (I will use the ones I’ve created in the project) and checked whether the model is a unit or a building (by verifying the label, as always). The units are set to generate an avatar, but the avatar creation for the buildings is disabled, as the buildings aren’t animated.For your project, you might want to set the materials and animators (and anything else you want to add) when importing the model. This way, the Prefab generated by the importer is ready for immediate use.To do this, use the AssetPostprocessor.OnPostprocessModel method. This method is called after a model is finished importing. It receives the Prefab that has been generated as a parameter, which lets us modify the Prefab however we want.For the prototype, I found the material and Animation Controller by matching the label, just as I located the avatar for the animations. With the Renderer and Animator in the Prefab, I set the material and the controller as in normal gameplay.You can then drop the model into your project and it will be ready to drop into any scene. Except we haven’t set any gameplay-related components, which I’ll address in the second part of this blog.With these advanced scripting tips, you’re just about game ready. Stay tuned for the next installment in this two-part Tech from the Trenches article, which will cover hacks for balancing game data and more.If you would like to discuss the article, or share your ideas after reading it, head on over to our Scripting forum. You can also connect with me on Twitter at @CaballolD.

At this year’s Mobidictum Business Conference, Lior Shekel, Director of Strategic Partnerships at ironSource, walked through 5 steps to launch a hit hyper-casual game today - including tips for marketability testing, soft launching, and global launching. Let’s dive in.Step 1: Run a marketability test on social networksThe first step to launching a hyper-casual game is running an initial marketability test on social media networks - this tells you its relative potential for success in the market. Facebook is typically the best place to start - it has a simple integration, it’s relatively fast and cheap to use, and offers a vast audience. Essentially, testing on Facebook gives you a general idea whether your game prototype matches your KPI goals.If test results on Facebook look promising, try marketability testing on other social networks like Google, Snapchat and TikTok. This will give you even broader confirmation that your game stands out among the competition.Step 2: Run a marketability test on SDK networksOnce initial KPIs are looking good, now it’s time to test on SDK networks. Why? SDK networks offer the biggest audience possible, and the biggest opportunity for your game to scale up during the global launch. Just because a game passes marketability on Facebook, doesn’t necessarily mean it will scale on an SDK network later on.To understand marketability on SDK networks, we look at eCPM, which is IPM multiplied by CPI. Like the chart shows, the campaigns that generate the highest eCPMs will be the ones to top the SDK networks’ data science ad serving models, winning the most impressions and scaling the fastest. Essentially, the higher the eCPM, the more the purchasing power your campaign has on the network.Step 3: Implement ad monetizationOnce your game’s KPIs look promising on both social media and SDK networks, you’re almost ready for launch. But first, you need to maximize your monetization opportunities through the game content itself. This includes adding more levels, A/B testing different placement and creative strategies, determining a basic game economy, and more.This way, before launch, you’re putting yourself in the best position to profit from your game, while ensuring your users have the most positive and exciting experience possible.Step 4: Run a soft launchNow it’s time to soft launch your game - releasing the product ahead of the scheduled launch is an opportunity to simulate real-world interactions. Since you’ve already tested your marketability, you can confidently soft launch on every ad network possible to increase your buying power.Some hyper-casual studios choose to initially soft launch on social networks, then later on SDKs - but we see that the most successful cases soft launch everywhere at once. Let’s dive into two different soft launch strategies.Going all inThe first strategy, the “all-in” launch, focuses on scaling up quickly to find the profitable and scalable sweet spot. It starts with a higher-than-average bid (we recommend around 20% higher), giving you a higher eCPM, as we mentioned earlier (remember CPI, or bid, is a factor of eCPM). By spending extra money, you’re increasing your eCPM - so you can scale quickly and top the charts, but your profit KPIs will drop as a result. To retain your revenue, we recommend capping this campaign at $500-1000 daily.Next, you lower your bid each day by no more than 10% - increasing the budget cap simultaneously. This process usually takes around 3 days, helping you reach your sweet spot when you can start granular bidding - carefully setting and adjusting different bids according to their source behavior. You should bid per source based on the quality that it’s generating for you, such as increasing bids in sources with a good ROAS.Staying conservativeConversely, a conservative launch is much more stable - but because it prioritizes profit, it scales much more slowly. With this strategy, you start with your target bid, which means your budget will likely be smaller, but will soon grow. At this stage, it’s crucial to prevent your game from reaching its budget cap - it harms the game’s positive trend and growth potential.To start granular bidding within 4-5 days, you should also be monitoring ROAS from day 1.Comparing four games that used one of these two strategies - every single one hit the top charts, with games using the “all-in” strategy staying there for a slightly longer time. Most importantly, despite the strategy, the games’ total revenue was virtually the same at the end of the day.Staying ahead of the curveNo matter which soft launch strategy you use, we recommend first launching in the US - it’s the biggest market offering the highest bids and eCPMs. From there, we recommend waiting 2-3 days before launching globally. To get maximum scale from your top sources, it’s best to optimize based on ROAS source bidding. Eventually, you can go on “auto-pilot” mode by turning on automated ROAS optimizer campaigns within each ad network - reducing workload for the whole team.As you global launch, keep these tips in mind:- Timing is everything - launch close to the weekend for longer retention and more playtime- Utilize your top-performing creatives and test new creatives - this improves IPM, which therefore boosts eCPM (eCPM = IPM x eCPI)- Call your users to action using different interactive and playable end cards to increase IPMStep 5: Automate and scale upCongrats! You’ve now global launched your game, new users are joining every day, and LTV is becoming much more accurate. Now is the best time to automate user acquisition, so you and your team can not only focus on acquiring the users, but also the game itself - and you can buy users much more efficiently.Not only does automation free your time, but it also uses highly accurate data - many ROAS optimizers today bid on an extremely granular level, for example per user and per ad request. This expands your reach because you can adjust your bids all the time, while your optimizer continues to optimize to scale and profit.By launching your hyper-casual game in a thoughtful way, you’re ensuring it’s on the best path for success - from the earliest marketability testing stages, all the way through post launch and automation.

My name is Esteban Maldonado and I’m a developer advocate for Unity. My job is to spread the word about Unity Gaming Services and create new educational material so developers can get started with the tools for their own multiplayer development journey.One of those solutions is Netcode for GameObjects (NGO), a first-party, mid-level networking library built for the Unity game engine. A netcode solution is essential in any multiplayer development project.One of the responsibilities of a developer advocate at Unity is to create sample games that showcase our tools, and an NGO sample was assigned to me – Galactic Kittens.However, although I’ve had my good share of professional gigs in the games industry, I personally have little experience making multiplayer games – so this was going to prove to be not just a learning opportunity for developers who use the sample, but also a learning experience for me making the game in the first place.Together with my team, we fleshed out the concept of Galactic Kittens – the difficulty level of the sample, the basic mechanics, the character abilities (which were later removed), and more.In order to tackle this sample game project, I joined forces with the talented team at Bromio in order to make this sample game come to life with polished art assets, music and SFX, and programming support. Our combined goal was to provide developers with a simple, beginner-friendly introduction to building a multiplayer game in Unity with Netcode for GameObjects.In this blog, I’ll cover the development journey for Galactic Kittens, from prototype to stable release, and how you can leverage this sample to start your own multiplayer project.Before I dive into its development, here’s a quick overview of our new sample game Galactic Kittens. This sample is a 2D co-op space adventure designed to help you learn some basics of multiplayer networking.The sample is meant to teach you necessary techniques to get started with multiplayer development, such as:Network session management, with automatic scene switchingBasic 2D movement synchronization, including changes in sprite sheetsSpawning game objects at runtime, on server sideTransferring ownership of the main players from the server to its clientVFX creation across all connected clientsHow to play sound effects and music to all clientsCommunicating player and game stats (health, enemies defeated, etc.) and displaying them on the game’s UIYou can learn more about Galactic Kittens on our website, or download the sample directly from GitHub to get started exploring the code.While I didn’t have too much experience making multiplayer games, Unity does have many public resources to help users get started with using NGO.With these resources, I started very simply by familiarizing myself with basic network concepts and terminology, using our Unity Multiplayer documentation. Next, I followed the Hello World project tutorials and studied available bitesize samples to start getting some results.After some trial and error, I was able to make a simple base prototype from scratch.At this point, there was no custom lobby, no real UI, no real connection management – you get the picture. The prototype was just two equal ships (with three Hit Points each) that moved around the screen and shot a cube bullet when you pressed the spacebar. It was just enough to show object spawning and movement synchronization across clients.It was a start, but I knew that Bromio would help us reach the finish line and turn this into a workable sample.After my initial progress, I started working with Bromio on fleshing out the prototype into something more production-ready. Like me, they did not have much experience making multiplayer games, but they took on the challenge and helped us reach our goal.In order to work more efficiently, we broke down the game into isolated components to start development in parallel – with artists working on assets and programmers working on the core logic of the game.Here’s a peak at the evolution of the art style in Galactic Kittens.Meanwhile, Bromio’s main developer and I were discovering fun and challenging aspects of making Galactic Kittens into a functioning game sample.One of the biggest challenges in development was connection management and character selection. We had to store the data of the characters in separate ScriptableObject files, which you will see when you download the project.These files contain the necessary information about each space explorer, including which sprites (player and ship) to show on the UI and the prefabs that should be spawned for each player once the gameplay scene starts.On the character selection screen, a big challenge was to make sure to acknowledge the event of a client disconnecting and to handle that event through the UI.We decided that users should not be able to pick the same character, in order to show how developers could actually do this in their own games. (It's actually easier to let players pick the same character since there’s no additional restriction.)The next challenge for connection management was the event of players disconnecting in the middle of a game session. This meant not only that the game had to adapt to players leaving, but also had to block other players from entering while a game is in session. We decided to make the connection manager only allow for new connections to come in while the host instance is on the character selection screen. This is not a one-size-fits-all solution – other games may allow for players to join late in an ongoing session, while other games may not – it’s up to developers to decide what’s best for their experience.We wanted to keep gameplay simple, with no complex AI or fancy behavior logic for the enemies or meteorites that players see. This way, we could provide a full game sample without taking away focus from showing users how to use the NGO library.As such, there are two main types of enemies and one meteorite obstacle: Space Shooter Space Ghost MeteoriteBoth enemies choose a random movement pattern, while the Space Shooter enemy is the only one that actually shoots back enemy lasers. Please refer to ourdeveloper guide for more information on how these enemies are built and how you can add your own logic.By the time we worked on the boss battle, all of the lessons learned from implementing the game’s lobby, player spaceship behavior, and simple enemies helped us to quickly build the final boss battle experience.One particular challenge was timing the warning alarm that you hear and see before the boss enters. In the end, we sent events with client and server RPCs in order to signal that the regular play experience was over and the final boss battle was about to begin.The behavior of the boss is structured as a finite state machine (FSM) that randomly selects which set of attacks to throw at the connected players. To do this, we used a C# class called BossController, which handles the transition from one boss state to another. Check the developer guide for information about the code behind this battle, and how you can add your own boss states.The #1 resource that helped us succeed in our mission to build this sample game was joining the Unity Multiplayer Networking Discord server and asking questions to the community. Here, we were able to actually speak with other developers who are making multiplayer games and also speak with Unity multiplayer service creators. The collective pool of knowledge was more than enough to help us reach the finish line.Working at Unity means I get to collaborate alongside networking savvy people who work hard to develop helpful resources and documentation that’s designed to assist everyone get started with multiplayer development. The Unity multiplayer documentation site came in handy many times – from familiarizing myself with basic networking terminology to dealing with latency to actually coding with NGO.We're definitely excited about Galactic Kittens. We’d like for you, and future NGO users, to use this sample as a step in the right direction toward your multiplayer learning journey. Please feel free to reach out in the Discord server or forums to ask questions or provide feedback and suggestions.One of the things I’m eager to learn is how to add object pooling to a multiplayer game sample. This is the technique that lets you pre-allocate the necessary memory for objects that get spawned repeatedly during a game session. In an earlier experiment, I tried this technique in an offline Unity project and it can definitely make an improvement to your game’s run-time efficiency. We’ve applied this technique to Boss Room and other UGS samples as well.If you’re starting out on your own multiplayer journey, then there are a lot of resources that my team at Unity provides to help make it easier for you.I would recommend starting at the Netcode for GameObjects page, where you can familiarize yourself with the package. Next, you can explore NGO through the Galactic Kittenssample or take small steps with bitesize samples.Once you’re on your journey, I recommend joining the Unity Multiplayer Networking Discord server and checking out the forums. And, if you feel like Galactic Kittens is too simple or not enough of a challenge, I would definitely encourage you to check out Boss Room, which is a complete 3D sample game that takes NGO development to a production-ready level.For taking your game online, Unity Gaming Services can help you even further – whether you’re looking to add the Lobby or Matchmaker services, voice and text chat with Vivox, or even hosting solutions like the P2P Relay service or Game Server Hosting. Happy creating!To find out more about recent trends and the future of multiplayer, read the 2022 Unity Multiplayer Report, which aggregates the results of over 1,500 survey responses across the US, UK, Japan, and Korea.

