Unity Production: Capturing the Everyday Game Maker Market

Abstract

The production of games using ‘free’ and accessible all-in-one game engines dominate the market for the development of game products and services. This shift has consequently ‘opened’ production to what I name everyday game makers, who share multiple professional and leisure-based game making identities, and ‘closed’ development behind platform governance policies, proprietary technical requirements, and multisided market strategies. I examine the local and global strategies of Unity Technologies and how game makers ‘make do’ with its production platform tools in developing digital games. I argue strategies of companies like Unity Technologies constantly transform and tailor its production platforms to the local norms and practices of everyday game makers through its desire to capture a larger market share of the global game industry’s creative production sector.