"Just for fun" crosses
boarders :Unity as a knowledge canal
Unity Technologies Japan
Hiroki Omae

CDIO Asian Regional Meeting 2014

Who am I?
•Hiroki Omae (@pigeon6)•Regional Director @ Unity
Technologies Japan•

A game programmer since ageof 14•

Currently teaching “Projectmanagement for gamedevelopment” at BBT
University (Chiyoda-ku, Japan)

Democratizing GameDevelopment「ゲーム開発を民主化する」

So what is Unity?

So what is Unity?
• Unity is a fun ecosystem for games
and 2D/3D interactive contentscreation• Intuitive Editor & workﬂows• Rapid Try & Error• Giant community helps you to solve
problems• Very strong multi platform support

Democratizing
Game Development
Unity Technologies Vision

FoundersJoachim AnteDavid Helgason
Nicholas Francis

Founded：2004
Unity started developing in 2001
Unity 1.0 released in WWDC 2005

Unity Technologies
2011Unity Technologies Today2013Copenhagen officeDevelopment teamHow we write code

How we (actually) write code

Unity as a global company

Number of employees：380+
Number of nationalities of employees：25+
Number of offices：14 countries・18 location

Unity Technologies
Japan?
•Founded 2011•

Akasaka, Tokyo•

16 people•

Doing various things to help
and empower developers inJapan

Why becoming de-facto?
• Good game and interactive contents
are designed to be data driven• Intuitive and productive tool makes
diﬀerence in both speed and quality• Quality = # of Try & Error• Asset Store and Community
empowers you even more

• Strong multi-platform support enables
you to develop in Contents-FirstapproachSupporting Platforms

Not only it is so many
It is ridiculously simple as clicking one button!

Free for personaland smallorganization use!
Also, reasonable pricing for educational purposesMany books throughout world

What Is knowledge Canal?

•“Knowledge Canal” is afast pipeline to exchange
and apply knowledges
across industries/
academies/countries/individuals

GameDevelopers
Conference!
SIG-Graph!!
GreatPresentations!
Papers!

OMG itʼs too hard..

Why it often didnʼt work•

The environment was too diﬀerent to even try toreplicate a portion of their success•

The eﬀort to ﬁll the gap is just too big to justify results reinvention of wheels is faster and cheaper•

When you have overcome all above, the solution
may be outdated•

If crosses industries, things are harder becauseeven terminologies are diﬀerent

Unity as Knowledge Canal•

Standardized development
platform for 3d contents
creation•

Modular (component based)architecture let people sharepieces of their software
super easy•

Used across industries/
academies/countries, so that
it is easy to learn or ﬁnd
someone already familiar with

So how much is itreally used?

Unity user bases
Over 2,500,000 developers
uses Unity today (2+% of all
software developer worldwide)
Over 500,000 developers uses
every day

Asia and Unity
1：USA 16.6%
2：China 14.1%
3：South Korea 7.6%
4：Japan 6.1%
5：UK 5%China + Korea + Japan

27.8%
Adding up all Asian countries
above 50

34.8%

Asia and Unity
9：Taiwan 2.9%
23：Vietnam 0.8%
24：Philippines 0.7%
25：Denmark 0.7%
26：Thailand 0.7%

Looking small ?
x 2.5M !

Unity’s rapid growth in
Japan
850+

Companies uses Unity Pro：

100,000+

Developers uses Unity：

Rapidly becoming de-facto
standard of game development

Unity Asset Store

Asset Store•

Asset Store is a market place that you can purchase or sell:••

2d/3d graphics models, textures, audios, featureextensions…

Originally designed to solve problems of:•Making game often requires variety of talents ( which
only cooperate is aﬀordable )•To make income from by-products of game to help
create gameDemoHow does it helps people
to cross boarders?

