I’m an aspiring game developer and am currently in year 12. I am doing my final year Research Project on developing a game in Unity and was hoping I could get some help from people who have some experience in Unity, you don’t have to answer every question if you don’t want to but it would really help.

1. What makes Unity popular? "edited"

2. At what age would you recommend someone start using Unity and how much do you need to know to use Unity effectively?

3. Why should someone use Unity in comparison to other programs?

4. Would you recommend the use of outside sources such as a design program when working with Unity?

5. Are there any tutorials apart from the ones on your site that you would really recommend for using Unity?

6. Are there any shortcuts or techniques that may help with learning Unity faster?

7. What genre of game can be made in unity and are there some that are more difficult to make then others?

8. How long can some games take to finish their development cycle?

9. How soon would you recommend trying to get your games on Steam, Google play, iTunes or even a website that hosts flash games?

10. How can small games become popular?

11. What advice would you give to an aspiring game developer on how to get started?

Thank you for your time, I really appreciate your help.

This doesn't belong in the Game Design forum. Moving.

Hmm I dont think 1. makes sense. You have tons of awful games made in Unity. The engine is popular because its the only one of its kind. You have tons of lighter engines and lets say a couple harder engines (Cryengine, UDK), Unity is the one and only middle.

1. Your question doesn't quite follow the others. Individual games are popular or not, irrelevant of Unity. As for what makes Unity popular, free for most hobby developers, RELATIVELY low barriers to entry, not too difficult but gives many great figures. However, some beginners take no thought to the magnitude of their projects. You need designers (what are you going to make? Is it fun?), artists (do you have modelers, or in a 2D game, pixel artists?), animators (those models aren't going to move themselves!) programmers (most people on this board fit there), musicians (from comedy to horror, they set the mood), foley (for the 'click-click', and the 'bang-bang'), potentially voice acting (very popular these days), QA/testers, (those aren't bugs, they are features!) and probably also some marketers (if you want customers), producers (if you want anything coordinated, and to actually see the business side), and the rest of the gang (Do you have collaboration agreements? What about a licence to distribute the game? Do you intend on making money? Governments hate it when you fail to pay taxes. Etc.) all of them are important even when one person does all the jobs. At work we use it extensively for prototyping, and we have used it to create shipping games on console; it is a reasonably good engine.
2a. When they are intellectually able to use it.
2b. Depends on the role. Unity is not exactly an entry-level engine. If you are a designer, you need to know different things than a programmer, or an animator, or a modeler, or an audio tech, all of them can use Unity in very different ways.
3. Use it because it fits your needs. Don't use it when other programs fit your needs better. It is a tool, nothing more or less.
4. Yes, very strongly. While the Unity environment lets you do quite a bit for composing the elements of your game, it cannot be your only tool. Designers primarily use word processors, then tools like spreadsheets and flowcharts. Manipulating things in the game is only a tiny minority of the work. Programmers use code editors, such as MonoDevelop or Visual Studio with appropriate add-ins for Unity, or other programs to write the code.
5. Yes.
6. Use it. Read about it. Unity is huge, you won't learn all about it from a single source. Even the official docs are rather lacking; often they will tell you what a thing does, but not why that is important and how it is useful in a game.
7. Genre is not the determining factor, just like the color of a vehicle doesn't tell you how fast it can go. This is determined by the design, not the genre.
8. At least as long as necessary, and also as long as you let them.
9. When it is ready.
10. Marketing, quality, and a fair amount of luck.
11. Actually start. Do something small enough that you can actually do it, and finish it.

1. Well, it's free, you can export your game to pc/mac/linux/iOS/Android/web, it's relatively easy to use (as a newcomer)

2. Well i guess if you really put an effort on it you can start at 12~15 it really depends on you, if you have prior experience making games maybe all you need is completing a tutorial before starting with your own game.

3. Because is easy, really complete, and let you export your game to pc/mac/linux/iOS/Android/web

4. Why not? I don't really know since i only do code.

5. I have only used 2 tutorials. This http://jessefreeman.com/learn-unity-2d/ and the infinite runner here https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules . Those are really good starting point, the only downside of the first is that is not free.

6. I don't think there is any shortcut, but having prior experience making games and with javascript/c# would really help.

7. You can see for yourself here https://unity3d.com/showcase some of the games made with unity. I can tell you that making an infinite runner is very easy with unity.

8. It depends on what kind of game you want to make and how big you want it to be. It could be from 4 days to 2 years. It really depends on what you want to make and how much effort you put on it.

