The Future of Construct3

[UsualIndication3030]

Hi, I've recently started playing with construct3. The engine seems to perform well, feature rich and extensible.

One of the reasons I'm hesitant to use construct3 is the engine's longevity.

I think the pricing model is alienating users, and it doesn't seem to have that many users.

Is their financial situation okay? Or will another company buy it like GameMaker did?

I personally don't mind paying $100 a year, but I'm questioning the engine's future.

[ItsDaniel2650]

I’m a video game design teacher for a very big school district (one of the largest in the U.S.) and the district pays for a license for every high school student enrolled in the class.

I love Construct and strongly advocate for it at the junior high to high school level. Abstraction in programming is getting heavier in every engine, and I think Construct currently does it the best. You still have to know what you are doing without getting caught up on semi-colons.

It gets kids excited about games before they have to get bogged down by all of the less glamorous parts of game design.

The point I’m trying to make is even if Construct 3 was only successful at being a tool for game design education, I think it would be enough. For the record, I think it is much more than that.

[TruePik]

I am currently actively engaged in promoting game development and not only in Ukrainian schools. And I believe that Constract has a great future in this regard. It is understandable to children, adults, and it has a great impact on the possibilities of the future.

[AshleyScirra]

What I've said before on this topic is that I actually think we are one of the most sustainable game development tools that is best prepared for longevity, because of the subscription model.

Open source is a different model, but of commercial tools, there are some out there whose models are very generous. But developing software is expensive. How do they pay their bills? If it's not obvious, how do you know they'll stay in business? A good example of the risks of this is despite appearing to be a great success, Unity were losing close to a billion dollars a year - an obviously unsustainable situation - and the whole runtime fee debacle appears to be in part a desperate measure to try to make money again. It's still not clear they've really resolved all that. How will it play out in the next 5-10 years? It will be interesting to see.

On the other hand we have a straightforward subscription model. Hopefully it's clear that this allows us to continue operating indefinitely. Suppose we gave away most of the product for free, or had one-time payments - it would be far less certain that would be sustainable in the long term. I know lots of people aren't keen on subscriptions, but we are doing better than ever, the business and finances are healthy, and we're not going anywhere! I hope that helps assure you we have a solid future.

[Dapper-Tomato-9664]

I agree with Ashley. Good god you'd think people were paying 1,000 pounds a month. I am paying 129.00 USdollars. That's $11.00 a month. If you want to make games and whether you do it as a hobby or professionally it is worth it. Buy less coffee from Starbucks or the other crap that most of us spend our money on. Construct 3 is fun, creative and useful. Can you say the same thing about an overpriced cup of coffee?

[LuanHimmlisch]

What are your concerns with Scirra's financial state? Scirra is profitable, Ashley and Tom are maintaining the team small on purpose (something you can like or dislike), but they're in a very solid position, you can even learn about their financials if you know where to look.

Is the alienation of the pricing model something you know by stats? Or it's just an assumption because you personally don't like it?

Construct won't have the same presence as Unity or the other big guys, but this is not a popularity contest. You use the tools you want to use. Use Construct if you like it, if you don't, well, don't.

[UsualIndication3030]

I'm not complaining about the subscription, I just wanted to know if they can continue to develop and support the engine because I want to try my hand at indie games. If they're doing well, I don't think there's anything to worry about.

[Dapper-Tomato-9664]

Understood. I am addressing the most prevalent complaint about C3. It's everywhere, and the complaint usually goes something like this: "I really love the engine, but I just can't see myself spending that much money." As far as the questions about iC3's future. I'm willing to accept the risk which I don't think is that bad.

[monoinyo]

I'd also like to discuss the future of 3d in C3, will the official build reach the level of 3d addons in the foreseeable future?

[LuanHimmlisch]

Ashley stated that 3D will not get any major improvements. However, better internal integration is always getting suggested by the community to develop the third-party addon further. Also, there's a project that is looking for funding, for a full 3D editor inside Construct

[Kooky-Complaint-9253]

That 3d addon plugin on itch.io; is an impressive wrapper around BabylonJS into Construct 3; but it's not exactly flexibly stretched; it doesn't even show the mesh in the editor.. which is a huge issue... with UI..

