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In another 14 days, the country's game technology giants will rush to one place

Game Spinning Top 2024/07/09 11:38

Recently, the group of game developers to which Gyro belongs has become more and more lively. In addition to sharing daily problems and development experiences, there is another topic of focus: the upcoming Unite 2024 conference, which will start on July 23.

A friend who has been immersed in the industry for many years and now insists on developing indie games full-time for more than 2 years told me that "development is very taboo behind closed doors", and it happened that the time was right, and he was going to Shanghai in the near future to take this opportunity to see his friends.

After checking the information, I learned that the Unite offline conference has been interrupted in China for 4 years (due to the epidemic and other factors), so the return of this summer has attracted the attention of developers. In addition, the sheer scale of the Unite conference is also one of the reasons why the Unite conference has attracted much attention, taking the 2019 conference as an example, the number of participants was 7500+, and the review video had a million views.

This means that both novices and the mainstay of the industry are willing to seek opportunities for communication and collision in it.

Game Top, In another 14 days, the country's game technology experts will go to one place

Gyro is more curious, why do so many developers value Unite, and are even willing to travel thousands of miles to the venue in person?

I found that it is almost in sync with the development of the Chinese game industry, and it is deeply bound to the development of Unity:

The establishment of Unity China in 2012 was at the beginning of the gaming industry, especially mobile games. So it's no surprise that Unity was the first engine that many developers came into contact with, and has been with them for many years since, from novice to big guys.

As of this year, more than half of the world's games are powered by the Unity engine; Among the top 1,000 mobile games in the world, the proportion of MWU (Made With Unity) has been higher than 70% year after year. In China, Unity has almost the deepest talent pool, so the proportion of projects using Unity is very high.

Over the years, developers have created some great games with Unity.

One of the obvious phenomena is that more and more MWU games are appearing on various award stages. From Call of Duty Mobile, Among Us, Genshin Impact, Marvel Snap to Honkai: Star Rail, it almost dominated the TGA Best Mobile Game Award;

Game Top, In another 14 days, the country's game technology experts will go to one placeTGA's Best Mobile Game of 2023

There are countless excellent works that have won other awards and nominations, such as "Sea of Stars", "Dyson Sphere Project", "Cuphead", "Dave the Diver", ......

Game Top, In another 14 days, the country's game technology experts will go to one placeTGA Best Indie Game of 2023

Looking at these titles, we can see that the Unity engine not only supports multi-genre and multi-platform game development, but also has a variety of gameplay features - the low-code, high-performance engine features give creators the freedom to be inspired and realize their ideas in a "cost-effective" way. That's why the Unity engine has always been favored by indie developers and mid-to-large teams.

Speaking of Unite, in the eyes of many developers, in addition to the advantages of cutting-edge technology and experience sharing, friendly and open social atmosphere, it also has an important function to capture the trend of the industry.

This is thanks to Unity's timely follow-up and support of industry trends.

For example, the most attractive thing about this year's Unite conference is the Unity Engine - according to the official description, it will be an engine that understands Chinese developers better, and on top of the original capabilities of the Unity engine, it has been deployed for the two subdivisions of mini games and smart cars.

With a market of over 50 billion yuan, there is a one-stop solution?

According to the "2023 China Game Industry Report", the revenue of the domestic mini program game market in 2023 will be 20 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 300%; DataEye, a data platform, said that by 2025, the market size will exceed 50 billion yuan.

The mini-game outlet has become a consensus. Especially since the beginning of this year, domestic listed companies have generally begun to enter the mini-game. However, the project logic of Mini Games is not the same as that of Apps, which requires more efficient development, as well as better optimization and adaptation - this is the pain point of Mini Game developers at present.

In the genesis version of the Unity Engine, Unity provides a one-stop WeChat mini game solution.

In addition to iOS and Android, the WeChat Mini Game Platform will be used as another game platform natively supported by the Unity Engine to help local developers develop WeChat Mini Games more conveniently.