9. GooglePlay and pages like Kongregate as soon as you want/can since it is relatively easy and you can start to create a portfolio to show your work. Steam i'd say once you accomplish to have a decent fan base so they can help you greenlite your game.

10. Remember Flappy bird? They can go viral pretty easy with some luck, you can take advantage of current trends/memes, try to use leaderboards, people love to compete.

11. Start as soon as you can, it doesnt matter if you create just little games, thats great for a start. Create a lot of games, if you enjoy playing games try to also analyze them, what makes them fun?, what would you change?, how do they approach different things as the weapons, enemies, continues, everything; Even if you cannot recognize what everyone loves in a videogame (the truth is that there's nothing that will please everyone) you will find what YOU love in videogames and that way you'll find your style and feel for the games you'll create.

Good Luck.

PS: You should really check out Extra Credit's youtube channel, great/fun source for game design theory.

1. I think that Unity is so popular now a day is because is so easy for beginners to deploy a game idea without a lot of experience in programming. You can focus on your game idea instead of struggling with close to metal features like graphics, sound, or user input. Being a multi-platform engine you can deploy your games for other platform with ease.

2. As long as you can read and understand tutorials you are old enough, I recommend some familiarity with object oriented programming for an effective use of Unity engine although it is not mandatory. Learn how to program and creating games from scratch improves greatly your development and solving problem skills and can help you to get a job in the industry.

3. Because Unity is a very flexible tool, being able to create your own scripts and behaviors lets you develop almost any game idea you can have. It do the hard work for you, so you only need to worry about game logic.

4. Yes. They boost your development cycle.

5. I don't know a particular web site but I think there are plenty of them.

6. Practice makes the teacher. Don't just watch the video or copy paste the code, try to understand what is going on. The more you practice your coding skills, the better you become.

7. Almost any kind of game could be created with Unity.

8. You can develop games on Unity very quickly, in one day you can have a decent implementation of your game mechanics.

9. As soon as possible.

10. Small games could be addictive, specially those that have high scores or achievements. People likes to compete and brag about their score in a game.

11. Commit to your goal. Start learning now and never stop learning new things.

1) It's free and offers the promise of being able to create almost any kind of game.

This fits in well with the grandiose dreams many beginning would-be game designers have.

2) Whenever you're old enough to understand what you're doing, more or less. Define 'effectively'. You can create something simple without knowing a whole lot about the program or its features if you limit yourself to what you can achieve with what you actually know.

3) In comparison to what? It's free, which is a big plus for a lot of people, but so are some others, at least non-commercially. Take something simple like a hammer. You have claw hammers, rip hammers, framing hammers, ball peen hammers, roofing hammers, sheetrock hammers, ... Each is great for the task it is designed for. You pick the tool based on your need - if Unity will do the job you need done, then it's a good candidate for you.

4) If you're going to create your own art and audio it's not a recommendation, it's a necessity. Nothing does everything.

5) I'm sure there are dozens. Some of them are probably even good ;) I don't use Unity so I can't answer this one specifically.

6) Yep - using it, and putting your creations up for harsh but constructive, honest critique by other game designers.

7) You could make any kind of game you want with it. Different games have different requirements and skillsets needed other than knowing how to use Unity. RPG's probably have the most diverse requirements, while match-3 games require a lot less. This goes back to Unity being a tool. Knowing how to use a hammer doesn't make you a carpenter. Knowing how to use Unity doesn't make you a game designer.

8) Most games never finish their development cycle, lying on the heap of abandoned projects and dreams that were just plain too large. If you're talking about completed games, it can be anywhere from months (maybe even weeks) to years. Again, it depends on the game - and that has nothing to do with Unity, per se.

9) Not until you've got a large fanbase of people playing your games, asking for more, and possibly buying them direct from you (proving that people are willing to exchange hard earned dollars for some of your entertainment).

10) How did pet rocks make their 'inventor' a millionaire? There's no accounting for taste and fads.

11) Think of the game you want to build. Now write it down in a folder and put it away somewhere, you're not going to build that for a long while. Take what you think is a small, achievable game. Now cut that back even more. Build something simple you know you can finish. Your first 'games' can be a single level platformer where you 'win' if you reach the end, or if you have to do an RPG, one with a very small town, a forest, and a very small dungeon. If you can put the dungeon entrance inside the town, that's even better. Tic-tac-toe, pong, Space Invaders are all great early projects.

Finishing something is an important skill to learn early.