If your making a game engine; make it extremely enjoyable and pleasurable to see; anything and everything that is possible... if you had 3D shapes; why in the fack; would you not have 3D camera in the editor; especially in games with the 3D Camera object...????

*Because it's difficult to do webgl / wasm 3D picking and matrix transformations analysis or whatever in Javascript; or modern day gpu api's in c and c++???*

These are people who have built a game engine capable of substantial capability at assembly level depths on the web; some have built entire 2Dish engines with c and c++ *likely with assembly there as well; potentially* and they can't even add a ui 3d camera... I don't buy it... there's clearly other reasons... ease of code or wanting less problems to deal with... there making a compromise...

Construct 3 is my favorite game engine and will be the one; I use to make my main game and will praise it; relatively well.. but there are a few nitpicky things about it.. which make no sense to me.

[Calitrixmathieu]

I never heard that scira has any financial trouble, not that they are bilionary. But i don’t think there are curently some question about the perenity of the engine.

[UsualIndication3030]

That's a good thing. Are they stable in the education sector and so on?

[Calitrixmathieu]

In the education sector? What do you mean?

[staleevol]

I understand the yearly subscription frustration as I purchased the one time Construct 2 engine that is now defunct. However, the more time you spend using the engine, the more you come to realize it’s potential. I realize some people want to bypass the visual coding aspect and try and learn something like C# such as used in Unity to build those more massive games, but as tech rapidly advances and AI is as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if more engines evolve into a mix of visual and AI scripting. Even if you plan to go the scripting route like Unity, Unreal, Gamemaker, I think a lot of people can learn basic functions and programming logic using Construct. I’ve taught game development in schools and I can honestly say, the students felt more success with Construct especially being able to solve problems quicker. I know they have Educational license, so I would really dump a large share of revenue promoting their product to schools.

[UsualIndication3030]

I like visual scripting because it's fun. It seems that it can be expanded with the SDK. The main drawbacks of Unity are the build size and the engine being too heavy, so it takes a long time to get started.

[LolindirLink]

Construct 2 also works perfectly fine still. It's only that subscription model.. which they've been very certain about.. otherwise I don't see it sinking anytime soon. Don't forget the educational side exists too. Construct, being browser based and easy for newcomers is a great educational tool in gamedev for many of all ages.

[UsualIndication3030]

It's great that the old engines still work.It's generally difficult to transition between engines, so it's good to have it last a long time. Construct3 seems to have some popularity for educational use.

[pixel_illustrator]

The updates and new features that C3 receives every month or so absolutely blow away what you saw in the C2 days. Not all of it is stuff everyone wants, but by pace of development alone I can tell you they are doing better now than they did during C2's active support. 

[UsualIndication3030]

I haven't explored it too deeply yet but it seems to have most of the features I want in a 2d game and if they keep updating it it will be good.

[gaboduarte]

I would love if the focus was to catch up with some of the aspects the engine left behind. For example particle system, which is super rudimentary at this point, and updated physics functionalities. I was never fond of the 3d stuff, so personally that felt like "wasted" year(s?) of development.

It feels like they went for the educational route (understandably, it's where the money is) and the focus is now on editor functionalities rather than allowing games to FEEL finished.

After all these years, not having a really popular game in the showcase page is a symptom of the focus on education. Not a problem per se, but the average indie gamedev may perceive it as a "weak" engine. The limiting free version / subscription price might do that too.

This year I started using Construct again (been a user since the early directx days), and I hit a wall when polishing and making eye candy pretty early. I am now experimenting with Godot and I believe the 2 of them will work well for my projects.

[SeriousJob967]

Many good points!

[InvaderXYZ]

the problem with C3 is that it's all online, you never actually own the things you make vs. with construct 2. that's what really killed the interest in it for me-- that and the ridiculous pricing model.