Cult of the Lamb was a breakout success this summer, selling more than a million copies in its first week. Through its unique premise, Massive Monster’s dungeon-crawling, base-building, rogue-lite hybrid casts you in the role of a possessed, cult-leading lamb.Your mission? Indoctrinate woodland creatures, perform dark rituals, and hunt down bosses – all to appease an eldritch being, The One Who Waits, and become leader of “the one true cult.” A major factor in the game’s success is its compelling gameplay loop, which reviewers have described as “addictive,” “satisfying,” and even “perfect.”We sat down with Jay Armstrong, Massive Monster’s design director and lead programmer, to discuss how the team chose which genres to combine, what they did to balance a two-genres-in-one-game approach, and their top tips for overcoming challenges to keep development focused.The Massive Monster team – Jay Armstrong, Julian Wilton (creative director), and James “Jimp” Pearmain (art director) – is spread out across Singapore, Australia, and the UK. How did you all meet and start making games together?We all started making Flash games individually. We first met through the Flash game scene, forums, and events. We all worked together on different games, and when Flash games fell away, we decided to team up and make games for desktop and console.The first game that Julian and I created together was called Super Adventure Pals, and almost exactly 10 years later, we released Cult of the Lamb. So the three of us have been collaborating together for a long time.What was your source of inspiration for Cult of the Lamb? How did you develop the idea?Funny enough, the cult stuff didn’t come until much later. The game actually started with the idea of combining the genres of a roguelike with a colony sim/base builder. I noticed that games like RimWorld and Enter the Gungeon created so many interesting emergent narratives – stories that spring out of the game’s mechanics – that made it so everyone’s experience with the game was unique. I was excited about the idea of combining those two genres to create something that would become more than the sum of its parts, so I created a prototype that I planned to show to the other guys at an upcoming PAX.When I took it to Jimp and Julian, they loved it, but we immediately found that it was a really hard game to pitch when talking to publishers. At this point we still hadn’t come up with the cult theme. We knew we had to figure out a way to market the game in one sentence. We needed a player fantasy we could explain easily and that people would immediately understand. It took around nine months of experimenting with different themes before we finally landed on the idea of the cult.Once we had that, everything for the next three years was about making sure we kept hitting the “promise” the game’s theme created. The game had to feel like you were leading a cult, which meant we had to have rituals and sermons. But figuring out how to make those game mechanics took a lot of iteration and experimentation. We got very used to cutting ideas that didn’t achieve that goal, and “listening” to what the game wanted to be. Having a clear goal for what we wanted the experience to be meant we were all on the same page, and it was obvious when something was or wasn’t working.Cult of the Lamb is your first Unity project. Why did you choose Unity to develop it?Yes, Cult of the Lamb is our first Unity project. We chose it because of the great tools it offers for iterating, quick testing, and allowing designers to lay out levels. In the past, we’ve created our own editors, but the tools that are available for Unity and on the Asset Store are such timesavers. We also have the flexibility of building whatever tools we want for ourselves.How did Unity enable you to manage the game’s combination of 2D and 3D assets to create a 2.5D look?One of the reasons we picked the 2.5D look was because we were moving to Unity and it was our first time using a 3D engine. It felt like a waste if we just stuck to normal 2D, so we decided to take advantage of that extra axis!It was great being able to move the sprites around and create faux-3D structures; to use the Editor to decide on the best angles for our characters and the camera.Why did you choose the top-down perspective? What were some challenges you encountered during implementation and how did you solve them?The main problem with our perspective was that we had to keep the camera relatively fixed, which restricted our options for combat and the placement of things in the world. While it is sort of top-down, we had to arrange things so that the important stuff was all at the top/back of the screen. It was fine once we got the hang of it: Creating restrictions forces you to come up with creative solutions.What benefit did Unity’s lighting provide for creating the look of Cult of the Lamb?The lighting is such a big part of what makes Cult of the Lamb look so cool! We had some support from our extremely talented friend Jonathan Swanson, who helped us set up all the lighting. Because of our 2.5D setup, we had to create some custom solutions. But once we got it all up and running, it really elevated the game massively.Did your artists work directly in Unity?Yes, everyone was working directly on the project at once, which saved us huge amounts of time. Having an artist or designer implement something directly is so great. This not only saves the programmers time, it also allows the artist or designer to get it looking exactly how they want it to.Back when we started in Flash, everything had to be implemented into the project by one person, and we’d send assets over email. This created a huge bottleneck. It’s such a relief to be able to put the tools in the hands of talented artists and let them do their thing!How did you iterate on what are essentially two different game concepts, while maintaining the scope of your project?It was definitely a challenge. Cult of the Lamb only works when both sides of the game feed into the other – when one side is broken or not as good as it should be, the whole game falls apart. It really didn’t come together until quite soon before the release. We just kept working as hard as we could and dragged the game kicking and screaming over the finish line.We still have loads of ideas for the game – but it just came to a point where we had to stop adding new stuff and focus on making it as cohesive as possible and the game loop itself as compelling as it could be. That’s where the real magic of the game is. We plan to keep adding more stuff to the game post release.How did you test features as you added them?Everyone on the team would do regular playtests. Later in development, our publisher helped us to connect with a focus group who gave us feedback. Ordinarily we would have exhibited the game to get player feedback, but due to COVID, we were essentially making this game alone in the dark. We had no idea what people would think of it!Thinking about the roguelike elements, how did you implement randomization? What was most difficult to balance here?Our team has a huge range of skill levels when it comes to gaming. We balanced “easy” to Julian, “medium” to me, and “hard” to Jimp.The other nice thing about dungeon crawlers is that you don’t really need the randomization to be very balanced. It’s actually more fun when you have a run where you get lucky, and sometimes you get really unlucky. It’s that variety that makes it fun!Balancing was mostly focused on enemy and boss HP against the level of your character’s starting weapon. Then there was experimentation with faith and hunger levels.We also have a lot of things under the hood of the game that adjust to the player if you’re struggling. For example, if you’re low on health, you’re much more likely to find a heart in the grass or to loot one from a chest.During our Twitch stream at GDC, you and the team talked about how taking advantage of the cult members is central to the game. How did you ensure that your players would feel like they were making difficult yet impactful choices when managing the cult?That was a decision we made very early on, and it pervades the entire DNA of the game. Really, it was part of almost every design decision we made.One thing that took us a while to figure out was how to make sacrificing a follower feel valuable. You originally just got gold for it, but it never felt valuable enough, so we knew we needed to make it more tempting for a player. That’s why we changed it to an instant level-up. Suddenly we found players were sacrificing their followers all the time!Another idea that we had from almost the beginning was being able to consume a follower to bring yourself back to life. That was originally a core mechanic of the game, but we decided to bring it in a bit later instead. Making leveled-up followers give more hearts is a great example – the cult members you care about more, and have invested in more, we make more tempting to kill. Basically, anything you care about, we try to make it tempting for you to do something horrible to it.What are the most important things you learned during the making of Cult of the Lamb that will impact how you approach your next project?Pick a theme and then create three design pillars; that will be how you fulfill the promise that the theme creates. For example, if it’s a game about cults, then you need a sacrifice ritual – even if you don’t yet know how it will be used mechanically.Once you have those pillars, absolutely every design decision must directly feed back into them. You might come up with a really cool idea, but if it doesn’t support that pillar, then you have to scrap it or your game will become unfocused.Start with a concept – it’s X meets Y – don’t just make another metroidvania or Stardew Valley clone. Even if you do decide to make another metroidvania, do something to elevate it so that you’re offering something new and exciting. It will make things much easier to get your foot in the door with publishers, socials, and press. Plus, while it might be more demanding, it’s incredibly rewarding to challenge yourself.Cult of the Lamb is available now on Nintendo Switch™, PC, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Follow @MassiveMonsters on Twitter for updates and visit our Indie Innovation hub for more stories featuring Unity creators making waves in the games industry.Answers attributed to Jay Armstrong.Nintendo Switch is a registered trademark of Nintendo.

Time spent in apps always peaks during the holiday season. The key to making that uplift work for your user acquisition is tackling it from all angles - from optimizing existing channels to expanding into new ones. That way, you can generate the installs and ROAS you need to start the new year off right.That’s why we invited three ironSource experts to this edition of our Angles of Acquisition webinar series:- Noa Eckstein, Head of Business Operations at ironSource Luna, covered building holiday-themed creatives that spike IPM - Sarah Chafer, VP US Sales at ironSource Sonic, discussed how to set up an offerwall campaign that'll generate record ARPU - Jess Overton, Director of Demand at ironSource Aura, walked through setting up an on-device campaign at a time when everyone's buying new phones Read on for a summary of the webinar or watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvewwdzvVBMConsumer insights during the holidaysTo kick off, Marketing Director at ironSource Lauren Baca set the scene with consumer insights during the holidays pulled from ironSource and M&C Saatchi Performance’s holiday marketing playbook:- 75% of consumers plan on purchasing clothes and footwear as gifts this year, making them the most popular gifts across all generations. - 65% of consumers plan to spend more or the same on holidays gifts this year compared to last year - 28% of consumers plan to start shopping in the fall and 27% of consumers plan to start shopping on Black Friday or Cyber MondayDownload the report for more data and insightsWith a better understanding of how consumers plan to shop and celebrate this season, Lauren passed the mic to our ironSource experts to break down some best practices for optimizing UA - from how to build holiday-themed creatives to making the most of a unique ad unit all the way to how to leverage a time when everyone's buying new phones.How to build holiday-themed creatives that spike IPMNoa explained that while the holiday season feels quite special, the marketing problems you face during the winter months are the same problems you face every other season - you need to find the best content and creatives, you need to optimize key channels, and you need to utilize your data better. The only difference? Your creatives get a holiday makeover.During the holidays, people tend to be their most emotional - it’s a time for nostalgia and thinking about friends and family. This emotion is a key ingredient to building high-IPM creatives - the goal is always to get users to go from seeing a creative to actually feeling something that encourages them to download, and the holidays are a time when that’s even more feasible.So if IPM has the potential to be so high, why wouldn’t you invest in building holiday creatives? Noa covered a few reasons why some studios might choose not to:- Holiday creatives can cost a lot to run and need more resources and attention to build, but may only run for a very short amount of time - Most creatives don’t end up scaling and often fail - it is more challenging to find the winning creative within such a short time period - Users who see a holiday-themed creative may expect to play a holiday-themed game, so you might need to adjust your gameplay or pay closer attention to user quality. - On the flip side, there are tons of data that show why you should invest in building holiday creatives, according to data from the ironSource Luna platform:- IPMs are significantly higher throughout the holiday season due to more engagement in apps and on phones (2021, US, iOS)- In fact, game installs surged 3x during the week of Christmas (2021, US, Facebook)- Advertisers test 2x the amount of creatives during the holidays, which means you don’t want to be left behindLooking deeper, Noa explained that building holiday-themed creatives can have a positive impact on your team and collaboration:- It’s an opportunity to refresh, prevent fatigue, and get creative in a unique way - Holiday elements trigger a lot of emotion leading to higher intent- You can create a really healthy dialogue between your creative team, UA team and product team as everyone works on holiday plansNext, Noa gave us some proof and walked through case studies. First, she presented a game studio that works with ironSource Luna that changed the sword in their playable ad to a Christmas tree, which had a huge impact on IPM during the holidays. It performed so well that the studio chose not to deactivate the creative after the holidays - and it remained the top-performing creative even two months after Christmas day. In another example, the holiday-themed creative was a top performer until the end of April.Last, Noa showed what happened when Luna tested three different Halloween-themed creatives for a game studio. For the first one, the Luna team took an existing high-performing creative and just put a Halloween theme on top of it. For the second one, Luna replaced a mermaid’s head with a pumpkin head and changed the pointer to a witch's hand. Neither of these variations are showing positive results yet - but that may change the closer we get to Halloween! For the third variation, Luna built a creative where the witch is playing the Halloween-themed game, which became one of the most successful creatives for this title and led to a 20% higher D7 ROAS.So how can you find this same success without heavy production?- Use real footage of real people that show pure emotion - Test holiday figures - snowflakes, witches, pumpkins - to spice it up - Give the pointer and buttons a holiday theme, like Santa Many advertisers are taking advantage of this time of year to increase performance, but you need to weigh that against the internal resources you have to build a new set of creatives. There are other ways to optimize your holiday strategy, such as with the offerwall - which leads us to our next angle.How to set up an offerwall campaign that'll generate record ROASNext up, Sarah Chafer discussed best practices for running offerwall campaigns during the holidays. First, she started with a brief background, explaining that the offerwall is a user-initiated, rewarded in app marketplace with three main constituents: developers use the offerwall to grow revenue, user retention, and app engagement, without cannibalizing IAP. Advertisers use the offerwall to reach a unique, quality audience that is looking for a transaction of some sort and will remain highly engaged in the app. Consumers engage with the offerwall for app discovery and brand discovery, all while getting further and deeper into the app they’re already using.So, how does this all work together - how do the advertiser and consumer come together in that moment or transaction? Sarah ran through a few of the most popular offerwall pricing models to help advertisers get campaigns started:Cost per engagement (CPE): Here, advertisers only pay when a user installs an app and completes a specific engagement event. This is all about getting users deeper down the funnel. Ask yourself, what do you want the user to do to remember the app and what would encourage them to use it again?Multi-reward cost per engagement (MR-CPE): In this pricing model, you pay in incremental steps as a user works towards completing a deep engagement event. This way, you can reward the user for completing more actions - not only installing and opening, but installing, opening and downloading a coupon or making a purchaseCost per action (CPA): You’ll pay when a user completes a quiz, action on a website, or purchases from a brand. This is the most common format during the holidays and it can be used in a lot of creative ways. Cost per install (CPI): You’ll pay each time a user installs your app, which is really about getting your app out there in the market and driving app discovery. Surveys: Pay when a user completes a survey to help you better understand user behavior - how they feel, what are their thoughts, what are they into, etc. Next, Sarah dove into best practices for mastering this ad unit during the holidays - saying that the most important thing to keep in mind is timing.There are tons of new devices entering the market - all the major players are releasing the latest versions of their best-selling devices and if you’re an early adopter of technology, you may already have one. Device sales increase heavily starting now and many will end up wrapped up as gifts. Starting with the offerwall now can help you be top of mind as new devices enter homes globally. Second, with holiday shopping starting earlier this year compared to last year according to our report, it’s important to remind users that the holidays are coming and that right now is the time to shop. You can provide this sense of urgency in your messaging, which we will discuss in the next section. Third, level up with currency sales and double down on rewards on key shopping days, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Consumers will be inclined to engage with an offer that gives them extra rewards. As an advertiser, you can double down on your bid - the reward is higher, the traffic is higher. In fact, we’ve seen around a 35% lift in conversions during previous currency sales. Once the timing is right, how do you get your creative to capture all the great offerwall traffic?Stay competitive with special promotions, also known as currency sales. We know that users are looking for deals - 40% said that rewarded ads influence their purchasing decisions according to our report. Whether you’re offering a sale or special package, get creative and switch it up frequently to stay fresh, unique and competitive. Going back to providing a sense of urgency, it’s important to be reminding users not only to shop but who to shop for. Include “gifting” and “holiday” in your messaging and add holiday-themed graphics to your creatives, which are consistent reminders that the holidays are coming. You can even call out someone in particular with phrases like - “for that someone special in your life,” or “for your pet” to get consumers thinking about their gift lists. The Tapjoy offerwall has a shopping tab, which gives consumers a better understanding of what our advertisers do by highlighting their packaging, merchandising, and best-selling products. Give the shopper an idea of who your brand is and what will be shipped to their home.Overall, the offerwall is an excellent touchpoint to reach high-intent users that will drive high ROAS. If you’re looking to expand your touchpoints even further, on-device advertising is a unique way to take advantage of the new phones entering the market - covered by Jess Overton.Setting up on-device campaigns when everyone's buying new phonesJumping off of Sarah’s point that there are tons of new devices sold, unboxed, and unwrapped this time of year, Jess shared that 51% of consumers plan to give a new device as a gift for the holidays. With each new device, consumers get access to new forms of entertainment - Jess even alluded it to the world’s greatest mall. Ultimately, how consumers decide to interact with their devices is a function of the apps they download and engage with.Jess shared that 95% of users that will be unboxing new devices this Christmas will be downloading apps in the first 48 hours. During those 48 hours, consumers will install 60% of the apps they’ll download for the lifetime of the device. If you look at your device's home screen and ask yourself, “when was the last time you downloaded a bunch of apps?”, it’s probably been a while. That’s the power of capturing a download at device activation.ironSource Aura partners with top device manufacturers and mobile carriers to deliver app discovery experiences directly to users on their devices so you can get your app discovered at key moments during the device lifecycle, whether it’s during device activation on Christmas morning or after a major operating system update. On-device marketing enables dynamic bidding and endless opportunities for optimization, which is largely impossible on traditional preload channels. Being able to meet users at moments when they're ready to discover and experiment with new apps along with first-class optimization capabilities means that on-device marketing is a channel that converts potential users into high-value customers.There are three things to keep in mind about running on-device during the holiday season. First, holiday-ify your creatives. Second, you can reach a range of demographics for your app and price accordingly. Third, sit back and watch that LTV rack up.Holiday-ify your creativesData shows that tailoring your on-device creatives to the audience and the placement can generate a significant uplift in performance. For example, you can add a holiday graphic or theme, such as a Santa hat, to your app icon on the device setup placement. Or you can show real people in the holiday spirit on the full-screen offer placement.Reach a range of demographics and price accordinglySecond, you need to ensure the bid for each demographic. This is especially important during the holidays, because you only get one shot. There’s only one Christmas morning, consumers only unbox your device once, which means you as the advertiser have to get your bids right the first time. So pay attention to price and understand which demographics are most important to your campaign.To paint a better picture, Jess broke down demographics of device activations last Christmas: the Boomer group is slightly less represented, with 15% activating new devices. 29% of activations came from Gen X, 25% from Millennials, and 21% from Gen Z. Bottom line? The on-device channel is a great way to get in front of hard-to-reach demographics, such as the older than 55 group. For Gen Z who are bombarded with ads, the on-device channel cuts through the noise and gives you a way to reach these users in a different mindset.Prepare for long LTVOn-device channels are a much slower burn in terms of LTV and app engagement. When you think about Christmas morning and setting up your new device, you might download a travel app, food delivery app, a few shopping apps, a bunch of games, but you’re not ordering food right away or booking your next trip on Christmas. Ultimately, you’ll see users start to engage more at D14 or D30, and this effect is even more significant during the holiday season. After all, we spend a lot more time on our phones and dabbling with apps.Having a multi-channel approach to your holiday advertising strategy is critical, and being well-informed on how to optimize all of those components is a huge benefit. If you’ve made it this far, you should have all of the best practices you need to drive high-performing creatives, create an offerwall strategy that converts, and leverage a time period high in device activations.

