QUOTE | “Suddenly we’re not gods any more…There are gods, and now we just license their engines.” – Positech’s Cliff Harris, talking about why he hates Unity and other middleware, preferring that indies write their own engines
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “In reality, 90 percent of them are just there to sort of leech value. They’re not really adding value right now in the industry.” – Plush Apocalypse owner Borut Pfeifer, talking about why indies shouldn’t sign up with publishers
QUOTE | “Games are awesome. Stop letting jerks hijack them.” – Zoe Quinn, along with other industry veterans, talking about harassment in gaming communities and what can be done to stop it
QUOTE | “You get the full power of Unity 5 for free. There’s no royalties, no fucking around. It’s simple. That’s really what we’re announcing.” – Unity CEO John Riccitiello, talking about why the game engine is a great deal compared to others he didn’t name (like Unreal Engine 4)
QUOTE | “eShop is actually pretty good to indies right now… it’s a really nice safe haven from places like iOS and Android, which are crazy crowded, and even on Steam it’s hard to stand out.” – Romino’s Jasper Koning, talking along with other indie developers about why they are putting games on Wii U
STAT | #13 – Placement of Riot Games on Fortune’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2015; the only other game company to make the list was Activision Blizzard at #96
QUOTE | “Zero per cent of people get motion sick.” – Valve chief Gabe Newell, talking about Valve’s new VR system Vive (developed in tandem with HTC) and why it’s better than all other VR systems
QUOTE | “If we felt like we couldn’t move the needle with respect to genuinely evolving the play experience we wouldn’t be here.” – Rock Band 4 product manager Daniel Sussman, talking about why Harmonix is bringing Rock Band back
QUOTE | “There isn’t necessarily a graphics arms race for the sake of it; there are improvements in visuals that are very specific to giving essentially a blockbuster appeal to the general public.” – NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil, explaining why they’ve worked hard to make their latest mobile game Dawn of Titans look great
STAT | $67 billion – The size of the market for gaming hardware in 2014, according to Jon Peddie Research; the PC market accounted for 33% of that, while smartphones were 23%, consoles were 16%, and tablets 11%
