It is good time to make the Construct great again

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bellborn

  • In terms of ideas for marketing I could see Construct having the motto:

    Work smarter, not harder

    Oohh or

    Work faster, not harder

    On the front page it would show something like:

    Here is what you would need to do in other engines to do X (Not naming a specific engine because no one likes bullies)

    and then showing how much faster and easier it is in Construct. Actually it should first show how fast and easy it is with Construct to do X and then show the other engine comparison, feels more confident this way around.

    This messaging would still say, hey we are beginner friendly, without pushing the no coding part too hard. It's less about a feature bullet point and more focused on what that feature actually does for you.

  • To be taken seriously, Construct needs a major makeover. Their website, logo, mascots, and how they advertise their engine all seem too playful. Don't get me wrong, it's professional, but their design language is truly geared towards young children.

    If Construct wants to appeal Unity users, it must undergo a complete re-branding. Construct has trapped itself in the "no-coding - fast prototyping" niche since the very beginning. And Construct 3 went full kids mode but with a hefty monthly price-tag.

    So while aimed at kids, kids usually don't have any income, making schools the main target audience. Unity is aimed at an entirely different market. Even if C3 is capable to take over a small portion of Unity 2D projects, it's just not advertised as such.

    Just compare the C3 landing page to Godot, Unity or CryEngine. C3 advertises how many users it has, and how the cutting-edge technology makes it run in your browser. It then starts to talk about "Chances are you've played games made in Construct and even have some installed on your phone.". Or "It's Fast". Does that sound appealing to a Unity, or any serious user?

    There's no real info on what the engine its truly capable of. No technical details. No proper game showcases. I would prefer the Construct 3 Features page as landing page, because it actually tells you some important information. Not perfect either, but much better.

    I think Construct does many things really great. But being appealing to a mature audience doesn't seem to be part of their marketing strategy.

  • Leaving the price aside, since it has already been discussed many times, I think that the real problem of Construct is their use base itself.

    The way majority of games published with Construct are silly mobile or browser games, and that's what someone that hear about Construct sees. If I am using a different engine or I never programmed and I want to develop my big dream game, I will not be interested in an engine that mostly create endless clicking games or clone of other simple games like Flappy Bird.

    I've been using Construct since 10 years now, and I am still amazed about what I can bring it out from it, and not only from C3, I still keep using C2 for many of my projects too and it's still great!

    Yes, a new user will never end up in creating their MMORPG with Construct, but they will never do it either with any other engine, because they lack of experience more than it be an engine limitation. So, you need to show well what can be achieved if you stick with Construct at the very beginning of your page. The rotating cube is nice, but if you don't keep looking at it, you can really see the good games like The Next Penelope or Mighty Goose. I think a slideshow underneath it, if you want to keep the cube, of other good looking games is good to have, especially if you can click and see 1-2 minutes of gameplay.

    I think you can also include some of the games done with C2, in the end you can say "If this was achieved with C2, can you imagine what you can make with C3?".

    There a few games that are graphically astonishing, and since we know that the eye wants its part, I would add those at the very beginning of the homepage. Videos of games like Remote Life, Cyber Shadow and Klang will make a huge difference. These are published games on Steam, so new users can see what is achievable completing a game with Construct.

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  • I forgot to mention, also a section or link to YouTube channel where you interview developers that have completed those games would be great. Show how the team is in connections with the developers and gather their experience on working with Construct.

    What was easy, what was their challenge, what they achieved, what's coming next and so on.

    It will be a good collaboration for both Scirra and developers since both will get a boost in marketing promotion.

  • in my experiense with this engine i can tell you , the problem of construt 3 lack of popularity is because nobody wants to show the true power of the engine , this is a great great engine but when i was a noob coding all the tutorials for construct 2 was simple games, the engine looks like have no more than the drag and drop coding system and construct 3 inherited those problems, the developers think construct 3 is a weak engine because the lack of tutorials , i can tell you i used to search tutorials for make custom plugins or behaviors or effects but all the tutorials are complex things or theres no good explanaition and even now has the same problem those are limitands for the develop of a game , in unity you can make anything you want, in construct you make things following a preset path , and is no bad but theres a bunch of developers who loves the senzation of coding something by her selfs, i know construct 3 have js code but is not the same the engine still limitated you

  • My biggest hope is to relax the restrictions on the free version so that more people can understand the charm of C3 more easily.

    Free version can use 3 or 4 layers, just like the C2 free version. I don't think this is too much of a request.

    Free version can add 2 or 3 families, let them understand how families work.