It’s been two years since we’ve hosted a Unite event to gather with our amazing community of game developers. Thanks to you, this year’s Unite is on track to become our most attended ever. If you haven’t had the chance to watch the keynote yet, we’ve got you covered with this spotlight on what was shared.“When we say the world is a better place with more creators in it, we mean that literally,” shared CEO John Riccitiello. “Because creators bring people together. Because we know the joy of creating, and we want more people to experience this joy.”“Now, we know creation is hard,” he continued. “Game creation is especially hard because it involves so many disciplines – from programming to design, art to lighting, character creation to animation, and some serious mastery of technology. Our role at Unity is to make the tools that make it easier for you, as creators, to realize your vision.”Bringing our community together to offer updates and insights into what we’re working on is so important to us. Today’s hybrid event – both virtual and in person within our local communities in Austin, Brighton, Copenhagen, Montréal, and San Francisco – is also an opportunity for us to listen to your feedback so we can ensure we’re building tools and features that meet your needs.Watch the full keynote, or keep reading for a recap of highlights from key areas of focus as we continue to heavily invest in our game engine to help you build, scale, and grow incredible games.DOTS, an acronym for Data-Oriented Technology Stack, is composed of three parts: Entity Component System (or ECS for short), Burst compiler, and the C# Job System. If your game requires massive scale, DOTS is a great alternative to an object-oriented coding framework because it lets you write safe, multithreaded code that can deliver performance gains. Simply put, DOTS enables you to build vast, complex worlds and deliver incredible experiences to your players.As Laurent Gibert, who oversees the development of DOTS and multiplayer technology at Unity, announced, “ECS is finally leaving its experimental phase. That means that with the coming 2022.2 Tech Stream – like any other feature – ECS will be supported for your projects.”Gibert emphasized that you don’t have to choose between data- and object-oriented development: The two can coexist. This means you can solve hard scaling problems while relying on your traditional workflows for everything else.To help you scale up your DOTS skill set more quickly, ECS will include graphics packages, physics capabilities, and Netcode, as well as full documentation, samples, and tutorials.“ECS is finally leaving its experimental phase. That means that with the coming 2022.2 Tech Stream – like any other feature – ECS will be supported for your projects.”Creating great visuals is time consuming, so our team spotlighted a few updates to help you achieve your vision more efficiently in both Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP).“We know that it’s hard to choose a rendering pipeline early in a project,” said Nancy LaRue, a marketing manager for technical artistry tools. “And it can be complicated to switch later on. So we’re working on modifying the render workflow so you’ll be able to use both URP and HDRP in the same project.”The segment highlighted some new tools for URP, including Forward+ rendering and a new Decals offering, that achieve parity and even eclipse what you could achieve with the Built-in Render Pipeline. To highlight URP tools’ effectiveness in production, Hannah Kennedy, art director from Obsidian Entertainment, took to the stage to talk about the studio’s new game Pentiment, launching November 15. Hannah’s team chose Unity and URP to deliver on their project because they needed a flexible approach, right from the start.“We were also able to use URP’s wide range of direct and indirect lighting solutions to quickly achieve the mood and enhance the dramatization of the game,” she said.Next, a demo illustrated an HDRP workflow to help you create dynamic environments using Physically Based Sky, Cloud Layers, Volumetric Fog, Adaptive Probe Volumes, the Volume System, and our incredible new Water System.We closed the graphics segment by celebrating some of the inspiring and jaw-droppingly gorgeous games that you’ve brought to life with Unity over the last few months. Catch the full sizzle below.“We’re working toward an end-to-end solution that covers every aspect of your multiplayer game – from creation to ongoing management of a live experience,” explained senior technical product manager Kiki Saintonge. She also shared what’s upcoming for multiplayer services.Developing and operating multiplayer games is incredibly challenging. We want to make it easier for you to design innovative multiplayer experiences, so we’re improving our Netcode solutions and bringing services like matchmaking and game hosting right into the Editor.To showcase what’s possible, Timothy “Timo” Vanherberghen, founder and CEO of Triangle Factory, joined us onstage. He spoke about the studio’s multiplayer VR games, Hyper Dash and Breachers, both of which leverage our Matchmaker and Game Server Hosting solutions.Timo had this to say about why his studio chose to select services from UGS: “We could have built a solution ourselves, but that would mean spending a lot of time building and maintaining features that have nothing to do with our core gameplay. We’re in this industry to build games, not the systems around them.”Triangle Factory’s next game, Breachers, will be in open alpha later this month.“We’re in this industry to build games, not the systems around them.”Today’s keynote also gave a preview of how we’re simplifying VR development with the XR Interaction Toolkit, including an example from Vinci Games in Blacktop Hoops. We shared the ways we’re making it easier for you to customize your Editor with updates to the UI Toolkit, which is now at full feature parity with IMGUI. The keynote even provided insight into how you can continuously fine-tune and test your live game content from a single platform to boost player satisfaction and reduce churn.Next, we announced the arrival of DirectX 12 in the upcoming Tech Stream 2022.2, as well as the work we’re doing to make our suite of art and VFX tools – including our digital human package, hair system, and puppet-based animation – widely available to you in real-time, so you can use these tools in your games.Unite 2022 continues for the remainder of today, with technical sessions, roadmap deep dives, and more. This content will also be available on-demand later this year, and you can watch the full keynote address below. Last but not least, we hope you’ll join us tomorrow for Unity for Humanity Summit 2022, an inspiring look at how creators are using real-time 3D technology to make the world a better place.

That’s a wrap on this year’s Unity for Humanity Summit. We’ve pulled together our favorite moments and takeaways in case you weren’t able to make it or just wanted to relive the highlights.During the Summit, we announced that applications for the Unity for Humanity 2023 Grant are open. Submit your social impact project for a share of $500,000 USD in funding, plus technical support and mentorship.We met so many incredible social impact creators using Unity in innovative ways to drive change. If you have a similar project, the Unity for Humanity Grant is open for applications to help support you in making your vision a reality.Grant recipients will receive a bespoke grant from a pool of $500,000 USD, plus mentorship and technical support to help bring their project to life. Your project must be currently in production and align with one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For application details and criteria, please visit the Unity for Humanity FAQ. Don’t have a prototype ready this year but want to pre-register for next year’s grant? Sign up to be one of the first to hear when the next grant is live.“[Receiving the grant] gave us the freedom to create with so much autonomy.”“Receiving the grant was what made possible for this first chapter of Origen to come off paper and become a reality,” shared Presencias, creators of Origen. “It also gave us the freedom to create with so much autonomy, it allowed us to delve into the artisanal and interdisciplinary part of the project, which was crucial to respect its identity.”Actor and activist Rosario Dawson joined us to share her vision for the future – which she believes is possible thanks to the remarkable potential of technology and the impact of creators.“We used to be all around the fire: the medicine woman, the warrior, the mother, the father, the child, the person who worked with the animals, and the food. Everyone had an equal space around that fire where they came together as a community. And, as industry built up, we started going into that pyramid shape where it was just the few people at the top and all the workers at the bottom,” she shared. “What’s remarkable now, with this technology, is we get to open up that portal, and get that light in our face and be back around the fire again – through our watches and our tablets and our phones.”So why does she have so much faith that technology will change the world? In Dawson’s words,“I know that we’re getting there because this generation is coming in hot. They are looking at the problems that we have perpetuated up until this moment and they are factoring in. They are being so conscious and intentional with what they are making and creating, and that just gives me a lot of hope.”In one session, attendees met students from Spelman College, Urban Arts Partnership, and Generation Pakistan. These remarkable organizations provide STEM education to underserved students, to skill-up more students, provide more career opportunities, and diversify the tech industry.Since its inception, Urban Arts has served more than 250,000 students across 150 New York City public schools. Their mission is to provide students from low-income communities with a high quality education in an industry lacking workforce diversity.Generation is on a mission to transform education-to-employment systems and help prepare, place, and support people into life-changing careers that would otherwise be inaccessible. Unity partners with Generation to run a 3-month training bootcamp in Pakistan, that not only teaches participants Unity skills, but also provides mentorship, employer site visits and support to place them in a career upon graduation.A 2022 graduate of the program, Farwar Bashir, shared, “The course improved my Unity skills, but also focused on our personality and built up our professional skills. It wasn’t just Unity – it was also how to deal with challenges and solutions that we would face in the real-time industry.”“When I came out of the interview room, I had the biggest smile on my face, and I knew in my heart that yes I got the job,” added fellow graduate Humaira Salamat. “I received a call the day after the interview, 'yes you got the job, please come to our office for negotiation of your salary'.”“It wasn’t just Unity – it was also how to deal with challenges and solutions that we would face in the real-time industry.”We heard from a number of creators using Unity to fight climate change and protect the planet. Former Unity for Humanity grant winners shared insights into their projects and gave attendees an update on their progress.For example, Gone to Water is currently in production and has an anticipated release on STEAM VR in February 2023. “Gone to water” is a term that describes the process by which an oil well becomes unproductive and therefore unprofitable, eventually filling with water.According to Cat Ross, designer and researcher for Love Death Design, “We chose to apply for [Unity] support to create this immersive documentary on urban oil extraction and its community health impacts on Tongva Land – in South Los Angeles – because, for those most affected by environmental racism, it is a matter of survival. Los Angeles is considered a microcosm of the world for its rich cultural contributions, but it is also a snapshot of environmental injustices faced by BIPOC and low-income communities throughout the world.”Drop in the Ocean, another grant-winning project, is a 10-minute social VR adventure where audiences hitch a ride on a jellyfish and encounter the mysteries of the deep. Most importantly, participants experience the plastic pollution crisis from the viewpoint of sea life. Read more about this project in a blog from one of the creators.“Through 2023, we will be exploring staging Drop in the Ocean at the most important environmental and climate action conferences and events, as well as supporting Conservation International’s outreach activity,” shared Vision3 Immersive Creator and Producer Adam May.At the “Accessibility Insights for Creators” roundtable we heard from Studio Director of Falling Squirrel Dave Evans, Accessibility Product Manager at Owlchemy Labs Jazmin Cano, and Blind Accessibility Consultant, Gamer, and Developer Lukáš Hosnedl about the importance of creating experiences with accessibility in mind.During this open conversation we listened as experts discussed the future of accessible gaming and how game developers can add features that will ensure their games can be enjoyed by everyone.In the “Create with AR Live” workshop, we were introduced to the latest Unity Learn free online course, Create with AR. This 13-hour, self-paced course will teach you how to create your own AR (augmented reality) face filter app.As we unlock the potential of AR apps, these skills are increasingly growing in demand, so now is a great time to add AR to your Unity skill set.What was your favorite part of this year’s Summit? To keep up with Unity for Humanity year round, visit the program website and sign up to our mailing list for social impact creator news and inspiration.