Hiyoshi Jump
4th Keio Media Design(KMD) Forum,
Superhuman Olympic

Superhuman Olympic?
•“Superhuman Olympic“
Demonstration of the Researches
about Augmented Sports•

Augmented Sports are the newﬁeld of Sports pioneered by KMD
Reality Media Project Professor
Susumu TACHI, Professor
Masahiko INAMI and AssociateProfessor Kouta MINAMIZAWA•

Exhibition contents of 4th KMD
Forum

http://superhuman-olympic.org/index.html

An interactive VR content that you can experience 100m+ hight jump
Uses 360 video recording of Keio Hiyoshi campus with drone
Uses Oculus RIFT HMD for both display & jump detectionCollaborators•

Yohei Yanase (Unity, VREngineer, Game Designer)•Makoto Ito (Unity, VR
Enthusiast, Engineer)•Project AssistantProfessor. Masahiro
Furukawa @ Keio University•

Yamen Saraiji @ KeioUniversityWhy Collaboration?
•Yanase and Ito @ Unity were eager toprototype non-game applications with VRand Unity•

After trying a few prototypes with 360
cam, they were seeking way to shoot thereal ﬂy through → how?

Why Collaboration?
•Keio Media Design lab
luckily had quad-copterthat can carry weight of1kg, as well as anengineering student who
has an ability to build
custom mount for it (Mr.
Saraiji)•

Shooting ﬂy-through thathigh requires permission
from public oﬃceSpeed of development•

From shooting to theexhibition was less than10 days•

“Hey that sounds fun,letʼs just do it!”Portable Device of Airborne Ultrasound Tactile
Display
The Center for Fostering Young and InnovativeResearchers, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Aichi, Japan
http://star.web.nitech.ac.jp/aufd/aufd.html

Takayuki Hoshi
Project Researcher,NITECH

Enabling device to thesmart masses•

Recently, a lot of new humaninteraction devices such as
LeapMotion or Oculus RIFT
comes from Kick Starter cloudfunding•

Almost all of those kickstarterfunded devices ship withUnity extensions•Even a prototype device
which exists only handful onearth can take advantage iffollow the same strategy

Enabling device to thesmart masses•

Original software forportable ultrasound device
was in C/C++ codebase•

Unity has an ability to call
C/C++ library from script•

Mr.Hoshi and Yoshihito
Kondo created a simple
extension to Unity tocontrol portableultrasound device

Enabling device to thesmart masses•

Art piece by “Technician inwild” Yoshihito Kondo for
Miku Hatsune 6thanniversary - quite wellbuzzed•

Easily empower creators
without forcing them hassle
with technical challenges of“plumbing”•“Hey, its awesome! I will
make something with this”

Entering JFF•Just For Fun based approach•

Doing ﬁrst, getting serious
second•Do not even think of reason
to do it•encourage bizarre andcrazy things•

work from passion, notmerit or moral

Game JamWhat is Game Jam?
•

Game jam is a hack-a-thon ofcreating games, like jam session ofmusic•

Held many times, across the world- the largest Global Game Jam had
23,198 participant from 488
locations worldwide (72 countries).

•

Very good mixer of talents fromschools/professionals/individuals/enthusiasts•

Very often tackle bizarre topic in ashort amount of time.

REPUBLIQUE and Yusuke•

REPUBLIQUE by Seattle based
studio Camouﬂaj is AAA quality
mobile game•

Yusuke Ikewada was a GUI
designer and also game jam
enthusiast, making games injam JFF•

Camouﬂaj founder Ryan foundYusukeʼs work best match for
REPUBLIQUE, soon started
working together acrossboarderNiconico research madness
a series of 180 sec. short presentations of “research inmadness” by wild researchers or researchers in academy

But how are they beneﬁt toworld?
• Will they make money? →NO!
• Will they solve problems? →Forget it!
• Consider it as more likesports - training skills andyour hands/mind.
• If your hands are moving, you

are instantly ready when you
meet a problem to solve.

Todayʼs students know
“attention based economy”• Attention can be converted

to money• Attention can create theircarrier• “To be known” creates a lotof chances and possibilities,
even solves problems
sometimes• Buzz of Fun is strong

Possible other canals today•

Arduino/Fritzing•

3D Printer/On demand(social) printing - Fablab

Takeaway•

Engineers can be motivated if it isfun - be ready by having a lot of
fun until actually meet withproblems to solve.

•Utilize fast pipelines, and consider
to connect yours so that it opens
variety of possibilities•

Encourage JFF based events tomaximize opportunities•

Share facilities and services to wild
engineers to maximize
opportunities (Fablab)Q&Ahiroki@unity3d.com

Thank you!
hiroki@unity3d.com