    Free version allowed to preview the project's files in read-only mode. Because there are many built-in examples that use project files, but they cannot see what is inside.

    About the number of event blocks, I think it's okay to keep it that way. Because many of the built-in examples are within 50 lines of events, this is enough to show that the restriction is feasible.(Viridino Studios is amazing!!!)

    one more thought. May be can Provides a playground mode(?playground). Free version can be use more features, but cannot export projects and are only allowed to save .C3P.(For example, pico-8 does this: editor: pico-8-edu.com introduce: lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php This is useful for sharing examples on community, or for use in teaching, tutorials, etc.

    I also hope that the official website can give Construct Community some exposure, even if it is an unofficial user discord community. In fact, there is a very friendly communication atmosphere, many people are willing to answer questions for novices, and there are many examples shared by users

  • I love C3 but here's what I think about this subject.

    C3 has sacrificed a lot of structure over the years for the sake of quick development which makes a lot of pros of the engine harder to sell than they should actually be. A lot of fundamentally important features aren't fully fledged, actively work against each other or have an inappropriate / non-existent UI (imo hierarchies, containers, families are a glaring example for this).

    Right now you can observe a lot of Godot newcomers finding out about its (amazing) node system and being thoroughly impressed. In contrast, showing the way hierarchies are handled in Construct to an experienced dev will usually lead to a very negative reaction.

    This is just my observation, i'm not claiming that this is the biggest factor or even a big factor in the marketability of C3 overall because that's a very complex subject. I have immense respect for what the C3 team has achieved so far.

  • I think there are no extended instructions for creating complex mechanics in Construct 3. What cannot be done is to find such instructions. Even now, I simply do not have enough Yandex mobile ads mediation plugin to monetize games here, because it simply does not exist, very little monetization... Even the same training books of different levels for Construct 3 can be released and show how you can make different games from beginning to end as examples. When there are ready-made projects, novice developers will not be able to figure out what is what in the project. And if the project is crammed into more than 3000 lines of algorithm and visual code like mine, it's not that you can't figure it out, I even get lost when updating myself, so that there is a well-added search in the visual code of Construct 3, it saves if the project is extremely large like mine...But to be honest, I'm not unlikely to change construct 3 to something else, since this engine is what I would like to see, it's easy to master standard functions and conditions, the visual code is also very easy, but sometimes you just don't understand what you need to do some non-standard mechanics and score on this is by choosing some workarounds or resorting to standard plugins. In general, we need textbooks and again textbooks with numerous examples of how and how you can do it! This will greatly advance Construct 3! After all, in order to make complex mechanics of a game that will not repeat other games, it is not enough to configure the plugin properly, you also need to know higher mathematics and sometimes physics) Therefore, the more manuals and textbooks there are in Construct 3, the more the same teenagers who are just entering game development will pay attention to it. Ashley I definitely say thank you to Ashley and his team, thank you for your hard work, and for continuing to improve the Engine!!!

  • Interesting thoughts all, but I have to say, for us the more we add to the free edition, the fewer sales we get. Open-source projects use a different model where most of the product is free, the titans of the industry like Unreal can rely on revenue from royalties of major commercial titles, and some other tools are backed by billion-dollar corporations who don't necessarily care about running things at a loss. I think we're actually relatively unique in being an independently run, small/medium-scale commercial business with subscriptions, and making a success of it. However we also have to make sure that's sustainable, and in its current form, it is. Unity are losing about a billion dollars a year at the moment so clearly they're thinking "this is unsustainable, we need more revenue fast", and look where that's ended up, and I think that's a good reminder of the importance of having a sustainable business.

  • for us the more we add to the free edition, the fewer sales we get.

    I agree with you. But Even if add slightly free edition features, it doesn't matter. Because this part is not enough to complete a large-scale game like Kiwi Story, it only allows them to complete a small demo like the same size as built-in example. It does not have complete levels and can only briefly complete some game mechanics.that is enough. Because many of the current built-in examples exceed the limits of the free version - layers, effect and family, and project files can't view.

    Make a small demo in the free version,This part of the time is enough for it to understand how powerful, simple and easy to use C3 is. if want to continue development in the future, they will be easier to subscribe for it. This may be overly idealistic, But putting too many restrictions on it before user get to know it. Looks like a bad beginner's tutorial.

  • I completely agree, obviously the business needs to be sustainable but their is also a wiiiide range to play with between small Scirra <--> gigantic Unity. I don't think anyone expects things on the scale of Unity or Unreal from Scirra.