Who says that virtual reality (VR) is limited to gaming? Not Cas and Chary. Our team had the absolute pleasure of collaborating with the renowned duo on the Unity-sponsored YouTube video, AWESOME things to do in VR that’s NOT gaming.More than virtual reality’s reigning cutest couple, Cas and Chary are deeply passionate about showing how technology can improve our lives today – and shape the future. Here are just a few applications of Unity mentioned in the video that demonstrate how.During Cas and Chary’s segment on how VR can change the way we travel, they explored the Great Pyramids of Giza in Emissive’s Horizon of Khufu. This experience was designed in partnership with Peter Der Manuelian, professor of Egyptology and his team at the Giza Project at Harvard University. On the experience, CEO of Emissive Fabien Barati shared, “We are thrilled by the success of Horizon of Khufu. Both entertaining and educational, it shows how VR can be appealing to a wide audience.”With several years of research and data collected onsite, they managed to produce an immersive VR landscape that allows you to freely roam and discover one of the Seven Wonders of the World. A small group of us at Unity actually had the opportunity to try it at a pop-up in New York City, and we can confirm that it’s as magical as it sounds.“We are thrilled by the success of Horizon of Khufu. Both entertaining and educational, it shows how VR can be appealing to a wide audience.” – Fabien Barati, CEO of EmissiveTo quote Cas in the video, “You want a window that looks out to the universe? Done. You want five TVs instead of one? Done!” That’s where Custom Home Mapper comes in.It takes a one-to-one map of your home and brings it into the metaverse in three simple steps:Trace out the perimeter of your home.Mark out large objects, such as your couch or bed.Set your anchor, and you’re ready to start customizing your home for VR mini golf, or just about anything else you can imagine!The solo developer behind this SideQuest project, Ryan, explains why he created the app: “To help people experience real freedom of movement in VR. It was a joy to try and solve these unique, creative problems of multi-room gameplay and social home interactions.”Ryan acknowledges “The tremendous amount of support received from enthusiastic users who wanted to see the same dream realized… Couldn’t have asked for a more interesting project to keep busy with during Covid lockdowns!”We’ve been fans of Rezzil for a while now and couldn’t wait to introduce the app to Cas and Chary. Rezzil uses a VR headset with both eye- and feet-tracking to register a player’s skill level in a particular sport.Rezzil’s suite of drills helps athletes achieve excellence in specific modalities they need to improve. And it doesn’t end there: Rezzil puts players back into past matches so they can understand where there’s room to improve their performance. Top clubs like Manchester United F.C. and the Atlanta Falcons of the NFL are using the app, and while the team at Rezzil can’t say who, we know that at least five World Cup teams took the app with them to the competition.Our friends at Cause + Christi XR worked with six-time Emmy Award winner, Baobab Studios, to build a custom social VR world for the red carpet premiere of Baba Yaga. Daisy Ridley and Jennifer Hudson brought some star power to the virtual event and even took photos with fans in AltspaceVR.As Cas points out, doing premieres this way is fun and gives anyone with internet access and a headset the chance to join in. That’s our kind of guest list.BraVeR is doing something pretty spectacular. With intentionally designed VR spaces, this team is working to help people overcome their fears. All of the levels and tasks in BraVeR are tested by experts and users alike, and based on proven methods and studies to help people cope with their anxieties. Each of BraVeR’s unique spaces centers on a fear to offer a mutually challenging yet enjoyable experience.In the words of Moshe Radman, CEO of BraVeR, “I saw that there is a huge technological change coming at us and decided to use this change for good. Mental health is a great place to start. As I dug in more and more, I found out that this is an inefficient and overloaded market. But VR can radically help take the load off and make mental health-related solutions more accessible.”“VR can radically help take the load off and make mental health-related solutions more accessible.” – Moshe Radman, CEO of BraVeRWe can’t wait to see how extended reality (XR) will shape the future of product design and prototyping. One of the apps that gets us super excited about this is ShapesXR. Gabriele Romagnoli and his team created a product that’s intuitive to use, even for beginners in the XR space.Visualizing your thoughts with 3D sketching enables you to communicate in a way that isn’t really possible with traditional methods. Safe to say that Cas and Chary are thrilled with the app.“We’ve been in the XR space since 2015 and have seen that creatives still have a hard time contributing their skills and knowledge to this new world. We created ShapesXR with the mission to empower designers and any non-developers to ideate, design, and prototype immersive apps,” states Gabriele Romagnoli, Founder of ShapesXR.“Some of our users call us ‘the Figma for 3D and immersive’ and it is actually very spot on. ShapesXR is, in fact, easy to pick up, and you can mock up interactions in a way that is fully collaborative. We strongly believe that working together and being able to effectively communicate your ideas in real-time is the key to success.”For the construction folk among us, it’s impressive to see how Arkio has made it so much easier to design interiors, sketch buildings, and craft environments with our hands.As Cas says in the video, “It supports the right tools for the industry and it’s really, really powerful.” With Arkio, the only limit is your imagination.Transfr trains people for well-paying careers in high-demand fields. It enables learners to find secure jobs currently available and facilitates their upward mobility thanks to immersive, hands-on VR training.With complete VR courses, tailored to audiences at diverse educational institutions and companies, Transfr puts participants in simulations that teach real-world skills relevant to their career paths. They even include tests that are reviewed by instructors in specific fields. When Cas gave it a try, she had a blast learning about autobody tools.“There is so much undiscovered and underdeveloped talent in our world. These high-potential individuals are often passed over because they lack access to the training needed for well-paying careers at great companies,” says Bharani Rajakumar, CEO of Transfr.“VR allows us to deliver on-the-job training at a massive scale to support the economic development needs of different communities, so that employers get what they want, a highly skilled workforce – and we get what we want, a pathway to upward mobility. By working with everyone in the ecosystem, from customers to technologists, we are creating pathways, from classroom to career, that can help workers and learners access new skills and a better quality of life.”We’d like to see more XR experiences created for younger generations. After all, they hold the future of these technologies.That’s why the Kai XR platform is so exciting. Created by educators, it provides students with the ability to explore the world of immersive tech. Schools, libraries, and extracurricular programs like summer camps across the United States are using the platform to show students what’s possible with XR.According to Kai XR CEO Kai Frazier, “Kai XR works with a wide variety of students ranging from those at juvenile detention centers to charter schools. Some students are expert coders while others don’t know what coding is. From working with a range of experiences, I wanted to create a makerspace that lets all students dive into their imaginations, and doesn’t limit them due to schools lacking the tools or experience to create. All of their ideas are valuable and it’s great to see what they create in our drag-and-drop Metaverse Makerspace, Kai XR Create.”“I wanted to create a makerspace that lets all students dive into their imaginations, and doesn’t limit them due to schools lacking the tools or experience to create.” – Kai Frazier, CEO of Kai XRThe combined forces of Varjo Technologies and Volvo have done some stellar work with Unity. The two companies first came together to create a digital twin of the entire car factory – Volvo’s own metaverse. Engineers and designers can now show each other exactly what they envision in VR with an interactive 3D model.As Cas states in the video, this has resulted in improved collaboration, faster design iteration, and accelerated development. Working together in the metaverse, from start to finish, has been beneficial for Volvo, and it could not have happened without the incredible people at Varjo.And now, it’s time to enjoy more awesome things you can do in VR outside of gaming. Let Cas and Chary take it away.Are you using Unity for something other than games?If you’re using Unity for a unique project, give us a shout on social media.Follow Unity for Digital Twins on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. For more on Unity for Digital Twins, check out our recent demo or our new kickstarter package.

How to Market an Indie Game with Chris Zukowski

On November 1, more than 19,000 members of the Unity community joined us from around the world, both virtually and in-person, for a full day of gamedev inspiration, education, and connection. Following the keynote, attendees were able to experience fellow creators’ projects, participate in expert-led sessions, network with peers, and even attend a first-of-its-kind, multiplatform virtual concert.With over 20 streamed sessions throughout the day and five unique local experiences, here is a roundup of notable highlights from Unite 2022.Senior Machine Learning Developer Florent Bocquelet expanded on a tool and Real-Time Live! Audience Choice Award-winning project that first debuted this summer at SIGGRAPH 2022. The session “Authoring character poses with AI” walked attendees through how the technology – which is not yet available – is being designed to work in the Editor to enable easier creation of natural-looking poses.Benoit Gagnon, a senior software developer, modeled ways for users to handle persistent data in a multiplayer context during the session “Persistent worlds: Managing player and world state.” The technical deep dive also covered PlayerPrefs, CloudSave, and general-purpose DBs, and offered a glimpse at what’s next from Unity Gaming Services.Of the more than 20 virtual sessions, nine featured leading minds from creators like you who use Unity day in and day out to optimize your projects, including:Renaud Forestié, director and Unity Asset Store publisher at More MountainsNic Gomez, senior games designer at AltaFreya Holmér, studio founderBen Hopkins, expert graphics engineer at Owlchemy LabsRohan Jadav, platform engineer at SuperGamingBrandon Jahner, CTO at MalokaManesh Mistry, lead programmer at ustwo GamesErick Passos, SDK lead developer at Photon EngineWe also caught up with creators from Triangle Factory, Vinci Games, and Obsidian Entertainment during the keynote session.Get the inside scoop on the Unite 2022 experiences hosted in five unique locations at Unity offices around the world.After networking and breakfast, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Create Solutions Marc Whitten welcomed the Austin crowd before the global keynote stream. For the rest of the day, attendees had the chance to check out exclusive in-person sessions, global virtual streams, and panels, and chat live with experts at the “Ask the Experts” booth. The day concluded with a fireside chat between Marc Whitten and Jeff Hanks, director of marketing for industries.Kicking off with breakfast burritos, Unity Senior Vice President Peter Moore welcomed a packed crowd at the Brighton office for the Unite 2022 keynote stream. The day continued with enthusiasm as attendees filled rooms to watch session streams, live panels, and roundtable discussions. Topics exclusive to Brighton ranged from understanding your audience from a scientific perspective to how Unity identifies and fixes bugs. Brighton also featured a very popular iiRcade machine and four “Studio Spotlights” featuring local studios who talked about their latest games and how Unity helped bring each to life.At yet another Unity office, Copenhagen guests were also welcomed with breakfast and an introduction from Senior Director of Product Management Andrew Bowell. In addition to its own iiRcade console and chances to check out the Made with Unity games featured in the keynote – Cult of the Lamb, Turbo Golf Racing, and Hyper Dash – attendees were treated to exclusive panel discussions as well as a fireside chat between Head of Marketing Strategy, Analytics, and Insights Deborah-Anna Reznek and Senior Vice President of AI Danny Lange.Despite a rainy day, Montreal welcomed a solid mix of students and teams from mid- to large-sized studios. Luc Barthelet, senior vice president of technology, kicked off the day. Following the keynote stream, participants had their choice of roundtables, panels, and presentations to attend. The Montreal office also hosted 24 Unity Insiders from around the world, including Ireland, the Netherlands, Brighton, Portugal, Vancouver, and Toronto. This group participated in a VIP experience that featured exclusive tracks catered to their areas of interest.The San Francisco experience had a great turnout and offered a choice of three different tracks for attendees, which included breakout focus groups, roundtables with Unity experts, and panel discussions. One such session featured Clive Downie, senior vice president and general manager for Consumer, as he moderated an interactive discussion with Ingrid Lestiyo, senior vice president and general manager for Operate Solutions, and the creators of Ramen VR (pictured below) amid a packed room. Another standout session was CEO John Riccitiello’s fireside chat with indie game developer Thomas Brush. To cap off the memorable day, attendees continued the festivities with a happy hour.It was so great to connect with our Unity community at a Unite event again (for the first time since 2020). Please continue to join us on our journey toward making the world a better place with more creators: connect with us through the forums, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, or Twitch. And keep your eyes peeled in the coming months for on-demand session recordings so you can check out anything you missed.

Today, we announced that our merger with ironSource is complete. It's a big day for Unity, and we’re excited because ironSource’s team and complementary capabilities will help us deliver even more ways to help game developers bring their vision to life:The leading end-to-end platform – The combination of Unity and ironSource is transformational in that it will give mobile game developers the tools they need at each stage of their development journey: from building, publishing, and operating mobile games to monetizing them, if they choose to, and growing their player base across multiple channels.Integrating creation and growth – It’s not just about having all of these tools in one place but also about connecting them so that they work together to simplify the whole development process. Together with ironSource, we can transform the linear mobile game development process into a deeply connected and interactive one. By integrating ironSource's products into Unity's platform, developers will be able to get real-world player and market feedback earlier in the development process, which means that they can learn what players really want, make better games and be on track for a more successful game businesses.When we announced our intent to merge with ironSource in July, we heard a lot of our community members sharing some concerns and I’d like to address the main ones directly:“Is Unity no longer focused on games?”Helping developers create great games that reach players where they are has always been and will stay at the heart of what we do (read our Games Focus blog series to learn more). Our goal is to make the tools that make it easier for developers to realize their vision – and that includes supporting that vision with resources to help them turn their games into sustainable businesses, if and when they choose to do so, which ironSource will help us do as they, too, are heavily focused on games.“Is Unity now only focused on mobile game developers?”While mobile is, of course, a huge platform for games, with 70% of all top mobile games globally made with Unity, we also remain committed to developing features for PCs, consoles, and XR. We want to ensure that all developers, from early learners working on their first game to the largest studios in the world, can rely on us regardless of the platform they choose to deploy their games on.The benefits from the merger with ironSource are, indeed, particularly strong for mobile game developers who choose advertising as their business model. Gamers are a highly engaged audience but only a small minority (less than 2%) utilize in-app purchase in the games they play. Advertising and in-app-purchases are the ways most mobile game developers choose to monetize their games. And most players welcome ads as a way to discover new games to play. This provides developers with the revenue to not only pay the bills, but also fund their growing teams - and build more beautiful games.We know you will have a lot of questions about how Unity will integrate and introduce these products. We are committed to moving quickly and transparently to integrate our technologies to deliver the best tools and services and over the course of the next week will share more about the short-term benefits for mobile game developers in particular.Unity’s mission remains the same: We want Unity to be the best development engine for creators to create what they imagine – no matter what they want to do.Keep an eye here on our blog for more updates about product integration and roadmap over the next few weeks.

