Results of 2016: Roman Menyakin from Unity about the main events in the life of the engine for the year

Roman Menyakin, Director of Business Development at Unity Eastern Europe, told App2Top about the milestones in the history of Unity Technologies over the past 12 months.

Year for the company

For us, the outgoing 2016 has become a year that can safely be considered a turning point.

The most important event in the new history of Unity was the transition from perpetual licensing to a subscription model. And this is not just a change in licensing conditions and new subscription plans (Personal, Plus and Pro) – it is a complete restructuring of the development cycle with a reduction in the timing of updates (from 2 years to 3 months), while the quality and stability of the releases being released remains the most important for us.

We consider the release of the demo “Adam” no less significant. This is a full–fledged short film – with the participation of a director, screenwriter, and artists – made on Unity. This is something that is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.

The third important event in the life of the company is a new education project. Firstly, we have launched a grant program, and now any educational institution with state accreditation can get Unity educational licenses completely free of charge. Secondly, a Unity training course has become available – so far the course teaches basic skills of working with the engine, but in the future we plan to develop the topic by adding levels and specializations. The training course is included in the paid versions of Unity, and is also available to anyone at a special price in the Eastern Europe region. Thirdly, we have launched Unity certification. The first exam was held in October, but today more than 80 specialists have the status of a certified Unity developer. We would like to note that our guys pass the exams with a score above average!

Event of the year in the world

The event of the year can be called the entry into the market of affordable VR devices. Perhaps right now VR has taken a serious step to get out of a fairly narrow segment into a wide market. The bulk of virtual and augmented reality projects are still related to entertainment or simulations, but we see that there are more and more very high-quality graphics game projects.

Trend of the year

The trend of the year is also associated with VR/AR and the active development of technologies in this direction. Another trend, which, however, goes beyond the limits of the gaming industry exclusively, is the development of 360-video, in the production of which game engines are used, as well as the increasing “penetration” of gaming technologies into the world of cinema. It is very interesting that films are being made based on games, and game engines are increasingly being used in films. For example, Unity was used in the “Jungle Book”.

Game of the Year

For me personally, the best games of the year were: Pokémon GO, Uncharted 4, Titanfall 2 and Inside.