Roman Menyakin, Director of Business Development at Unity in Russia, told App2Top about the past year.
Events, trends and disappointments
2015 was a very eventful year in terms of events and news. But if you make a choice, then, perhaps, it should be noted a big breakthrough in the availability of development technologies, and the formation of VR / AR as one of the trends in the development of the industry.
Now let me reveal it.
As you remember, at the GDC 2015 conference in San Francisco, one of the main news was the announcement that popular engines, including Unity, are becoming free. This opened up a whole new world for developers. As for us, this fully corresponds to the company’s mission – the democratization of development.
The second event, which we also call a trend, is not as unambiguous as the first one.
VR/AR technologies have really become a trend that has captured the minds of many developers. But, at the same time, he became to some extent a disappointment. Now it is obvious that this is one of the most interesting and promising areas of industry development, which turns the ideas about the interaction of humans and the computer environment and opens up completely new opportunities.
However, according to our forecasts, the real “big game” in VR/AR is still two to four years away, and this process is not going as fast as those who invest in this direction would like. However, now is the right time to start studying this topic, because virtual and augmented reality require different approaches to design, interface, content, and promotion. And that is why in February Unity will hold a big conference in Los Angeles on VR/AR – Vision Summit, where leading industry experts will speak and consider key aspects of this direction.
Achievement of the Year
To be honest, it is very difficult for us to single out one person. In our opinion, every developer who works in game development has achieved something important, even if it may not seem very significant from the outside. What I would like to note is that in our opinion, this year there were many bright indie projects that have good prospects.
Game of the Year
Just as in the case of the answer to the previous question, it is difficult to single out one project. And is it worth it?
Year for the company
For Unity Technologies, 2015 was a very bright and interesting year. Firstly, a completely new Unity 5 has been released, which has significantly changed both the development of the Unity universe and the platform itself. It was this year that Unity went beyond just an engine/editor, becoming a platform, or rather, a development ecosystem that includes, in addition to the engine itself, analytical services, testing services, monetization services, and an Asset Store.
Another important event was the recent exit from the Unity WebGL preview (this became possible with the release of Unity 5.3), which expanded the list of officially supported Unity platforms. Another important moment in the history of Unity was the official announcement of the roadmap for the development of our technologies, and this received a very big response among developers.
If we talk about Unity in Russia, Ukraine and the CIS, then we cannot but note the growth of Unity community in the region, the emergence of active and bright leaders who teach Unity in universities, conduct Unity User Group and thanks to which more and more useful information in Russian appears.