I’m back for part two! If you missed the first installment of my advanced Editor scripting hacks, check it out here. This two-part article is designed to walk you through advanced Editor tips for improving workflows so that your next project runs smoother than your last.Each hack is based on a demonstrative prototype I set up – similar to an RTS – where the units of one team automatically attack enemy buildings and other units. For a refresher, here’s the initial build prototype:In the previous article, I shared best practices on how to import and set up the art assets in the project. Now let’s start using those assets in the game, while saving as much time as possible.Let’s begin by unpacking the game’s elements. When setting up the elements of a game, we often encounter the following scenario:On one hand, we have Prefabs that come from the art team – be it a Prefab generated by the FBX Importer, or a Prefab that has been carefully set up with all the appropriate materials and animations, adding props to the Hierarchy, etc. To use this Prefab in-game, it makes sense to create a Prefab Variant from it and add all the gameplay-related components there. This way, the art team can modify and update the Prefab, and all the changes are reflected immediately in the game. While this approach works if the item only requires a couple of components with simple settings, it can add a lot of work if you need to set up something complex from scratch every time.On the other hand, many of the items will have the same components with similar values, like all the Car Prefabs or Prefabs for similar enemies. It makes sense that they’re all Variants of the same base Prefab. That said, this approach is ideal if setting up the art of the Prefab is straightforward (i.e., setting the mesh and its materials).Next, let’s look at how to simplify the setup of gameplay components, so we can quickly add them to our art Prefabs and use them directly in the game.The most common setup I’ve seen for complex elements in a game is having a “main” component (like “enemy,” “pickup,” or “door”) that behaves as an interface to communicate with the object, and a series of small, reusable components that implement the functionality itself; things like “selectable,” “CharacterMovement,” or “UnitHealth,” and Unity built-in components, like renderers and colliders.Some of the components depend on other components in order to work. For instance, the character movement might need a NavMesh agent. That’s why Unity has the RequireComponent attribute ready to define all these dependencies. So if there’s a “main” component for a given type of object, you can use the RequireComponent attribute to add all the components that this type of object needs to have.For example, the units in my prototype have these attributes:Besides setting an easy-to-find location in the AddComponentMenu, include all the extra components it needs. In this case, I added the Locomotion to move around and the AttackComponent to attack other units.Additionally, the base class unit (which is shared with the buildings) has other RequireComponent attributes that are inherited by this class, such as the Health component. With this, I only need to add the Soldier component to a GameObject so that all the other components are added automatically. If I add a new RequireComponent attribute to a component, Unity will update all the existing GameObjects with the new component, which facilitates extending the existing objects.RequireComponent also has a more subtle benefit: If we have “component A” that requires “component B,” then adding A to a GameObject doesn’t just ensure that B is added as well – it actually ensures that B is added before A. This means that when the Reset method is called for component A, component B will already exist and we’ll readily have access to it. This enables us to set references to the components, register persistent UnityEvents, and anything else we need to do to set up the object. By combining the RequireComponent attribute and the Reset method, we can fully set up the object by adding a single component.The main drawback of the method shown above is that, if we decide to change a value, we will need to change it for every object manually. And if all the setup is done through code, it becomes difficult for designers to modify it.In the previous article, we looked at how to use AssetPostprocessor for adding dependencies and modifying objects at import time. Now let’s use this to enforce some values in our Prefabs.To make it easier for designers to modify those values, we will read the values from a Prefab. Doing so allows the designers to easily modify that Prefab to change the values for the entire project.If you’re writing Editor code, you can copy the values from a component in an object to another by taking advantage of the Preset class.Create a preset from the original component and apply it to the other component(s) like this:As it stands, it will override all the values in the Prefab, but this most probably isn’t what we want it to do. Instead, copy only some values, while keeping the rest intact. To do this, use another override of the Preset.ApplyTo that takes a list of the properties it must apply. Of course, we could easily create a hardcoded list of the properties we want to override, which would work fine for most projects, but let’s see how to make this completely generic.Basically, I created a base Prefab with all the components, and then created a Variant to use as a template. Then I decided what values to apply from the list of overrides in the Variant.To get the overrides, use PrefabUtility.GetPropertyModifications. This provides you with all the overrides in the entire Prefab, so filter only the ones necessary to target this component. Something to keep in mind here is that the target of the modification is the component of the base Prefab – not the component of the Variant – so we need to get the reference to it by using GetCorrespondingObjectFromSource:Now this will apply all overrides of the template to our Prefabs. The only detail left is that the template might be a Variant of a Variant, and we will want to apply the overrides from that Variant as well.To do this, we only need to make this recursive:Next, let’s find the template for our Prefabs. Ideally, we will want to use different templates for different types of objects. One efficient way of doing this is by placing the templates in the same folder as the objects we want to apply them to.Look for an object named Template.prefab in the same folder as our Prefab. If we can’t find it, we will look in the parent folder recursively:At this point, we have the ability to modify the template Prefab, and all the changes will be reflected in the Prefabs in that folder, even though they aren’t Variants of the template. In this example, I changed the default player color (the color used when the unit isn’t attached to any player). Notice how it updates all the objects:When balancing games, all the stats you’ll need to adjust are spread across various components, stored in one Prefab or ScriptableObject for every character. This makes the process of adjusting details rather slow.A common way to make balancing easier is by using spreadsheets. They can be very handy as they bring all the data together, and you can use formulas to automatically calculate some of the additional data. But entering this data into Unity manually can be painfully long.That’s where the spreadsheets come in. They can be exported to simple formats like CSV(.csv) or TSV(.tsv), which is exactly what ScriptedImporters are for. Below is a screen capture of the stats for the units in the prototype:The code for this is pretty simple: Create a ScriptableObject with all the stats for a unit, then you can read the file. For every row of the table, create an instance of the ScriptableObject and fill it with the data for that row.Finally, add all the ScriptableObjects to the imported asset by using the context. We also need to add a main asset, which I just set to an empty TextAsset (as we don’t really use the main asset for anything here).This works for both buildings and units, but you should check which one you’re importing as units will have many more stats.With this complete, there are now some ScriptableObjects that contain all of the data from the spreadsheet.The generated ScriptableObjects are ready to be used in the game as needed. You can also use the PrefabPostprocessor that was set up earlier.In the OnPostprocessPrefab method, we have the capacity to load this asset and use its data to fill the parameters of the components automatically. Even more, if you set a dependency to this data asset, the Prefabs will be reimported every time you modify the data, keeping everything up to date automatically.When trying to create awesome levels, it’s crucial to be able to change and test things quickly, making small adjustments and trying again. That’s why fast iteration times and reducing the steps needed to start testing are so important.One of the first things that we think of when it comes to iteration times in Unity is the Domain Reload. The Domain Reload is relevant in two key situations: after compiling code in order to load the new dynamically linked libraries (DLLs), and when entering and exiting Play Mode. Domain Reload that comes with compiling can’t be avoided, but you do have the option of disabling reloads related to Play Mode in Project Settings > Editor > Enter Play Mode Settings.Disabling the Domain Reload when entering Play Mode can cause some issues if your code isn’t prepared for it, with the most usual issue being that static variables aren’t reset after playing. If your code can work with this disabled, go for it. For this prototype, Domain Reload is disabled, so you can enter Play Mode almost instantaneously.A separate issue with iteration times has to do with recalculating data that is required in order to play. This often involves selecting some components and clicking on buttons to trigger the recalculations. For example, in this prototype, there is a TeamController for each team within the scene. This controller has a list of all the enemy buildings so that it can send the units to attack them. In order to fill this data automatically, use the IProcessSceneWithReport interface. This interface is called for the scenes on two different occasions: during builds and when loading a scene in Play Mode. With it comes the opportunity to create, destroy, and modify any object you want. Note, however, that these changes will only affect Builds and Play Mode.It is in this callback that the controllers are created and the list of buildings is set. Thanks to this, there is no need to do anything manually. The controllers with an updated list of buildings will be there when play starts, and the list will be updated with the changes we’ve made.For the prototype, a utility method was set up that allows you to get all the instances of a component in a scene. You can use this to get all the buildings:The rest of the process is somewhat trivial: Get all the buildings, get all the teams that the buildings belong to, and create a controller for every team with a list of enemy buildings.Besides the scene being edited, you also need to load other scenes in order to play (i.e., a scene with the managers, with the UI, etc.) This can take up valuable time. In the case of the prototype, the Canvas with the healthbars is in a different scene called InGameUI.An effective way of working with this is by adding a component to the scene with a list of the scenes that need to be loaded along with it. If you load those scenes synchronously in the Awake method, the scene will be loaded and all of its Awake methods will be invoked at that point. So by the time the Start method is called, you can be sure that all the scenes are loaded and initialized, which gives you access to the data in them, such as manager singletons.Remember that you might have some of the scenes open when you enter Play Mode, so it’s important to check whether the scene is already loaded before loading it:Throughout parts one and two of this article, I’ve shown you how to leverage some of the lesser known features that Unity has to offer. Everything outlined is just a fraction of what can be done, but I hope that you’ll find these hacks useful for your next project, or – at the very least – interesting.The assets used to create the prototype can be found for free in the Asset Store:Skeletons: Toon RTS Units – Undead DemoKnights: Toon RTS Units – DemoTowers: Awesome Stylized Mage TowerIf you’d like to discuss this two-parter, or share your ideas after reading it, head on over to our Scripting forum. I’m signing off for now but you can still connect with me on Twitter at @CaballolD. Be sure to stay tuned for future technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.

Following the 2022 Unity for Humanity Summit, we’re looking for social impact creators who are using real-time 3D to make the world a better place. Is that you? If your answer is yes, or even maybe, Unity is awarding funding, technical support, and mentorship to help bring changemaking projects to life in 2023.To help you make the most of this opportunity, we’ve put together a few tips to guide you through the application process. Not sure if you need the support? We also spoke with three past grantees about their experience and how the support has helped them realize their creative vision.1. Lead with your passion.Are you dedicated to making the world a better place? That’s exactly what our judges will be looking for, so try to get that across in your application.2. Keep a record of all of your answers.To avoid potentially losing your hard work, write your submission text in a separate document before entering it into the Typeform application.3. Read the application criteria and questions carefully.There are no trick questions – we’re transparent about the projects that are eligible and the judging criteria we’ll be using, so make sure your application includes all the required information to improve your chance of being selected.For more guidance, watch our session on grant application tips from the 2021 Unity for Humanity Summit.To make sure all applicants have as much information and context as possible, we make our judging criteria clear. All projects must be impact-driven – meaning that they have measurable impact goals and/or calls to action – and encompass social, healthcare, education, humanitarian, and/or environmental issues. Projects must also align with at least one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.When reviewing grant applications, we consider inclusion, impact, viability, and vision:Inclusion – Inclusive storytelling is at the heart of the Unity for Humanity program. Does your project reflect a diversity of experiences and backgrounds? Does it have a natural connection to the community and audience being represented or served through the work? Does your application demonstrate that you are thinking about future audiences and distribution of the work in an inclusive way?Vision – Is there a strong motivation for creating the work? Does your project express a unique perspective? Does it reflect a strong sense of compassion for humanity?Impact – Does your project have measurable impact goals and calls to action? Is your project aligned with at least one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals?Viability – Does your team have a realistic plan of execution for the production and distribution of the project so that it can achieve the greatest impact? Is it realistic in scope?For more detailed information on applying, read our Unity for Humanity FAQ. If your project’s timeline doesn’t align with this year’s application period, you can pre-register for next year’s grant to receive inspiration, tips, and grant news.We spoke with three past Unity for Humanity grantees to learn about the impact receiving the grant has had on the development of their project.Love Death Design, creators of Gone to Water / Ido al Agua, an immersive documentary that brings first-hand accounts of environmental injustice in Los Angeles, Tongva Land, into a virtual space of protest.AnythingEverything, creators of Powers of X, an immersive film exploring our planet’s environmental fragility relative to the effects of global consumption and man-made climate breakdown.Presencias, creators of Origen, a series of virtual, digital and real-world experiences that reveal ancestral stories through nature.Q: What inspired you to create a social impact project?Love Death Design, creators of Gone to Water / Ido al Agua – New media can be leveraged as a profoundly impactful mode of storytelling: we can protest in virtual spaces, we can employ new technologies to demand sustainable future architectures.“New media can be leveraged as a profoundly impactful mode of storytelling.” – Love Death Design, creators of Gone to Water / Ido al Agua“Gone to Water” is a term that describes the process by which an oil well becomes unproductive and therefore unprofitable, eventually filling with water. We chose to apply for UFH support to create this immersive documentary on urban oil extraction and its community health impacts on Tongva Land – in South Los Angeles because for those most affected by environmental racism, it is a matter of survival. Los Angeles is considered a microcosm of the world for its rich cultural contributions but it is also a snapshot of environmental injustices faced by BIPOC and low-income communities throughout the world.AnythingEverything, creators of Powers of X – We are incredibly excited about using emerging technologies like XR to enable new formats for storytelling and create positive change, particularly when it comes to education about the climate crisis. With Powers Of X, we saw a powerful opportunity to harness VR and AR's unique ability to convey scale in order to reveal the impact we each have on the planet in a much more tangible way.Presencias, creators of Origen – Having been in contact with stories, memories of this land’s origin, led us to think that collaborating with storytellers from the various territories (the Amazon, the Andes and northwestern Argentina) to jointly create an experience in first person, interwoven by meaningful interactions, could result In a significant project capable of touching many hearts.“The project has driven an initiative to replant 20 different species in the mid-Ucayali region of the Amazon Rainforest.” – Presencias, creators of OrigenSomething incredible happened from the production phase of Origen, thanks to the collaborative networks it has woven, the project has driven an initiative to replant 20 different species in the mid-Ucayali region of the Amazon Rainforest. We understood that a project with these characteristics transcends what it can generate in the public once released. It is since its construction, through its dialogue with reality, that starts to generate an impact on multiple levels.Q: How did you come up with the idea for your project?Presencias, creators of Origen – The story of this project began more than ten years ago thanks to the bond with an incredible Mapuche descendant woman, Celeste, a great friend I’ve known since I was 19 (she’s also a script supervisor in the VR experience). Since then, in successive trips that I’ve made in Latin America, Celeste asked me to take presents of great symbolic value to her friends, guardians of other territories. It was revolutionary for me to be in contact with these women, their stories and this powerful network. Eventually these experiences became the opportunity to collectively create Origen.Q: What impact has the Unity for Humanity Grant had on your project?Love Death Design, creators of Gone to Water / Ido al Agua – Support from the Unity for Humanity Grant enabled our small creative design studio to produce a large scale project, collaborating with a wide spectrum of community members, activists and artists across South Los Angeles – Tongva Land. We were able to afford hardware to create the work, time and space to produce it, and the ability to compensate all our contributors – as well as offer free community workshops. As this is a pilot project for our artist-led studio, Love Death Design, having the support to realize the work in scope with our vision has been impactful and has greatly lifted our presence as under-represented artists and voices in the XR community.We are so grateful to have the support to co-create this work with community members, activists, and artists on the frontlines of environmental injustice and hope that this piece provokes those who experience it to consider their privilege and position, and join us in demanding the end of neighborhood drilling.“UFH was instrumental in helping us get our project off the ground and taking our concept from abstract idea to a tangible prototype.” – AnythingEverything, creators of Powers of XAnythingEverything, creators of Powers of X – We have used the UFH funding in order to conduct research around the subject matter, refine the conceptual experience, and most importantly to develop a functioning prototype which demonstrates the format and can be used in order to raise follow-on funding for the full production. We have successfully completed the prototype and we could not have done it if it wasn't for the help, resources, and support we received from Unity For Humanity.Presencias, creators of Origen – For the development of the experience and to implement the first steps of the replanting initiative that emerged as a result of the process of creating the firsts chapters of Origen.Receiving the grant was what made possible for this first chapter of Origen to come off paper and become a reality. It also gave us the freedom to create with so much autonomy, it allowed us to delve into the artisanal and interdisciplinary part of the project, which was crucial to respect its identity.The premiere of the first chapter, “The Journey to the Heart of the Amazon Rainforest,” is approaching and we are starting the pre-production of chapter two – “The Journey to the Andes” – which keeps us working and very excited for what is to come.The Unity for Humanity 2023 Grant is open for applications until 11:59 pm PT on December 9, 2022. Join our Social Impact creator Discord to speak to the Unity for Humanity team, ask questions, and meet other creators. Apply for the grant today.

This is the eighth blog in our Games Focus series, which highlights key product development initiatives for the year ahead and beyond. In this installment, we cover the status, upcoming release plans, and future vision for Unity Multiplayer Networking.Hi there, my name’s Kiki Saintonge and I’m a product manager on the multiplayer team – the one focused on delivering Unity’s Netcode for GameObjects solution.I’ve been at Unity for about a year, but I’ve been a hobbyist and indie Unity developer since 2013. My passion lies in games, particularly playing the inspiring things y’all make. I’m pretty excited to chat about our multiplayer solutions in this post today, especially since so many of you have voiced the need and desire to have a more complete and accessible solution to multiplayer development. We’re closer than you think.Let’s be honest: Making multiplayer games can be really hard, from designing the mechanics to implementing and testing. You have to account for so much – latency, packet loss, handling scene management, what should or shouldn’t be sent over the network – much of which is difficult to track or simulate. Even our third-party networking solutions need third- (fourth?) party tools just to see what the heck is going on.Building a complete networking system for your game should be just like the game itself: unique and refined to fit your game’s experience.With that in mind, we wanted to build a netcode solution that’s flexible enough to accommodate every core aspect of your multiplayer game, while also making it easier for you to use third-party tools or services if you need to. This is the fundamental goal of our netcode solutions.It’s also important to keep in mind that with multiplayer development comes services and scale, two things you might not have thought about in the context of single player or co-op. Unity Gaming Services is our recently launched platform that includes Game Server Hosting (Multiplay), Matchmaker, Relay, and Lobby services. It was designed to give you all the tools you need to build solid foundations, create engaging player experiences, and drive game growth, all within the same integrated ecosystem.We announced some amazing netcode solution releases this year. Our first major release of Netcode for GameObjects is now available in 2020 and 2021 LTS.This GameObject-based Netcode solution helps you get started building small-scale co-op multiplayer games. However, if you’ve built your experience using DOTS (Entities), we’re also pleased to announce our Netcode for Entities solution coming to the 2022 Tech Stream, which helps you get set up for a larger-scale multiplayer experience. Look for our next post in this series to learn more about that release.These stacks cover a wide foundational start to multiplayer development. Together, they make up one step of many to get you on your feet with multiplayer games. These releases also are focused specifically on critical networking scenarios, like abstracting how to communicate to servers and clients, sending object data across the network, and input handling.This release also supports some essential tools that allow you to track the packet loss, size, and latency of networked objects. Network Profiler is an extension to the Profiler that’s built into the Editor, and Runtime Network Stats Monitor(RNSM) is a customizable lighter-weight “Profiler” view of the network states that can be run on standalone builds for playtests.You can install these tools through our com.unity.multiplayer.tools package in-Editor.All of our Netcode stacks – yes, that includes Entities – are built on top of our Transport layer. This layer is netcode-agnostic and can be utilized with any solution.Unity Transport Protocol (or UTP) extends the user datagram protocol with added support for Unity Relay and extra security using DTLS. This layer works across Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and all major consoles.We also provide some light network simulation capabilities through our transport package’s Debug Simulator properties. This allows you to throttle or simulate latency or bandwidth issues when testing in-Editor.If you’re looking to get direct access to this lower-level networking library you can install it directly via the com.unity.transportpackage.Although Netcode for GameObjects is relatively new, there are already games being built with it.The wonderful team over at Fika Productions with Team17 are working on a beautifully hand-drawn game, Ship of Fools. It’s a fast-paced multiplayer co-op game of nautical persuasion developed completely in Netcode for GameObjects.We’re constantly looking to cover gaps and demystify what’s happening on the network with multiplayer tooling.Multiplayer Play Mode would be a big first step in making multiplayer development a first-class Editor experience.The goal of this multiplayer tool is to “just work” once you enter play mode. It offers the same experience as the single-player workflow, but now you can have up to four clients running within the same Editor session, each receiving its own console information and able to be differentiated with a network-based tagging system.Network Simulator is another feature we’d like to bring up from the Transport layer and expand into a more fully functional tool with a UI that lets you introduce lag spikes, set ping rates, trigger connections/disconnections at will, and even customize certain networking scenarios to run during playtests.We’re looking at getting our Transport package better integrated with Burst, as well as supporting WebSockets.Having a dedicated server is the core to many multiplayer games, and it comes with the need for more fine-grained control of what kind of headless server you’re building.We’ve begun to investigate the dedicated server workflow. This starts with giving you more control and clarity over which assets you want within a server and which you do not. Essentially, you’re selecting the content you want in your server builds, which saves you time and potentially bandwidth in the long run.Want to see the status of these features and more on Netcode for GameObjects?Check out our multiplayer networking roadmap to see what’s included in 1.0 and what’s in the works for future releases. You can also check out our recent Unite 2022 Roadmap session for an overview across the Unity ecosystem.Creating multiplayer games is not easy, and it’s common to feel overwhelmed when exploring the development of a multiplayer game – even with SDK docs provided.It’s our goal to equip and support you with the tools to build great multiplayer gaming experiences for your players. Part of that promise involves providing not only the foundational networking technology but also the documentation and educational templates, such as Boss Room, you’ll need to understand its application.There are many resources available today that you can use to learn more about Unity multiplayer solutions.Boss Roomis a small-scale cooperative game sample project built with Netcode for GameObjects. It’s designed to be used in its entirety to help you explore the concepts and patterns behind a multiplayer game flow.We’re continuing to develop in-house projects as well, to highlight new features and the general capabilities of what you can do with Netcode for GameObjects.Our latest game is Galactic Kittens, a 2D, multiplayer, playable, open source, co-op shooter.To start, check out these blog posts to learn about Unity’s multiplayer suite:Empower great multiplayer experiences with Relay and LobbyEnter the Boss Room: our new multiplayer sample gameState of disruptive behavior in multiplayer gamesChoosing the right netcode for your gamePlus some amazing resources created by our incredible community:COMPLETE Unity Multiplayer Tutorial (Netcode for Game Objects) | CodeMonkeyHow to: Unity Online Multiplayer | TarodevWe hope you’ll stay engaged with our Games Focus series by giving your feedback. Post your questions and comments for this blog in the multiplayer forum or in this dedicated thread.Visit our Productboard for full details on the roadmap. You’ll need to log in with your Unity ID and accept to use functional cookies. Each card on this interactive board is clickable, giving you more details about each topic while providing you with the option to share your feedback. Click on a card, select the level of importance of the topic to you, add your point of view, and submit. This feedback is then directly routed to the proper product teams.Netcode for GameObjects is a capable netcode solution, but if you’re looking to build something much bigger – think galaxies or multi-server MMOs with thousands of players active at once – you’ll want to stay tuned for the release of our next blog in the Game Focus series, which will be all about how to create larger worlds and richer environments.