    I had another idea after thinking about it some more, maybe as a less drastic change, while hopefully still getting some of the benefits an unrestricted free version would IMO have, how about a periodic Scirra organized C3 game jam. Every X month Scirra holds a Construct 3 weekend game jam where C3 is free to use for that weekend and the 1st price is a C3 license.

    It still doesn't fix all the issues of a crippled demo vs unrestricted free version I personally see, but it could help eliminate the biggest pain points.

  • Honestly...

    I´m actually more than impressed how well Construct is doing and how Scirra managed to expand their team from being a two people company to a real team.

    Owning a SME myself I know how hard that is! Congrats guys. No need to compare with anyone :-)

  • Hello there, I have to say that topic resonates with me a lot! Sorry in advance for my bad English and too many thoughts (long text). :D

    It's really nice that there is nothing negative and everyone is trying to bring something interesting that could help the engine, that's one of the things I appreciate about Construct as a whole, the community, so it would definitely be nice to put more emphasis on it, see the mentions about the unofficial discord, it's really helpful and you feel good there, which for complete newcomers is essential information that none of them know.

    Then I would focus on the first impression, which is essential for new potential customers, yes as already said it looks like a product for "children", whether by the presentation on the web or even a little for me unnecessary detour to add "3D" features because I myself do not consider it enough capable to create anything full-fledged and therefore I stick to 2D only and personally I have no problem with it to make only 2D games and Construct should not be ashamed of being only a "2.5D" engine because it is damn good at it.

    Overall at the first glance it looks like an engine only for some simple games and not for serious projects like "here I'll play around and then I'll learn a proper engine", that's very sad, because we all know how powerful and great it is.

    Now let me make a small side-step to my "life" with Construct. I started back in the days of Construct Classic and I really like using Construct to this day (C3), overall it suited me very well and I like how efficient it is, what I think about I am able to process very quickly and express my ideas, I think that is really unique for Construct. For that I thank the whole team very much for how far they have come since the beginning and I hope they will continue to do so, because I want to use ideally till my death. :D

    So then it makes me even more sad when someone asks me "in what engine you did it?" and I say Construct 3 and nobody knows it, or like now a bunch of news and articles about the Unity controversy and what the alternatives are and nobody talks about C3, which is a big shame. People just don't know how good and efficient it is, and unfortunately even a first look at the web doesn't give them much of a feeling of a serious high performance engine, which C3 undoubtedly is.

    Regarding the presentation, as it was already said here, that "we are better than X or Y" and "that we are 2x faster etc"... doesn't seem to impress people much, emotions through the stories/successes of the games have a greater impact. Yes, the blog series about developers (by Laura) was mentioned here, which is nice, but it will not reach new potential customers. I will read it as a long-time user because I know about it.

    For example, I personally have worked my way up from small experiments and really bad "things" and XX unfinished projects to a hobby solo dev full-fledged release of the game on Steam as you can take a look here:

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/1970010/Light_Bringer

    Now I don't want to praise/promo my game, the point is that I proved it to myself and got to a higher level. I became GAMEDEV and it has been very exciting journey with Construct and for me it is something like personal achievement. You know I became more serious developer who will release his own full-fledged game that looks not lame :) I attended few game conferences with it and many other interesting things. Yes, I wasn't successful with sales, because I had a bad promo, but it is another story and my problem. The engine served me more than well and thanks to that I've made it to this point and I'm still moving on, and for that, many thanks to whole Scirra!!

    Sorry for endless post... :)

  • I was going to write a long post, but it seems most of the talking points has been discussed already in this topic. And I agree with most of them! Instead, I'm going to say this: I love Construct, I've been using it for 7+ years and over that time, for me at least, it felt that as the engine was expanding the community was shrinking. Maybe it's because most people here are beginners, maybe it's because when those beginners get more advanced they jump ship, maybe it's the marketing, maybe it's the paywall, I don't know. What I do know is that I want to continue using Construct in the future, so I hope things improve going forward. This is a great opportunity for the Construct team to reassess the situation and act on it.

    PS I will lie if I say that I didn't look at the alternatives thinking the grass was greener over there. Most recently when the Unity fiasco started and what Godot is offering.

  • Lets discuss what can be done to make the Construct interesting for devs, especially who are searching for a new engine, after Unity fail

    People telling that Construct is for kids, why?

    Welcome from Unity ...

    Not a great intro ... That was quite rude, short-sighted, and pointed.

    "Interesting" how?

    It's a 2D/2.5D engine at its core.

    What else do you want? What isn't interesting? Are you really going to take "it's for children" seriously when people can make drones fly in Scratch?

    Like dude, wow. Wow.

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