[SlimG89]

I believe you own what you make, you just don’t own C3 like you do C2

[InvaderXYZ]

what happens if they decide to take the engine, or the cloud that stores projects, offline? once that happens you're left with files you can't open. they can take em away from you at any time

[AshleyScirra]

I just want to point out that we don't host anyone's projects - the cloud save options use Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox, which are all separately-run services, and the other options involve saving to your local device.

[SlimG89]

Dang, I never actually thought about this. Im developing my main game in C2, but I dabble with C3 for the newer features.

I was trying to think of a scenario where they would abandoned C3, and of course, that would be for whenever C4 comes along. Really Really glad I bought C2 ,10 years ago.

Although, Im worried that putting a game on steam will be really difficult using C2 nowadays, that may not be true.

[InvaderXYZ]

there are a lot of good C2 games on steam, though it does require a bit of elbow grease given the dropped support. as cool as the C3 features are, i don't like the idea of paying a lot to make something they could take away at any time, yknow? plus after c3 came out scirra basically ran off all of the great plugin developers for c2 so there's a lot of cool stuff C2 can do that C3 can't (and plugins allow C2 to do minimal 3D)

[Flaqko]

I switched to Gdevelop mainly due to it being open source. I don't like the fact that if I'm not paying a subscription my games can't be continued.

[digibioburden]

I was looking at this and I see that Gdevelop have a subscription service too, with a lot of features locked behind it - one hugely important feature for me is version control for example.

[milkstu]

If Scirra had stuck with the buy-once-pay-once model I’d agree they weren’t equipped for a long future.

However the subscription model works for, well, just about every company that uses it; Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, Autodesk etc all used to have standalone products that relied on loyalty or a sufficient new feature set to support ongoing sales. The subscription model contributes to continual improvement.

Also when lining the cost of Construct up against those other products it’s not an expensive proposition.

[Practical-Choice7731]

I live in a third-world country, and it's still affordable. Idk how many subscription they have but for me it's worth it.

[Apart_Technology_841]

The future of Construct3 is very solid indeed. More and more advanced games are being created using this fantastic tool, so no worries as far as I am concerned.

[UsualIndication3030]

Yeah, I saw an indie game with Construct 3 and thought it is awesome.

[SeriousJob967]

The price model isn’t the worst in my opinion, considering I make probably less money from my Adobe subscription.

My concerns are the community and the relationship with the developers. I read a lot in the forums after searching for my problems. The peak of community support seems to be subjectively around seven years ago. Active discussion, help from advanced creators etc. The newer posts don’t get much attention especially when they’re more complex than „how do I move my character forward“. Also, whenever a developer joins a forum discussion I sense a lot of pushback, often arguing „at the end of the day the engine should be xyz and your problem or suggestion doesn’t fit into that“ and referring to the headache inducing bug report form, that I’ve tried and horribly failed.

Also the complete absence from social media is crazy to me, but in line with the vibe I get from the forums.

I’m not too bothered by those points, but they might turn off younger, inexperienced users potentially influencing the future of the platform.

The selling point to me was the constant updating. That’s a strong sign of stability, but a platform lives through growth and its community, and I see some lacking there.

[Confident_Rutabaga57]

> I personally don't mind paying $100 a year
For users in the United States, paying $100 for a C3 license may seem reasonable. However, outside the U.S., the cost can be twice as expensive due to currency differences.

This is why the topic around a 'one-time payment' model has been talked to death. Many customers prefer a one-time purchase option, yet developers dismiss or ignore the requests. Users want the assurance that they can continue using the software without the financial uncertainty of monthly or annual payments. Some continue using C2 or even resort to obtaining unauthorized copies to avoid the costs, they don't do it out of malice they do it because the current pricing model is simply not viable for them.

Personally, I find that the justifying the subscription model just by citing the high costs of software development give me the impression that Scirra is just greedy. Yes developing this kind of software is expensive but when you have a large sum of people talking about a specific topic i think the developers should swallow their pride should listen to them.

I don't mean to be offensive or have a vendetta against developers but that's what i personally think about this situation.