At Appfest 2022, ironSource’s Maytal Shaul, Anna Popereko, and Yuval Lotan walked through 3 ways you can impact growth in the heavily automated App Economy - including tips for custom product pages, ad placement strategy, and A/B tests. Read the summary or watch the video below.In the mobile app industry, automation has been a growing force - improving performance for both user acquisition and monetization. But as Maytal, VP Business Growth at ironSource explains, automation is not a threat to manual control. In fact, to get to the best performance, man and machine should work together.Here are 3 areas where app and game companies can utilize this control and have the most impact.Spend more time optimizing on ad strategy and placementsYuval Lotan, ironSource’s Head of Platform Growth, kicked off the session with some important findings - optimizing placement strategy has significantly higher growth potential than optimizing waterfalls, up to 400% in fact. But surveying LevelPlay customers showed a disconnect in time allocation, with most studios investing the majority of their time into areas with the least growth potential.So why do studios tend to invest less in placement strategy? There are three main reasons: risk, team structure, and data accessibility.The retention riskNaturally, changing your ad placement strategy can be riskier than changing your waterfall - since it can affect retention, playtime and in-app purchases while optimizing your waterfall won’t. But for those same reasons, it can also be much more beneficial. According to ironSource research, users who engage with rewarded video have much higher retention rates and are much more likely to make in-app purchases. That increase in performance makes it a risk worth taking.Team structureTo best optimize your ad strategy, you need an expert, or a team of experts, who understand what your users need and how they respond to different ad units. But that can be difficult when your studio’s structure isn’t built for it.It can be tricky, for example, to collaborate on placement strategy when the monetization manager, product manager, and game designer, all sit under different teams with different goals. One might prioritize in-app purchase revenue while the other prioritizes ad revenue.That leaves you with three options:- Make changes to your company structure, if needed- Hire a dedicated person for this role, like we did at ironSource (more tips by her later)- Outsource to an agency, like ironSource’s game design consultancy Data transparencyMany studios also hesitate to invest in their placement strategy because it’s difficult to get transparency into what success looks like. Here are some of Yuval’s tips:First you need to know what KPIs to look out for. Start with engagement rate, or the percentage of users watching your ads - which is the best way to evaluate your growth potential because it’s proportional to your revenue. Additionally, pay attention to impressions per engaged user and impressions per DAU.Next, find out your category’s benchmark from your mediation partner - if you have a clear target, it’s much easier to define goals. For example, one RPG game compared their KPIs to the benchmarks and saw their rewarded video engagement rate was low but impressions/engaged user was high. From this, they understood that their ads were delivering good value to their users, but the traffic driver wasn't accessible enough for them to find it. In fact, when Yuval’s team built recommendations for this game, they calculated the game had a growth potential of more than 40%, because they estimated they could reach the genre’s median engagement rate. Eventually, this game boosted engagement rate by 60% - all while keeping retention stable.Following Yuval’s call to spend more time optimizing placements, Anna Poperko, ironSource’s in-house Game Design Consultant, shared four tips on how to do just that.Data is kingTo fully understand how users are engaging with a traffic driver, Anna recommends comparing KPIs (engagement rate, impressions/DEU, etc.) rather than viewing them in isolation - this way, you get greater context for players’ behavior. Let’s say one placement has a very low engagement rate but very high impressions per/engaged user - you can conclude that players don’t notice this placement often, but those who do find it very valuable.Understanding your players’ motivationsTo monetize players, it’s essential to first understand them and what they need. Gamers are commonly split into standard motivational groups - mastery, achievement, creativity, and more. If, for example, you know your players are motivated by achievement, you can match their motivations to a placement strategy that suits their needs - like offering a rewarded video to help when they fail.Know your competitorsTo maximize your ad placement strategy, it’s always worthwhile to learn from similar games to know exactly what makes your competition succeed. Playing those games is an opportunity to compare and understand their user flow. Do they have more or fewer placements? Where are their placements located? Does their app address the same user motivations as yours? See what gaps you can fill in your placement strategy - every insight is an opportunity, and there’s always room for improvement.Get inspired by other genresBeyond competitors, Anna recommended getting inspired by other successful genres that lean on similar player motivations. For example, Anna worked with a first-person shooter game that never updated the items in their store - losing engagement from players. Inspired by racing games that have stores which refresh monthly, the shooter game decided to refresh their store items more often - and revenue quickly increased. Even though the genres were vastly different, they both had “achieving” player motivations in common.Utilizing custom product pagesIn addition to optimizing placements, Maytal covered another area for growth: Apple’s custom product pages, a product of iOS 15 which has huge potential to boost IPM and conversion rate. 15%-43% increase in IPM, 8%-37% increase in CVR, and 7%-40% increase in eCPM, to be exact. It works by connecting custom versions of an app’s App Store landing page to specific creatives.Looking at the ironSource network, more than 40% of the spend is running with Apple’s custom product pages - and 90% of the advertisers utilizing custom product pages are running their UA through ironSource ROAS optimizer. From that, we understand that automating their bid strategy gives them more time to focus on their creatives and product page experience.As Maytal explained, there’s a reason why and how custom product pages boost IPM and conversion rate. Basically, they add an extra layer of optimization to the user journey - either towards your audience or your creatives. By optimizing custom product pages toward your audience, you get an additional opportunity to focus on language and localization, unique holidays, etc. Meanwhile, by optimizing towards creative elements, by adding screenshots, previews, similar colors, character, and other elements to match popular creatives, you get to build a better bridge between the product page and the creative that sent them there..In fact, when Pocket Gems saw one creative outperforming the rest, they created a custom product page to include that creative’s theme and ran it on the ironSource network. After a successful A/B test, they implemented the new page into their main campaign, and their IPM boosted by 16% as a result. Learn how they did it with ironSource.Applying A/B testingA/B testing is another key strategy to optimize both user acquisition and monetization.In fact, there’s a direct correlation between studios automating monetization by adopting in-app bidding and running A/B tests.By A/B testing monetization, you can measure the impact of any in-game change without hurting KPIs. It also helps predict ARPU and retention uplifts, while giving a clear window into users’ behavior.If you suspect that a change, even a small one - can boost your revenue or scale, it’s always worth finding out. In fact, among LevelPlay customers who A/B test - in 62% of cases, the B group wins - those who applied the new change saw their LTV grow by 7%. These changes might include adding/updating bidding networks, testing different ad placements (capping, pacing, rewards), and banner refreshment rate - all of which have the biggest impact on LTV.To run A/B tests successfully, Maytal recommends:- Challenging existing strategies you have - user behavior in a game is always changing - Testing a wide cohort of users to see the A/B tests impact on all audiences - Looking at both overall and granular results to better understand that the change will impact all groups positively- Testing everything - everything has potential to be optimizedSimultaneously, Maytal suggests:- Avoiding running tests that are too long in order to not risk hurting KPIs- In order to always pinpoint what is affecting results, don’t run test different test versions simultaneouslyUltimately, while the automation tools we have have great potential to increase performance, there is always room for manual optimization - we just have to find the best places to do it.

Synthetic data in Unity now includes synthetic humans and homes in this major release of our open-source tools.The success of increasingly ambitious machine learning (ML)-driven computer vision (CV) systems depends on high volumes of richly annotated data. Since performance of these systems depends so much on the data, gathering better data is often the best way to improve model performance. Collecting and annotating real data is so expensive and time consuming, however, that a data-centric approach is not feasible for many projects. To that end, thousands of teams have turned to Unity for building synthetic data for computer vision.Today we are making a big leap forward in synthetic data with a major update to our open-source tools for building synthetic data, which we are calling Perception 1.0. A new Synthetic Humans package gives you diverse, poseable, randomizable, and deterministic 3D humans. The new Synthetic Homes dataset generator provides photorealistic home interior data for scene understanding and object detection. Additionally, the Perception package has been updated with depth and normal outputs, path tracing support, and Python visualization and analysis tools.With this expanded suite of tools, we want to enable you to build high-quality synthetic data faster than ever.We are excited to announce the release of Unity Synthetic Humans, a 3D person generator built from the ground up for human-centric CV synthetic data. Thousands of hours went into creating the content using a mix of scanning, simulation, and 3D artistry. Today, we are sharing all of this work for free under an academic use open-source license.Unlike other digital humans, which provide small variations on a handful of base character models, Synthetic Humans create massive diversity by combining libraries of hair styles, fully anonymized facial and ethnic generation, body models, and clothing. As a result, each generated human is anonymous and unique – instead of generating a specific person, you control the sampling distributions on axes of randomization, including ethnicity, height, weight, and age. For example, a dataset with 20% teenagers, 45% young adults, and 35% middle-aged and older, can be specified in the generation parameters.Key features:Wide range of diversity in age, body type, and skin toneRich labeling, including body keypoints and clothing segmentationFully rigged and skinned bodies and clothes compatible with the Unity Animation SystemPlacement randomization in 3D environments with collision avoidanceWe are also releasing Synthetic Homes, a large-scale dataset of synthetic home interiors, and the associated dataset generator. Use cases for in-home CV are innumerable, but gathering diverse home interior data in the real world is notoriously difficult due to privacy concerns and data collection restrictions. Synthetic Homes aims to accelerate model training for such applications by providing a large dataset of varied home interiors with accurate and rich labeling, as well as a configurable dataset generator.We include a variety of randomizations to maximize diversity. These include materials, furniture type and configuration, sunlight angle and temperature, day/night switching, interior lighting temperature, camera angles, clutter, skybox, door and curtain animations, and more. The dataset generator gives you control over many of these elements, enabling you to tune them to your liking.Interior lighting in homes is complex and intentional, making photorealism especially important. We used Unity’s multi-bounce path tracing to accomplish physically accurate global illumination and reflections. This accuracy can help bridge the so called “Sim2Real gap”, improving a model’s ability to perform well in the real world after training on synthetic data.The Synthetic Homes project includes a 100,000 image dataset, a configurable dataset generator, and a notebook for data analysis. The dataset includes rich labels for semantic and instance segmentation, bounding boxes, depth, and normals. It also includes environmental information like occlusion percentage and camera position. To enable you to iterate on the data we also provide the dataset generator, where you can tweak parameters like camera positioning, blur randomization, and image size.The Perception package powers synthetic data in the Unity Editor. We are broadly expanding the package in this release to support new CV tasks, increase quality, and speed up dataset development. New Perception features include:A conveyor belt sample illustrates the capture of video datasets with randomized object spawning and physics.Ray tracing integration provides highly photorealistic images using physically-based multi-bounce lighting with minimal setup.Occlusion labeler calculates how much of an object is occluded by other parts of the scene and how much is offscreen. This information makes it possible to filter out annotations on highly occluded objects.Depth and normal labelers capture rendering layers that can be used for new tasks or give models additional information to perform better predictions.Transparency and two-sided geometry support enables pixel perfect labeling of plants in agriculture and outdoor environments.We also want to give the community more impact on Perception, so alongside this release we are also opening up the package to accept contributions from the community.Data exploration and analysis are critical to iterating quickly on synthetic data, and we want to make that as easy as possible. With this update we are introducing a new dataset format called SOLO, designed for large-scale image datasets extensible to new types of annotations and metrics. SOLO datasets are separated on disk by frame, enabling distributed dataset generation and processing.In tandem with the SOLO format we are releasing pysolotools, a new open-source python package that provides utilities to work with the SOLO format. The pysolotools Python package provides an iterator interface that allows you to easily work with SOLO data on a frame-by-frame basis. It also includes a framework to easily retrieve common dataset statistics universal to most CV problems such as object counts, size distributions, and heatmaps. Finally, with pysolotools it is easy to write custom scripts to convert from SOLO into your needed data format. Even easier, pysolotools comes with pre-built converters to some popular formats, including COCO.Finally, we recognize that it is important to be able to visually verify the data that was created. pysolotools-fiftyone is an integration with the Voxel FiftyOne viewer to allow you to visually inspect SOLO datasets.You can learn more about building synthetic data on Unity’s Computer Vision hub, including tutorials, case studies, and links to all of the content and examples.Synthetic data for machine learning is a growing, fast-moving field. Connect with the community and with us on the Computer Vision forums, where you can share questions and ideas.