Based on WebGL, the solution not only converts games from other platforms into WeChat Mini Games, but also includes IL2CPP memory and performance optimization, special rendering/anomaly optimization, and an enhanced version of the Profiler tool, which can realize functions such as automatic reduction of the size of the first package of the project and on-demand access to project assets, so as to help developers continuously improve the efficiency of creation, and make the performance and experience of the Mini Game go further.

On the operational side, Unity China has launched a one-stop game cloud service solution (Unity Online Service, UOS) to help developers simplify the operation and maintenance process. UOS natively integrates support for WeChat Mini Games, allowing developers to easily provide users with stable and efficient O&M services.

In other words, in the expectation of this solution, developers only need to focus on the realization of ideas, and they can achieve the effect of monetizing their ideas "one step ahead" without being interfered with by other factors.

Gyro noticed that there were also celebrities sharing more technologies and experiences in the Unity Engine session of the Unite conference.

For example, the Mini Game Development Guide brought by the technical director of the underlying architecture of Unity China, the technical leader of the Mini Game, and the technical manager of Unity China, will compare the data of actual cases and analyze the underlying optimization in depth, helping developers use the Unity Engine to create mini games with richer content, more exquisite graphics, and smoother operation.

The Mini Game Hosting Solution shared by Unity China's Technical Manager will focus on design ideas and implementation principles, as well as how the host can help developers improve the efficiency of Mini Game development and help the platform quickly build a Mini Game environment.

It can be said that a single Unity Engine session gave Gyro a premonition of the excitement of this Unite conference, and it is no wonder that so many developers around him yearn for it.

What experience will 100+ "technical dry goods" bring?

According to Gyro, in the game ecology special session of Unite 2024, there are many senior developers who have brought professional technical sharing and cases. Among them, there are not only the star products that we are familiar with, but also the new faces that have recently emerged:

For example, in the first half of the year, "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World", which became the focus of the industry, the technical person in charge of the game will talk about how to achieve silky infinite scaling on mobile platforms, ultra-multi-layer surface material mixing and other technical experiences.

Game Top, In another 14 days, the country's game technology experts will go to one place

In addition, Tencent Interactive Entertainment's expert engineers will share the R&D technology of "Golden Shovel Battle", which will share how to provide a set of solutions to maximize asset quality and production efficiency under the framework of mobile game performance specifications. Aiming at the abstract paradigm of combat skill editing, the whole pipeline of skill design, implementation and verification has been developed. and the optimization problems and thoughts faced in the process of game production.

Game Top, In another 14 days, the country's game technology experts will go to one place

Blackjack Studio's Technical Director will bring the development practices behind Steelland's graphics, covering the material schemes, lighting systems, and render pipelines in Steelland. Since AI applications are also a common area of interest for developers, this keynote will also introduce the various conventional and AI tools actually used in the project, and how they can help artists and TAs improve image consistency and productivity.

Game Top, In another 14 days, the country's game technology experts will go to one place

There are also many indie developers who have made achievements and will also appear on the stage of Unite 2024. For example, the producers of "Humanity Fails" will share how to use Unity and Steam Workshop to ensure the smooth operation of the game in the long term; The technical director of Fat Pudding Games (whose work "Lost Island" was Apple's official "Best Indie Game" in 2016) will share his experience in the framework design of puzzle games.

Epilogue:

Putting aside all external factors, I think many people choose the game industry for more or less because of their interest and passion: to turn the inspiration in their minds into reality, so that more people can feel their creations.

But the process of developing a game is a tough one. In the past, present, and future, technical challenges have always been around, and it's always a good time to embrace the community and share knowledge and experience with countless developers like you – and I'm looking forward to seeing what Unite 2024 will bring, and how many creative and great works will come out after this conference.

Developers who are interested in this conference can check the schedule below and scan the QR code to participate in the event.

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