Unity Aims to Revolutionize Game Development and Beyond

The Gamescom event may be over, but another major developer gathering is just around the corner. Unite, Unity's annual celebration of its game developer community, is set to take place in Amsterdam this November, marking its first physical event since 2019. According to Marc Whitten, President of Unity's Create division, 'We are thrilled to bring everyone together again.' Unite offers a unique opportunity for Unity's most passionate developers to connect with the company's teams, featuring a packed schedule of talks that delve into the latest developments and innovations. At Unite 2023, Unity will demonstrate its efforts to bolster its core product while driving innovation for the future. Over the past year, the company has enhanced its multiplayer services to support seamless, high-concurrency connected experiences. It has also launched the 2022 Long-Term Support (LTS) version, promising maximum stability and performance, and recently announced a new suite of AI tools in closed beta, aiming to revolutionize game content creation. Starting with multiplayer, the demand for connected gaming experiences has never been higher. Unity has been focused on delivering a range of solutions to support the creation of multiplayer games across all genres and platforms, from networking stacks to dedicated hosting, friend list management, and in-game voice chat. Unity's Game Server Hosting has gained significant popularity, being adopted by top games like Apex Legends and Among Us. It boasts robust, high-concurrency servers with 99% uptime, making it a key area of focus for the company. 'We've been focusing on the self-serve feature for Game Server Hosting, enabling any studio, regardless of size, to start creating their multiplayer title immediately,' Whitten explains. 'This is in addition to observability and the DevOps side of the pipeline, ensuring developers have more control and a better understanding of their game's multiplayer sessions.' He continues, 'Getting Game Server Hosting right is all about the data that comes back – are developers fine-tuning their matches, matchmaking, and session mechanics? Do they understand the cost structure? Minor modifications on the game side can significantly impact the cost of running sessions. We've been investing to ensure creators have that level of control over their games.' The evolution of Unity's Game Server Hosting service extends beyond technical improvements. 'Game Server Hosting is one part of a rich set of gaming services necessary for building modern live games,' Whitten says. 'This feeds into aspects like community. We've been developing better community management tools to help games foster vibrant, positive communities. A great example is Safe Voice, our recently announced toxicity detection solution that leverages advanced acoustic and semantic intelligence to identify in-game toxicity at scale, enabling moderators to take action faster and create a healthier community experience.' In terms of recent updates to the Unity engine, the company released the 2022 LTS version in June. The key features of the 2022 LTS include improved iteration via the multiprocess AssetBundle pipeline, a more streamlined Package Manager, and faster compilation thanks to the Burst engine. Additionally, there are graphical upgrades, such as the High Definition Render Pipeline, which allows developers to create stunning environments. A significant change is Unity's full integration of the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) within the engine's editor. DOTS enables developers to create richer games by supporting more objects in a game session and world. Although DOTS has experienced significant evolution and improvements since its pre-production phase, it is now more accessible. 'We've been working on this for many years,' Whitten says. 'Although many games have shipped using our pre-release version of DOTS, it wasn't part of the editor workflow, and developers had to do custom work to migrate components. With our production-ready DOTS 1.0, we've simplified processes, making the technology easier to use.' One of the major trends in tech and games is artificial intelligence. Unity is eager to introduce similar tools to game development, such as its Unity Muse platform, which lowers the barrier to entry by making it easier for people to understand how to make a game, create content, and increase productivity. 'We strongly believe that every system in a game will be touched by AI, from creation to runtime,' Whitten says. 'Unity Muse helps developers with techniques, algorithms, and code, allowing them to work faster. It's a great example of using AI to get help and go faster with what you're trying to do inside Unity.' Unity Muse is just one of the company's AI offerings; the other is Unity Sentis, which enables developers to embed artificial intelligence models in their projects. 'We have a strong belief that many people will be running neural networks inside every frame loop in their game,' Whitten explains. 'With Sentis, we're trying to make it easy for developers to use the device's capabilities to run that neural network.' There's been significant discourse surrounding the impact of generative AI, especially in creative sectors. Whitten acknowledges the uncertainty but believes it will ultimately make things easier for professionals and amateurs. 'We believe that although there's a lot of real-time 3D content in the world, including games, there's going to be much more to come,' Whitten says. 'The problem is that it's too hard to make the core content. At Unity, we challenged ourselves to offer tools that would make it ten times faster, ten times easier, and ten times cheaper to create content. That's one of the things AI can help create.' Looking towards Unite 2023, Whitten is excited to meet developers, showcase Unity's new products and improvements, and spotlight innovations that will future-proof creators for the challenges of tomorrow. 'We're just looking forward to being in front of our creators in person again,' he says. 'Our focus is always to find a balance between the stability developers need to make great games now and investing in where the future is going. We're excited to show everyone attending the event how much Unity has to offer.'