It’s been a while since the Scene Management team has shared an update on Prefabs. During the last few releases, and after fixing a large number of bugs you’ve reported (thank you!), we’ve made several improvements to the Prefab system. Let’s take a look at each improvement coming in 2022.2 – now available in beta – and how these updates can benefit you.You can now replace the Prefab Asset for a Prefab instance that exists either in a scene or nested inside other Prefabs. This feature will keep the Prefab instance position, rotation, and scale in the scene, but merge the contents from the new Prefab Asset, all while retaining as many overrides and references as possible via name-based matching (by default). More specifically:The Inspector for a Prefab instance has a new Object Field that can be used for replacing the Prefab Asset.The Hierarchy has Context Menus that can similarly replace the Prefab Asset of the instance.Finally, a plain GameObject can be converted to a Prefab instance through the Context Menu in the Hierarchy, or by dragging and dropping with the Ctrl/Cmd modifier key.This functionality is not only available in the UI, but as with most features we build, it has an API that allows you to manage how objects are matched, as well as how Overrides should be treated. See PrefabUtility.ReplacePrefabAssetOfPrefabInstanceand PrefabUtility.ConvertToPrefabInstance.One of the most requested improvements has been the ability to reorder added GameObjects and components. “Added GameObjects and components” refers to the GameObjects and components that are not part of a Prefab instance, but are added to the Prefab instance in a scene or inside a Variant or Nested Prefab. So as of 2022.1, it is possible to reorder the added GameObjects by drag and drop – both among themselves and between GameObjects belonging to the Prefab instance. Getting this feature ready has required a major refactoring of the Undo system.If you want to reorder added GameObjects from an Editor script, it is simply a matter of setting the sibling index on the Transform of the added GameObject. The ability to reorder added components in the Inspector is included in 2022.2. There is no public API for reordering components.The last thing we needed to achieve full feature parity between GameObjects and components was the ability to delete GameObjects from Prefab instances as an Override. Deleting GameObjects as Overrides, an option available in 2022.2, ensures that once you’ve deleted a GameObject, the usual workflows for reverting from/applying to a Prefab Asset works as you’d expect.When it comes to an Editor script, use Object.DestroyImmediate to destroy Prefab instance objects and record the destruction as an Override stored in the scene file.Users often ask what the Variant inheritance tree looks like for a specific Prefab Asset. In 2022.2, we added the Prefab Family pop-up to the Inspector. The content of the pop-up is dependent on the selected Prefab Asset in the Project Browser. After selecting a Prefab Asset and opening the Prefab Family pop-up, the Editor lists all the ancestors of the current Prefab, as well as all the immediate children.In addition to queries about the inheritance tree, users have often asked how they can get rid of unused Overrides stored in a scene but never accessed (because the property has been removed from a script). In the worst case, such properties might reference assets that are then pulled into the final build, taking up space on the storage device and in memory – but never used.Overrides are now flagged as unused for:Null target objectsUnknown Property Paths (which are not subject to scripted FormerlySerializedAsAttribute usage)Removed componentsRemoved GameObjectsChanged array dimensions (e.g., materials array)When selecting one or more Prefab instances in the Hierarchy and opening the Overrides drop-down, the Editor now shows whether there are unused Overrides. You can then remove them from the scene using the new Unused Overrides drop-down.Moreover, you can remove all unused Overrides in a scene through the Hierarchy’s Scene Context Menu or via the Context Menu for an arbitrary selection of Prefab instances.We do not automatically remove unused Overrides. After all, the reason for their existence cannot be inferred. Removing a property from a script or deleting an asset should not automatically remove unused Overrides as you might subsequently wish to undo the removal and have the Overrides restored.In case you’re wondering: “Why do I still have Overrides on my Prefab instance after pressing ‘Apply All’?” The answer is that those Overrides simply can’t be applied to the Prefab Asset. Most commonly, such Overrides are references to other objects in the scene that cannot be referenced from the Prefab Asset. Overrides that are not typically applicable are now highlighted by a dark blue bar in the Inspector. These cannot be applied; only reverted.You can now change the default behavior when opening Prefab Mode to In Isolation instead of In Context. Go to Editor Preferences > General > Default Prefab Mode to make this change.Now, with 2022.2, Undo is recorded as a single Undo operation when exiting Prefab Mode. This results in all changes made to the Prefab being reverted if you perform an Undo after leaving Prefab Mode.Over the course of multiple releases, the error handling and reporting during scene load (and Prefab load in Prefab Mode) has substantially improved, and will now indicate which Prefabs the errors are related to and/or the GUID for missing Prefabs. In fact, the way we handle missing Prefabs’ assets during scene loading is safer and more stable than before.In an effort to further improve error handling and avoid introducing bad data into your project, we’ve added a Broken Prefab Asset Type, which will be produced by the Prefab Importer when errors that cannot be rectified are encountered.The most common case is when a Prefab Variant has lost its parent Prefab, perhaps because it was deleted. In this case, we can’t produce a meaningful Prefab Variant, so a Broken Prefab Asset is created instead. This new asset will show information about what is wrong in the Inspector when selected in the Project Browser. If it’s a case of a missing Prefab parent, then the GUID of the missing Prefab is shown. Alternatively, if it’s a chain of Prefab Variants that is broken, you can go up the chain through the Inspector until you find the Variant with the missing parent.The concept of Disconnected Prefab instances no longer exists as of 2022.1. We still support loading Disconnected Prefab instances, but when the Editor encounters them during scene loading, the Disconnected Prefab instances are stripped of all their Prefab information and become regular GameObjects.As mentioned, our team has fixed a series of bugs you’ve graciously reported to us over time. Some of them derive from the original Prefab system, but many have only become apparent upon the introduction of our improved Prefabs.Today, we are confident you will enjoy the stability of the latest Prefab system. We hope you will find it smooth and efficient to work with.Have more Prefab-related questions or comments? Join us in the forums to share your feedback.

Aiming Inc. is a Japan-based game developer responsible for hits like Dragon Quest Tact and CARAVAN STORIES. They wanted to bring in more revenue from their newest hit, Charast Magical Academy a spin-off app of the hit game "CARAVAN STORIES, but had never used an ad monetization model - so the ironSource team helped them get started.ironSource’s Yusuke Toyoshima and Shuichiro Mine sat down with Aiming, to learn all about why they chose ironSource rewarded video and the Tapjoy offerwall, what they learned, and how they managed to boost their engagement rate 80% in the process.Choosing to work with ironSourceMine: This was the company’s first time using ad monetization, right?Saito: Yes. Aiming has a stance that when we see good market trends, we want to adopt and test it by ourselves - so it was only natural to start monetizing with ads. Originally, our company specialized in midcore games, but there were already many competing apps in the market. To generate a stable source of revenue, we decided to develop a hybrid revenue model (in-app purchase and ads) based on "CARAVAN STORIES," which already has a large fan base.Mine: Now you’re monetizing with ironSource and using Tapjoy’s offerwall - why did you decide to go with us?Sakaino: This was our first time integrating ads into our app, so we needed a platform that offered extensive support and a full suite of products. We compared companies from all over the globe, but ironSource was the only one completely that fulfilled our needs.Yusuke: We're glad you chose us! Sakaino: We felt the support immediately - the ironSource quickly responded and drafted financial projections for us.Mine: Publishers who integrate ads in their apps for the first time often don’t have enough information about performance benchmarks. Since ironSource has experience across all game genres in Japan and globally, we can provide our customers with practical ad monetization plans.Sakaino: There were other local options with good products for early-stage companies, but we wanted to get as much operational know-how as possible. That's why we chose ironSource - they offer a variety of report data with a UI that allows us to intuitively understand what’s important at first glance. There was a strong connection between Aiming’s attitude of "challenge new trends and accumulate know-how" and ironSource's push to "provide actionable data for publishers."Mine: At ironSource, we care about providing actionable data. In the long run, we think it is very important to understand the factors behind fluctuations - not be overwhelmed by the ups and downs of CPMs. Ad revenue is always important, but what’s most important for publishers is the success of the game itself. We provide data in a format and UI that every publisher can understand - not just the specific person in chargePerforming beyond expectationYusuke: How was the integration process?Sakaino: It took about two weeks to develop and integrate rewarded video and offerwall into our game. Since the dashboard was easy to understand, even for beginners, we were able to issue and set up placements in one day.Suzuki: From the planning phase, everyone on the team had a shared strategy of how to put ads into our game - so I think it went really smoothly.Mine: I feel that your monetization and game management teams work seamlessly together. For many publishers, this can be challenging - different teams usually have different goals and opinions.Sakaino: Since I joined the project, from the game planning phase to leading ad monetization, I think everyone, including the development team, shared a common goal.Suzuki: It may seem unusual to have someone in charge of ad monetization during the planning phase. Normally people tend to give higher priority to their own department, so perhaps our company's strength is the way that each department can share and coordinate all goals.Yusuke: How was the ad revenue performance?Sakaino: The result was much better than we expected. eCPM for ironSource rewarded videos was more than double our original estimation, and engagement rate reached 80% - even though our original estimation was 65%.Mine: Since the players are mainly from "CARAVAN STORIES," the user quality may be different from the other casual game players. If your game has been around for a while and has a certain income level, eCPM might be higher as a result.Sakaino: I think that’s right.Suzuki: Since the game story is a prequel about the lives of popular characters, fans are highly motivated to play.Mine: It's a successful app strategy for using IP (intellectual property).Sakaino: Tapjoy’s offerwall also performed better than we originally expected. Especially in the beginning, it performed better than the rewarded videos.Yusuke: Since Offerwall provides bigger rewards than rewarded videos, it’s particularly compatible with games that have many users who are willing to pay.Saito: In particular, Android has good KPI compatibility with the offerwall. Android users usually have a lower retention rate, but the offerwall increased revenue and stabilized it.Showing ads to domestic and global usersMine: Did you get any negative user feedback about ads?Sakaino: I don't think there were any noticeably negative reactions.Mine: The key to user-initiated ads like rewarded videos and offerwall is motivating the users to see the ads. "Charast Magical Academy" was designed to use ad monetization from the start, so I think it shows ads to users in the best way possible.Suzuki: Since we set the right rewards for both the offerwall and rewarded video, users connect with the ads and feel satisfied with them.Saito: The rewards we offer are valuable to users. To ensure that users who want to receive rewards don’t miss them, we added badges to places where there are ads that have not yet been seen, and added a jump button that auto-scrolls to that point. However, it seems that some new users thought that they couldn't progress in the game without clearing the ads, so now we only display badges for users who have progressed to a certain stage.Yusuke: I see.Saito: Impressions grew about 2.5x the normal rate during the offerwall's currency sale, but when we displayed the badge on the game screen and directed users to the ad page, it grew 8x - a huge revenue increase.Yusuke: It's a device that tells users that an offerwall event is currently being held.Sakaino: Also, Charast Magical Academy is only available on Japan’s app store, but some overseas fans download and play it. Thanks to the Tapjoy offerwall’s global support, it’s been great to be able to show global ads and rewards to overseas users.Yusuke: Global support is the Tapjoy offerwall's strength. There is no need to separate campaigns, and global ads are automatically displayed for access from overseas, to accommodate overseas users. Also, the offerwall is optimized with an algorithm to automatically display ads that users are interested in on the top of the list, so publishers can maximize their revenue without spending too much time and effort.Continuing to use ad monetization modelsMine: What are your plans for the future?Sakaino: We are satisfied with ironSource’s usability and profitability, and will continue to use both their rewarded video and the Tapjoy offerwall. For the offerwall, thanks to their global support and compatibility with Apple/Google’s regulations - we’re sticking with Tapjoy.Yusuke: That's great news for us.Saito: We plan to continue releasing games with an ad revenue model. Thanks to our new know-how from Charast Magical Academy, I'm including ads in all the proposals for our new games. Since it generates additional revenue and doesn’t discourage in-app purchases, there’s no reason to not use it.Sakaino: In the future, it would be nice to have a verification function that can segment users according to their in-app purchase status and level of loyalty, and optimize ads accordingly.Thank you to Mr. Sakaino, Mr. Suzuki, and Mr. Saito for participating in the interview. And congratulations on your half anniversary!

In an excerpt from the e-book, User interface design and implementation, veteran game designer Christo Nobbs examines the interplay between UI and game design.Our e-book, User interface design and implementation, illustrates how UI artists and designers can build better interfaces in Unity. The guide covers workflows for the two UI systems available in Unity, but the primary focus is on Unity UI Toolkit for Unity 2021 LTS and beyond. Christo Nobbs, the game designer who was also a major contributor to The Unity game designer playbook, shares a section that he provided for this latest guide on how UI and game design can create rich immersion to keep your players captivated.Successful games are immersive. Whether it’s a VR simulation or mobile role-playing game (RPG), a great game transports us to a different world.Immersion requires a delicate balance of UI and game design. The UI needs to be functional – but within the confines of the game’s art direction and overall identity. The trick is using the right UI for the right situation.Should you show an onscreen icon when a player picks up an item or defeats an enemy, or is that too distracting? Could a misplaced pop-up take the viewer out of the action? These are the kinds of questions you’ll need to consider as a UI designer and artist in the larger context of your game.One current trend is diegetic UI. Today’s game players inherently recognize traditional extra-diegetic UIs, such as health bars or menu screens, as conventions of the medium. They’re artificial devices plastered on the “fourth wall” to communicate with the user. But diegetic UIs, conversely, embed themselves into the story and narrative. They make parts of the game world function as a user interface.Imagine a game character that pulls out an empty weapon magazine in a scripted Timeline sequence. That animation can replace a head-up display (HUD)-based ammo counter.The Dead Space series is often cited as a prime example of diegetic interface. Here, the player dons a sci-fi survival suit, which motivates the game’s UI. The suit’s holographic display projects in-game statistics and inventory, as well as colored lights on its spine that double as a health indicator. The result is a built-in UI seamlessly integrated into the story.In iRacing by iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations, realistic in-car dashboard indicators show damage, which also affects the car’s handling. The player understands there’s something wrong with the vehicle through audio and visual cues, rather than an explicitly flashing vignette or HUD icon.On the flip side, if a game is tooimmersive, the designer can build an “out.” A horror game can give the player a “safe word” with a pause button. This intentionally breaks immersion if scenes become too intense.Experienced designers understand that the UI must fit with the game’s identity. The interface needs to be clean, readable, and appropriate for the situation. With today’s hardware, you can realize advanced UIs that support the story you are trying to tell.At the other end of the spectrum, competitive games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or CS:GO, Overwatch, and League of Legends depend on UIs that gather information. They use HUDs that must be efficient and assist in gameplay. Diegetic interfaces are less appropriate here. Breaking that fourth wall can actually make for a better game.Since the players have a keen awareness that they are participating in a planned experience, the interface helps them assess the “playing field” – remaining time, team rosters, vitals, minimaps, etc. In some ways, this reflects a sporting event, where the broadcast UI updates its spectators.Whether they’re showing team positions or illuminating players through walls, these UIs have the effect of enhancing strategy and tactics. They can also build suspense for the player and heighten the experience. Thanks to the UI, being a spectator after losing an online match can sometimes be as entertaining as playing.In World of Tanks, the spatial UI elements appear above each player’s tank to relay information about teammates and enemies; things like their name, tier, health, and tank icon. The HUD point bar, navigation elements, and minimap all share a clean and direct visual language.By working with your designer, you can better understand the game’s UI needs. Gameplay is a balance between challenging your players and sharpening their skills. Ideally, this will pass through the Flow channel (see the chart below).Tilt too far to one side and you risk boring your players. To alleviate that, reduce UI elements and increase the challenge level. Then you can force the player to puzzle through the gameplay without too much assistance.Making the game too difficult, on the other hand, can result in anxiety. In this case, adding UIs can lessen gameplay confusion and get your target complexity back on track.Think of UI as a design device meant to steer your game into this Flow channel. An interface shouldn’t waste the viewer’s time. It should clearly communicate its content (e.g., load out, health, etc.), but nothing else. Your designer will likely go through numerous iterations as the product evolves into its shippable form. Let the players – and the gameplay – work out the rest.Tip: UI text You might want to use less text in your interfaces to improve their focus. Small adjustments to icons, fonts, and layout can all impact game pacing. Less text, where appropriate, can also make it easier to localize your game.For more UI text tips, see Joseph Humfrey’s 2018 GDC talk, Designing text UX for effortless reading.Interface designers today have a vast library of game applications to learn from. You can explore them through the Game UI Database. This massive, searchable site allows you to filter by HUD element, type, style, and feature, among other categories. Use it to pore over hundreds of published games and study their in-game menus and screens.Another great resource is Interface in Game. It features video clips of UI elements you can browse. Use this database to search a wide range of titles by platform and genre. Need to polish up some visual effects or UI details? You’re likely to find a reference here.As you examine more game interfaces, you’ll begin to perceive patterns, especially by genre. In a first-person shooter (FPS), for example, we expect to see the health stats at the bottom of the screen. It’s almost an established convention, since so many applications have done it this way.When designing a UI, it’s important to capture the genre’s visual language. If you’re building an RPG, look at how other RPGs handle inventories, skill trees, leveling up, etc. Make something that players are already familiar with, so they can jump right into the gameplay with an understanding of the established style.UI design patterns aren’t random. They’ve evolved over time through a sort of collaborative effort. Designers have already figured out what works, and new designs are simply building on an existing game canon. Learn from these past design decisions. You’ll not only save yourself time, but appease your players as well, who will be expecting certain patterns and visuals in the game.For more information on UI design patterns, read Best practices for designing an effective user interface by Edd Coates, a senior UI artist from Double Eleven.UI Toolkit sample – Dragon Crashers is a demo available to download for free from the Unity Asset Store. This sample demonstrates how you can leverage UI Toolkit for your own applications, and involves a full-featured interface over a slice of the 2D project Dragon Crashers, a mini RPG, using the Unity 2021 LTS UI Toolkit workflow at runtime.You can find more advanced e-books for Unity creators on our How-to hub.

