Interesting move, and looks like it was sold for $10MM, down $6.4mm from their initial sale to Playtech (although some of that price might be performance related bonuses). I would of thought given the Covid pandemic GameMaker should of benefited.
Looks like a potential focus on the Opera GX browser which I'm still not entirely sure what the benefit of the product is exactly. I expect will be made clear in time!
(Disclosure am a founder of a competing company in the space)
> I would of thought given the Covid pandemic GameMaker should of benefited.
I can confirm this. A few of my friends picked up game development as hobby. Although they went for Construct 3 because it had better UI and was based on web technologies.
EDIT: Was pleasantly surprised to know that you are working on construct.
Primarily because it is easier compared to compiling binaries for different OSs. It is quicker to get something simple running and share it with others.
It’s been a huge plus for a lot of distance learning during Covid where students have a wide variety of devices (eg Chromebooks) and can all run Construct 3.
Is it possible that dominance of engines like unity and unreal actually make it hard for these small engine to compete. I love unity and unity taught me how to program but I don't want to live in a world which is basically only Unity development.
Like I see the bolt integration for Unity as being a direct shot at no code engines
Unity/Unreal visual scripting still carries all the baggage of understanding a bunch of concepts inherent to those engines that visual scripting will not handwave.
This is not true of Construct, GDevelop, et al which have spent a ton of engineering time to abstract all of the engine's underpinnings to make it all very easy to understand for the newcomer to make working behaviors with visual scripting. There isn't any silver bullet to this for Unity and Unreal and for that reason there will always be at least a small market for editors that have significantly less learning curve.
These visual scripting engines are probably eating GameMaker's lunch since GML predates a lot of modern alternatives such as aforementioned scripting and JavaScript support in modern engines with more power available to savvy users.
I'll probably stick with unity just because I really love programming in it, but I can imagine some of my non-technical friends enjoying the above engines.
Wow, Game Maker 5.1 or something like that is how I started programming, Its drag & drop was super easy to use, and then you could add code blocks and program in a language near to C I think.
I didn't like the YoyoGames look and prices, but GM and its author Marks Overmas, which I think left the project years ago, are part of my past so I really hope with this acquisition they can make it work.
I'm in the same boat, having Game Maker as my first introduction to programming. When I was using it, though, drag & drop + scripting hit a wall pretty quickly and you have to figure out how to create a dll.
Same here! Mark was like a hero to me back then as I was learning Delphi (which Game Maker was written in at the time) as a teenager. I even asked him some questions about Delphi but I don't remember if he answered.
The takeover sounds weird at first, but https://www.opera.com/gx is actually probably a good idea.
Mainstream browsers like Chrome are generic those days and believe they deserve 100% CPU, RAM and network. Innovation in UI/UX have been stagnant with little changes. Most development is about APIs and other internals. Anything that will have impact on less than 2B users is not prioritized / not worth the effort. And doing significant changes for 2B users is risky.
Meanwhile Opera takes a market niche, bundles multiple things to target this market niche and improve their UX considerably.
The browser is user agent but the market leaders sometimes forget it. Then smaller players show up and often come with some really nice things.
the ability to run the browser throttled at < 25% CPU and 500MB of RAM is actually amazing if you like having the audacity to keep your browser open while playing any modern video game
I always have my browser open while playing games. I'm usually on voice chat over WebRTC. Occasionally I'll respond to messages or look something up. Sometimes I even have music or videos playing in the "background".
I doubt many people want to close down their browser where so much is happening these days.
I still remember the days when as a child (age 11-12 or smth) I was asking my parent few more hours before bed to complete another chapter of my game in GameMaker. It was such a fun, probably it pushed me towards coding.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 59.0 ms ] threadLooks like a potential focus on the Opera GX browser which I'm still not entirely sure what the benefit of the product is exactly. I expect will be made clear in time!
(Disclosure am a founder of a competing company in the space)
I can confirm this. A few of my friends picked up game development as hobby. Although they went for Construct 3 because it had better UI and was based on web technologies.
EDIT: Was pleasantly surprised to know that you are working on construct.
how is that a plus?
Like I see the bolt integration for Unity as being a direct shot at no code engines
This is not true of Construct, GDevelop, et al which have spent a ton of engineering time to abstract all of the engine's underpinnings to make it all very easy to understand for the newcomer to make working behaviors with visual scripting. There isn't any silver bullet to this for Unity and Unreal and for that reason there will always be at least a small market for editors that have significantly less learning curve.
These visual scripting engines are probably eating GameMaker's lunch since GML predates a lot of modern alternatives such as aforementioned scripting and JavaScript support in modern engines with more power available to savvy users.
I'll probably stick with unity just because I really love programming in it, but I can imagine some of my non-technical friends enjoying the above engines.
I didn't like the YoyoGames look and prices, but GM and its author Marks Overmas, which I think left the project years ago, are part of my past so I really hope with this acquisition they can make it work.
Mainstream browsers like Chrome are generic those days and believe they deserve 100% CPU, RAM and network. Innovation in UI/UX have been stagnant with little changes. Most development is about APIs and other internals. Anything that will have impact on less than 2B users is not prioritized / not worth the effort. And doing significant changes for 2B users is risky.
Meanwhile Opera takes a market niche, bundles multiple things to target this market niche and improve their UX considerably.
The browser is user agent but the market leaders sometimes forget it. Then smaller players show up and often come with some really nice things.
I doubt many people want to close down their browser where so much is happening these days.
Mark Overmars, thank you!