I was fortunate enough to speak at this years Develop Conference again this year and, not being the shy & retiring type, I picked the hot topic of Flash vs. Unity – from a game developer’s perspective.
Flash is close to Matmi’s heart; we’ve been working with it for nearly a decade and in our early days, it was our hallmark platform. As Matmi grew, game players and clients got more demanding and we found ourselves outgrowing the functionality of Flash. We also spotted the trend towards mobile and made the leap onto that platform with Unity 3D – which has worked well for us… so far.
The Develop audience were a savvy bunch including plenty of Flash developers and for once, I stopped answering questions and started asking them. We had a very insightful 30 minute debate and I think a few eyes were opened. Hopefully, one of those eyeballs was Apple’s. Has David become Goliath, or does Apple remember what it was like to fight for fairness?
I hope it’s the latter. Developers need freedom to mix and match platforms, re-use code, re-skin applications and make max use of assets – because otherwise, clients won’t be able to justify the cost of our work and the whole industry will backfire spectactularly. Toolsets and middleware like Unity 3D may or may not continue to be available on the iPhone etc, but to continue to offer great value to the developers, they really do need them. I’ve got everything crossed for a good result because Apple platforms are great for gaming and we love them.
If you’ve got some constructive comment or insight into the subject of 3rd party development tools on the iPhone, comment here or drop us a line in confidence at jeff@matmi.com.
While the platform debate rolls on, I’d like to say big thanks to David and Alison at Unity 3D for a top night out at the Develop Conference. Great company; great food; great discussions (and probably a great big bill – but we’re worth it!). We had a blast, thank you, and I hope we can return the favour soon.
Susan and all the Tandem Events gang; nice work – great conference pulling some great speakers and a great crowd. Thank you all.
Subscribe in a reader