Making a game is hard. Getting anyone to care about it might be harder. That’s why we launched the Indie Survival Guide — an evolving archive of Q&As, VODs, and live streams from developers and industry folks. There’s no guaranteed playbook for success, but hearing how others navigated design, business, and getting by can give you better odds. In this recent stream, we sat down with Chris Zukowski from HowToMarketAGame.com, who shared honest, actionable advice on standing out in a crowded Steam marketplace. Below are a few highlights from the conversation.1. Optimize your Steam pageA good Steam page does two things: it tells players exactly what kind of game they’re looking at, and it proves that it’s worth their time. According to Chris, clarity is king:“You wanna make your Steam page look like your type of game so that at an instant somebody shopping goes, ‘Ah, it's that type of game—I’m gonna buy it.”To build trust, you also need to look professional, and that starts with how your game is presented visually.“You wanna show quality. And another way to do quality is you should hire a capsule artist,” says Chris. “I’m telling you folks… don’t just use Unity, take a screenshot, and then use MS Paint to write the title of your game. Don’t do that.”Details matter, even in your thumbnail. Chris pointed out how players make fast visual associations when skimming through the store.“Every capsule always has a hammer. I don’t know why,” he says. “But if you just put a hammer in your thumbnail for your game—it’s called a capsule—people are gonna see that hammer and subconsciously go, ‘Oh, I bet I build a city with that.’”Why is all this important? Often, you have that first 5 seconds when someone lands on your Steam page or views your capsule browsing the platform to grab their attention. The competition is steep, and you need to find any way to rise above the noise.2. Choose the Right Genre on SteamYour first marketing decision isn’t the trailer, or the tweet — it’s the game you chose to make. Genre isn’t just a creative choice; it defines your market fit.“The moment you say ‘I’m gonna make this type of game,’ you’ve actually made the biggest marketing decision,” Chris explains. “People think like, ‘Oh, I’ve made my game and now I want to start thinking about marketing.’ It’s too late.”Chris emphasized that certain genres are better suited for Steam’s player base. Horror is a consistent favorite, as are systems-driven games.“Most of the games that do very well are genres that people don’t typically make. The big one is horror. The other ones I call crafty building strategy simulation-y games,” he says. “Crafty building strategy simulation-y games—these are games where they’re almost like a sandbox. It’s not like a linear story where you’re a dude with a sword and you run through an environment.”Things like crafting games, management and automation games, city builders, and simulation games do really well on Steam, even if they don’t become household names. This has held true for awhile. Trends on Steam aren’t as unpredictable as they seem. Chris has tracked genre performance over several years and found them surprisingly stable:“I’ve done this for the past three years to look at the big genres that are on there… and typically, it’s very consistent year over year. These trends aren’t running. These trends are staying the same.”3. Avoid Common Mistakes on SteamEven great games can stumble at launch because of simple oversights. One of the biggest? Not treating your Steam page launch as an announcement:“People have never announced their game,” he says. “I know this sounds weird… but a lot of people just throw their Steam page up and then their Steam page is live. No. When you put your Steam page up, you announced your game.”Another major one: forgetting to use Steam’s built-in tools to notify your audience.“You launch your game and… you didn’t push the ‘email wishlisters’ button? That’s a big one. That’s a new rule. That was instituted in about October. But that’s it—you have to push the button,” he says. “You have two weeks from when you launch your demo to push this button called ‘email wishlisters’… do not forget. A third of responses to my survey were like, ‘what’s an email button?’”Discovery on Steam is based on a lot of things, but don’t underestimate metadata and tags. Steam’s discovery algorithm relies heavily on tags, yet many devs ignore them or don’t maintain them.“Another stupid thing—check your tags. I’ve seen people that have like 10 tags. No—you wanna get all the tags."4. Prepare for Steam Next FestSteam Next Fest can offer a massive visibility spike — if you show up prepared. That means your demo needs to be in shape before the event begins.“You should not be debuting your demo during Next Fest,” he says, “Next Fest is the grand… it’s the quinceañera. It’s the grand debut of the final stage of yourself. You should have released your demo long before.”This is especially important because Steam gives all participants equal footing at first — but only boosts games that perform well early.“You want your demo bulletproof,” he says. “You’ve wanted it vetted by streamers before. You’ve wanted it in other festivals. Because if on that first day everybody fires it up and there’s some bug… you’re done.”Chris emphasized the importance of building wishlists before the event begins:“If you’re coming into Next Fest hot with more wishlists, you will do better. That’s why you want to get that demo out early and build some momentum before the fest begins.”5. Invest wisely when supplementing your Steam pageIf you're chasing visibility, you don’t need to buy a massive toolset or a stack of ads. In fact, most of this process can be done with strategy and timing.“There aren’t that many tools… you don’t need to buy a lot. Marketing is not pay-to-win that much,” he says about marketing a Steam game. “Marketing is actually much more strategic, and it’s about when you time certain activities and what you do.”The only thing Chris consistently recommends spending on? A pro-looking capsule image.“The only thing I really recommend spending money on is hiring a capsule artist. Other than that, most of this is free and DIY.”There are no magic formulas, but learning how others have done it can go a long way. If there’s one consistent takeaway from this chat with Chris, it’s that marketing is not just about shouting as loud as you can on social media. You need to make a game that the market on that platform is looking for, make it obvious that it’s that type of game, and let the game do the marketing work for you. Getting demos out early is key. You can follow more of Chris’s work at HowToMarketAGame.com, or dive deeper into the Indie Survival Guide for more hard-earned advice from devs who've been there.Keep making games, and don’t forget to push that e-mail button.

The Indie Survival Guide is your ongoing archive of real talk and hard-won insights from the devs and industry experts making games happen—often against the odds. Whatever tools you’re using, this growing library of Q&As, livestreams, and VODs is here to help. There’s no magic formula, but we believe shared experience—across design, business, and survival—can give you the best shot.We recently sat down with Emily Pitcher—a Forbes 30 Under 30 and Game Awards Future Class honoree, better known online as sonderingemily to her 350,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram, and beyond. Emily is the creator of lily’s world XD, a psychological horror game built on cringy teen nostalgia, fourth-wall breaks, and real photos from her own adolescence. Her work spans game dev and content creation, and she’s the first to admit: it hasn’t all been easy. But the journey has a lot to learn from.Here’s what she had to say.1. Failing as part of the processBefore the success of lily’s world XD, there was Gold Lining—a project that taught Emily the brutal, necessary lessons of creative failure. She poured her heart into the game, even secured early funding from Xbox, but ultimately it didn’t find traction. There was no publisher. No finish line. Just hard decisions and emotional fallout. But it was also the beginning of clarity.“Gold Lining was a project I started basically right out of college,” she says. “Instead of researching what might be popular with Steam players, I just thought, what would be a concept that seems cool to make?... We actually got some funding from that game from Xbox… but unfortunately, we were never able to secure a publisher with that game, and the game was ultimately cancelled.”Emily doesn’t romanticize this period. The dream faltered. Her confidence did too. And the weight of rejection nearly broke her.“The game could not be finished without money,” she said. “The scope was just way too big… and we kind of came at a crossroads of what should we do… I stopped having fun making the game… I was really sad every day with the rejections… I stopped believing in the game itself.”Still, she made the hardest—and wisest—move: she quit. And by walking away, she opened the door to her next act.“It was honestly really hard, very emotional—there was crying involved, of course—but now looking back, I am so happy I had the courage to step away,” she says. “I do not regret that failure at all because only because I went through that and learned the hard way, that lily’s world XD has been able to get grounding.”2. Turning Mistakes Into MomentumEmily didn’t just recover—she reflected. Every painful lesson from Gold Lining became a data point. And rather than rebuild in the same direction, she rebuilt smarter.“[Chris Zukowski] actually had this video that changed my life,” she says. “He did this interview with a popular game dev channel and he had this whole section about genre. And he said platformers—the worst genre—that hurt a little bit.”The first shift? She stopped building games no one could explain. She learned that clarity matters. Especially when talking to publishers or creating content, having a razor-sharp pitch can be the difference between intrigue and indifference.“You can summarize the hook of your game in one sentence,” she says. “That one sentence can guide you when you're talking to publishers, guide you when you're making content about your game.”She also interrogated her design logic more rigorously. Was every mechanic supporting the theme, or just convention?“I was just following the conventions of the genre and not asking myself, are we just doing this because it’s a platformer?” she said. “Or are we doing this because it helps the central theme of the game?”Most importantly, she dismantled the echo chamber. No more developing in isolation. Instead, she decided to involve the audience early—and often.“Another big thing I would do is to try to validate your game earlier,” she says. “With Gold Lining, it was just an echo chamber of me and my friends… with lily’s world XD, I made the videos from the very beginning.”3. Playing to your strengthsOne of Emily’s biggest unlocks wasn’t about tech or trends. It was about accepting who she is—and who she isn’t. She’s not a trained programmer. She’s not a pro artist. But she is a storyteller. A designer. A builder of weird, personal worlds. And when she embraced that, things clicked.“You gotta be a little objective about what you're good and bad at,” she said. “I suck at programming. I am a good writer. And I would say I'm passable with art… if someone told me, ‘I suck at programming, I'm mediocre at art, and I can only write,’ I’d be like, ‘You should not make an indie game’… but even though all of those things are true, when I get the feedback form for my game, for playtesters, people actually say that art direction is one of their favorite things.”Instead of pretending to be someone she wasn’t, Emily designed around her limits. And in doing so, she carved out a creative space that felt truly hers.“I worked around my weaknesses,” she says. “I suck at programming, so I decided to make a game that I thought would be easier to program… I used to work at Meta, so I’m familiar with tools like Figma… I use pictures of myself because I’m not that good at art… and it is a narrative detective game, so storytelling and writing is at the forefront.”Her lesson: don’t wait to be good at everything. Use what you’ve got.“Limitation is what makes you seem competent if you have a lower skill set,” she says. “If you're doing pixel art and you use a limited color palette, immediately your art is gonna seem more cohesive just because of that—even though you still suck.”4. Publicly validating conceptsIn contrast to the quiet, closed-door development of Gold Lining, Emily took a radically open approach with lily’s world XD. She didn’t just develop in public—she launched her audience journey before her Unity project even existed.“With Gold Lining, it was a secret right up until the end… I worked for about two years in private on the game,” she said. “And with lily’s world XD, I thought: in the first week of development, let’s make a video. And that video got 2 million views… I realized that I could use social media as a way to evaluate whether my ideas had strengths.”The result? Instant feedback. Viral traction. And a powerful way to gauge demand before sinking years into development.“I had started making videos here and there… eventually I grew a small audience,” she says. “I posted one of my TikTok videos to Instagram just to share with my family and friends. That video got over 2 million views, and now I do it as a career.”This approach wasn’t accidental—it was strategic. She tested multiple angles and found the hook that stuck.“When I had an idea, I came up with a few sentences of hooks,” she explained. “...and what led to the huge boom and rise of my game… was this thing I did to save time, that ended up being a cool developer story.”Emily’s story proves you don’t need a huge following to start. You just need to start.“I know that not everyone has a massive social media following,” she said. “But I don’t think you need a massive social media following to validate this idea through social media… Unpacking went viral at its first tweet… they weren’t famous people before that.”5. Using Social MediaSocial media was never Emily’s endgame—it was a bridge. A means of discovery, validation, and momentum. But not a silver bullet. She’s blunt about its limits.“Short-form video is not the best way to convert to wishlists,” she says. “That conversion has to happen when they see the name, they save the video, then they go on their computer and search it up… that is just too many steps.”What works? A multi-platform approach, repeated visibility, and content with a clear hook.“Post your video on all social media platforms,” she said. “This video that is literally 6 million views got 700 views on my TikTok. If I just posted on TikTok, I would think this is a bad video—but no, this video gave me like 10,000 wishlists.”Most impressive of all, she built momentum before she even touched code.“I started making videos when all I had were two screenshots,” she said. “When I made my video, I didn’t even open Unity. I didn’t know how to code yet. I just assumed I was going to learn on the way.”But Emily is crystal clear: none of this matters if the game itself doesn’t land.“Social media will not take you to the finish line,” she says. “Ultimately, you need to make a good game… you should leverage social media to give you opportunities in your game, rather than relying on it as the sole marketing method.”There’s no single path through indie game development, but Emily Pitcher’s story makes one thing clear: failure is not the opposite of progress; it is progress. From burnout to bounceback, her ability to interrogate her process, stay honest about her strengths, and meet the audience where they are has turned lily’s world XD into one of the most anticipated indie horror games on Steam.As Emily put it best:“We are stronger together and we should not look at each other as competition.”