Game Industry Vet here. Unfortunately middleware or tools for gaming have gone to the 0 margin, free area. Mainly because 99% of game generally don't make much money so people dont invest heavily. Those 1% that do make a lot of money tend to invest in the their own tool development or want to retain control of their middleware hence less money in the pot.
Another interesting point, IMO, is that game development attracts very capable developers. Thus they tend to be very adept at finding things for OS instead of forcing the company directors to buy large licences for convoluted software they don't need :)
I'm finding that people spend way more money in the rough prototyping phase than during the "ok let's build the real thing" phase. Especially in things like asset stores.
Myself and a bunch of friends working on VR stuff easily spend $10-50 on a random helper to get a prototype done in a few hours rather than a few days.
That is really interesting. I think definitely find myself doing this as well. It's easy to justify both personally and professionally. Thanks for bringing that up.
Interesting! Good to know, and this obviously matches with my experience.
I feel like the level of complexity required to sell software for game development has moved up a fair bit to things like procedural texture/mesh generation.
I don't know if I'm going to continue along these lines. If I can squeak out a minimal revenue stream I'd be happy, but if there's literally zero opportunity in this area I'll have to look elsewhere.
Another interesting point, IMO, is that game development attracts very capable developers. Thus they tend to be very adept at finding things for OS instead of forcing the company directors to buy large licences for convoluted software they don't need :)