My take on the Gamesalad buzz (my story)

MattButlerStudios

I have now been a part of the Gamesalad community for roughly 2 years. Throughout my time I have experienced a whirlwind of things. I have discovered my passions in life, learned more than I could imagine, and set achievable goals for my future. With all of this said, I would like to chime in on the current state of Gamesalad and the reputation that it has had.

When I first discovered Gamesalad, I was at the beginning stages of programming. (literally googling "how do you make a program"). When I found Gamesalad, I was amazed by the potential that it gave me. I was able to make a working application that could run on my phone. As I got better with the software my apps turned from "technically it is an app.." to "that actually looks pretty good" to "That looks amazing!". Gamesalad not only gave me experience with development, but also experience with complex publishing processes and concepts. Gamesalad is great because it allows a novice developer to slowly creep their way into the development world without too much resistance or confusion. As I continued with Gamesalad even further, I decided that I wanted to start syntactically coding applications. (coding with actual programming languages) As I learned these languages and began making apps, I found it easier in some ways because of Gamesalad. Sure Gamesalad did not teach me Javascript or Swift, but it did teach me how to think logically and conceptually. (things that are very important when programming) In a sense I definitely attribute my love for programming to my roots as a Gamesalad developer. I am not sure if I would have fallen in love with programming if it weren't for this software or the community that goes along with it. In fact, because I love programming so much, I am making it my career and I couldn't be more excited and hopeful for the future. As an entrepreneur at heart, I have finally found a place where I can express my love for business and the development of products. With all of this said, I do have some things to say about Gamesalad in general. Although a great idea, I believe that Gamesalad is poorly executed in it's delivery of software and it's professional presence on the web. I see software like Unity and gaze at the amount of feature-rich functions that are available to it's users at the snap of a finger. If only Gamesalad could push out updates and features like their business was depending on it (as it does). Sure, budgets and developer availability may come into play, but the main problem is EXECUTION. In my option Gamesalad is very good, but very stagnant. Throughout the 2 or so years that I have been a part of this, very little major changes have taken place. It just would be nice to see constant progress and meaningful decisions being made on GS behalf and I don't think I am the only on who feels this way. Also, in regards to pricing changes, I don't really get this. Gamesalad was cheaper back in the day (free) but now for the same amount of features you have to pay a stiff price before you even tackle the software. I can honestly say that I might have overlooked Gamesalad if it weren't for the enticing free version. Their is no need to charge new developers, because it is essential that they learn in an open environment. People don't want to pay for what they don't know. If you give them time, the majority will pay off in the long run. They will be sustainable, loyal customers. (like the GS veterans here today!)

Anyways, enough of my blabbering.. I just wanted to give you guys my take on Gamesalad and how it has changed my life. I certainly do not hate Gamesalad. In fact, I am very thankful for it. However, throughout the last year or so I have just gotten fed up with the horribly slow software, constricted features, and poor execution. I guess you could say this is my goodbye, but rather even a movement onto better things. Thanks for the fun Gamesalad and all of you caring community members. I come back every now and again to see how things are doing. I hope Gamesalad can pull off a feat and become what everyone is projecting it to become. Happy coding and enjoy your time with Gamesalad!

-Matt B (undefined-studios.com)

Braydon_SFX

Sorry to see you go, Matt! Best of luck to you in the future!

Gnarly

Best of luck.

tatiang

@MattButlerStudios said:
If only Gamesalad could push out updates and features like their business was depending on it (as it does). Sure, budgets and developer availability may come into play, but the main problem is EXECUTION.

Maybe. And maybe having 550 employees has something to do with it: https://unity3d.com/people.

Sorry, not meaning to cherry pick your post as you clearly have put a lot of time into GameSalad and a lot of thought into your comment but I couldn't let that slide without at least bringing up a relevant comparison.

MattButlerStudios

@Braydon_SFX Thanks, I appreciate all of the tutorials that you have posted. They really helped me out during my time with Gamesalad.

MattButlerStudios

@tatiang said: Maybe. And maybe having 550 employees has something to do with it: https://unity3d.com/people.Sorry, not meaning to cherry pick your post as you clearly have put a lot of time into GameSalad and a lot of thought into your comment but I couldn't let that slide without at least bringing up a relevant comparison. >

I too was debating that in my head as I wrote it. I know there is certainly a difference there, but there is no doubt that Gamesalad could allocate their time and resources better. But then again, can't we all?

