Talking gaming with Unity 3D's John Goodale

If you can't tell just yet, we've been giving a lot of buzz about Indonesia's growing gaming industry for the past few months. I was clear that 2012 is going to be the year of gaming in Indonesia. More gaming companies established this year with fierce incumbents like Agate Studios, Altermyth, Toge Productions,etc.

The potential benefactor for this industry, is engine/platform provider, exactly like Unity3D. For those not familiar with the name, Unity3d is a tool for video game development, architectural visualizations, and interactive media installations. In short, it helps people develop 3d games.

Unity's development environment runs on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, and the games it produces can be run on Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, iPad, iPhone, as well as the Android platform. It can also produce browser games that use the Unity web player plugin, supported on Mac and Windows but not Linux.

Dailysocial got the chance to talk with John Goodale, Unity 3D's General Manager for Asia region. A bit of background about Goodale :

John Goodale is the Asia-Pacific General Manager for Unity Technologies and is directly responsible for all of Unity's operations in the Asia region. John has been with the game industry for over 20 years and has held several leadership positions in his career. During the early part of his carrer he focused on game monetization as a producer, product marketing manager, licensing director and business unit manager at game publishers Sega, Activision and Turner Entertainment. Since 2007 he has focused on game development in Asia, building and leading large teams and launching the Asian businesses for game engine companies as General Manager Asia of Gamebryo, CryENGINE and now Unity Technologies. John has lived and worked in Japan, is fluent in Japanese, and has been doing business in Asia for more than 20 years. John resides in Boise, Idaho with his family but spends upwards of 80% of the year travelling throughout Asia.

Without further ado, check out Dailysocial's interview with Goodale below.

Can you tell us a bit about you, your previous experience and background?

On the personal side, I am 45 years old, am married and have six children. When I'm not spending 300 days per year in Asia, I enjoy my home in Boise, Idaho, in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. I have been in the games industry for more than 15 years; however, my first 10 years in the industry were on the publishing side of the business, working for publishers Sega and Activision. I started in the tech side of the industry five years ago launching Emergent's "Gamebryo" business in Asia, and similarly launched Crytek's "CryENGINE" business in North America and Asia.

How did you end up in the gaming industry?

I ended up in the gaming industry completely by accident. I was doing some M&A consulting work for Fujitsu's client-server division (Tokyo) in the mid-90s. One of their sister companies, Fujitsu PC Corporation, asked me to find some American-made PC games for them to license for inclusion in their retail DOS/V machines sold in Japan. So I reached out to games companies for this licensing effort. The rest is history.

What do you think differentiate Unity3D with other similar platform? What are the key strength?

One of Unity's core strengths is scalability, and this is reflected in our marketing tagline of "Democratizing Game Development." Using Unity, you can develop great content if you're a single individual creating a simple puzzle game for iOS, or you can develop great content if you're a 1,000-person studio building AAA content across all platforms. The tech scales, and the business model scales, truly serving the entire community of developers.

What are the weaknesses and what are you going to do about it in the future to improve it?

Unity still has some extremely high-end features that we still need to implement, though I believe we can still boast as we have done before that we are "the most advanced engine this side of a million dollars." You will see as we progress through our version 3.5 release next month, and our 4.0 release later this year, that we are continually adding high-end features, without breaking the engine for the smaller development shops.

What do you think about Indonesia's gaming industry? Straight consumer market or we have a chance to produce?

We believe that Indonesia and throughout Southeast Asia, the games market has some very interesting opportunities. It's why we're making an investment in the region. To the best of my knowledge, we are the only engine company to have local staff in the region. Mr. Patrick Williamson, based in Singapore and reporting to me, runs that effort, and I have room for additional headcount in my budget for the current year. As the development community grows in Indonesia, we believe that the region has a real shot at creating some great stuff that gets global recognition.

What you see in Indonesia's gaming scene in the next 3-4 years?

Compared to Korea and China where all the rage has been PC or web online gaming, and Japan where console has reigned king until the recent popularity of SNS gaming, Indonesia has yet to find a niche in the games industry. We are closely watching the investments being made by Japan's social networking service companies in Indonesia, as well as those of game operators traditionally strong in China and Korea. We also plan to work closely with Indonesian government agencies and local user groups to grow game development in Indonesia. It's really tough to say where it will be in 3-4 years, but serving PC, web and mobile platforms (with expanding support going forward), we believe we'll be well positioned to help drive that growth.

What do you think is the next evolution of gaming?

I wish I had a crystal ball to look in to for this answer! But clearly we're seeing some interesting trends. Globally, mobile gaming on ever-more-powerful handheld hardware is here to stay and grow. Additionally, web-based gaming is becoming an increasingly satisfying experience; our own Unity Web Player is currently growing by close to 5 million users per month. New and improving web technologies, including our own, promise even better playing experiences going forward. As a company, we stay very active in our developer communities globally, and we have done a fairly decent job of planning our roadmap to meet developers' needs, and offering the right platform support for today, and 3-4 years from now.

Advice for Indonesia's game developers?

Unity! Unity!! Unity!!! OK… so it's no surprise that I would say that. There's a speech that I often give globally on the role of failure in becoming a successful game developer. Perhaps I can give that same speech in Jakarta in the near future! :-)

PS : Unity 3D is having a networking session with John Goodale, General Manager Asia with Unity, at Hong Kong cafe this coming Monday January 30th from 2pm - 5pm at the Hong Kong Cafe, Jakarta. There, you will hear from John Goodale on current and future game development trends and current practices in game development and game marketing.