Also, Tatiang you have been a great help to me during my Gamesalad career. Thanks for all that you do.

jigglybean

@MattButlerStudios said:
Also, Tatiang you have been a great help to me during my Gamesalad career. Thanks for all that you do.

I think they are doing that now. The last CEO wanted too many fingers in too many pies but this refocus has seen the GS team push out more updates than ever before. They are finally focusing on their core business - the Engine.

It's worth sticking around to see things pick up, which I am sure they will.

robertkdale

I agree @jigglybean

I am confidant that GS will only get better. That’s why I will continue to pay for the annual pro membership.

Chunkypixels

@Tatiang

..not quite sure what your comment regarding the size of Unity staff proves when used in the defence of GameSalad...

Unity didn't start out as a company with a staff of 500 developers... its grown to that size by making good decisions, and for the most part providing a continually evolving and improving toolset... which has led to an ever increasing subscriber base and revenues... thus leading to increasing development staff.

6 or so years ago, Unity as a company was nowhere near the size it is today...it started out much more along the size of what Gendai Games did. From what I recall Unity started out as 3 guys in a basement somewhere in Scandinavia.

GameSalad by comparison... seems to have not really progressed much, possibly even going backwards at times... and has hampered its own ability to push out regular and meaningful updates and improvements... So bad decisions, often buggy software and slow improvements, have led to forced company downsizing.

So Im not sure that comparing the size of Unity to GameSalad in correlation to updates really works...other than to show that one did things right... the other wrong?

Sorry.. not meaning to cherrypick, or nitpick...

Hopscotch

@Chunkypixels said:
Unity ... its grown to that size by making good decisions, ...

Not!

Not even its founder will agree with you there. The early years of Unity were a disaster for developers. The luck that Unity had, was that buddies at Disney committed to using Unity as a base and threw loads of money at Unity until things became manageable. This gave them cred and pulled investors to help them grow.

If GS had this kind of "luck", things may have been easier for them too.

tmann

If you look at the history of GameSalad it seems the opposite is true. The more staff the fewer the updates... maybe they just partied a lot. With current staffing levels at less than 20% of the peak I expect to see GS officially out of beta when GS Towers is a one man band knocking out daily updates

The_Gamesalad_Guru

@Hopscotch said:
If GS had this kind of "luck", things may have been easier for them too.

Disney did the same for GS as to money 6million in fact.

Armelline

I agree with most of what's being said at the moment about a stagnant product. It's been a big concern for years. But in 2 months since the change of leadership we've seen two things happen:

1. The software was brought up to date with modern systems i.e. Yosemite and sped up massively.
2. The software stabilised to a point where the next version coming out is essentially crash free. Of course only time will tell if that's true for everyone.

What they've done is really hammered out a solid, faster, stable version of Creator. This is the only logical thing they could have done, realistically, but they've done it.

Now we wait and see if new features come faster now. If we get custom fonts, polygonal collision or joints by the end of the year, then any concerns I have will be gone. If the year comes to a close with no notable new features, I'll be very sad.

I back GameSalad more strongly than most, but I've also spent the past few years giving them a lot of stick about the mistakes they've been making. Let's see if they're going to keep making them under their new CEO or not - right now the evidence points to not.

Chunkypixels

@Armelline "If we get custom fonts, polygonal collision or joints by the end of the year, then any concerns I have will be gone."

I'd change the OR to an AND....

In any other package, you'd expect to see all three happen over a four month development period.... its rather sad and telling that we've waited so long for them that were at the stage where folks would be happy if just one of them materialises....

If finances are back in order, and they've got a new round of investment, then theres no reason why all three and more shouldn't be possible if the resources are properly allotted to the core engine and tools and aren't squandered on more side projects....

tatiang

@MattButlerStudios You're welcome! And best of luck moving forward...

tatiang

@Chunkypixels In general, I'm not defending the complaints against GameSalad but rather just pointing out that saying that GameSalad doesn't execute well and that's why they can't do what Unity does is comparing apples to oranges since Unity employs something like 50 times as many employees. It doesn't mean they don't execute well, it just couldn't be the only reason they aren't as efficient as Unity.