For Game Developers Who Are Sick of Working Hard to Release Games That Get Negative Reviews

Learn Unity Addressables in a Single Weekend and End the Misery of Poor Reviews and Refunds from Nasty Performance Issues

Frustrating game loading times above 5 seconds?
Suffering from program crashes due to high memory pressure?
How many 1-star reviews and lost sales will you risk before taking action?

Hi, I'm Ruben from TheGamedev.Guru

Fellow game developer

Nowadays, it's easier and cheaper than ever to buy huge asset packages from the Asset Store and toss them into your game. High-detailed landscapes, a multitude of characters, high bit-rate soundtracks and PBR materials are among the most popular.

And it's easy to see why we do this — to offer the engaging gameplay that our users demand.

But, there is a hidden cost of implementing that much content into your game.

Adding more content explodes the download size and increases the loading times of your game. And we all know that players really hate waiting.

Yet, as more and moreo assets are loaded it doesn't take too long before your game puts critical memory pressure on the device. What happens next is irreversible: the OS kills your application just before your players can save their game.

The result: players requesting refunds, negative reviews, lost sales and stress.

Sounds familiar?

Resource-heavy assets are preventing players with legacy devices from enjoying your game. And bad reviews are hurting your reputation and your wallet.

So what can you do about this? Reduce asset quality?

Well, quality is one of the features that people were looking for in your game in the first place. You're not doing them a favor by sacrificing quality for playability. Doing that only ruins their experience.

Ok, so how about you maintain an updated device blacklist? Well, that is just painfully time-intensive, not to say tedious, and this keeps excluding players.

BUT there is a way.

I recently ported a very famous PS4 game to Oculus Quest. This is what it meant:

I reduced memory requirements by half (8GB to 4GB)
I increased rendering performance by 20% (60hz vs 72hz)
I maintained, if not enhanced, the game's visuals

But, my journey to achieving this feat was NOT a smooth path.

I first looked at achieving the port using the conventional asset management approaches. Let's examine them.

The Traditional Approach to Asset Management

Traditionally speaking, there are three main ways of dealing with asset management in Unity.

Unity Resources API

Load on demand from the Resources folder

Additive Scene Loading

Structure your content into scenes and load them as needed

Asset Bundles

Prepare asset packages in advance and load them on demand

Unity Resources API
This famous directory is the most commonly used API in the Unity development scene. But this is not without problems. Developers abusing the system prompted Unity to discourage its use and instead look for alternative ways of loading, ironically, resources.
Additive Scene Loading
This is one of my favourites. Additive scenes work very well for UI and global logic, but using them for the sole purpose of asset management has quite some overhead on the programmers' side. Often enough, you'll find yourself moving and reparenting objects between scenes.
Asset Bundles
This is for hardcore programmers. They're incredibly powerful, as they allow you to pack all kinds of assets and distribute them in countless amounts of channels. However, they're considerably complicated to maintain over time. You'll need a very refined pipeline and build process for asset bundles to work well in your project.

These three methods have their pros and cons, but they all have something in common: they're incredibly costly at different points of the game development cycle.

So how do the AAA studios do it? What's their secret?

AAA studios regularly deliver high-performing, stunning-quality assets to an endless market.

Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, ID, Guerrilla and others all have almost unlimited budget and talent to accomplish this. AAA studios spend millions of dollars in tools, pipelines and talent.

It is not uncommon to see beautifully crafted graphics running on lower spec-hardware. Years of continuous dedication in automated pipelines and exclusive developers dedicated to the smallest of the tasks allow just that.

But, you don't have the budgets or human resources of AAA game companies.

You want to focus on the design/creativity of your game
You don't want to spend time dealing with complex pipelines and workflows
You want the engine to do the dirty work for you

This was the challenge I faced at the start of 2019 when I wanted to port a famous and demanding PSVR game to a tiny VR platform (yes, we're talking about Oculus Quest).

I needed to reduce memory pressure by 50%, increase rendering performance and at the very least, maintain (if not enhance) the games' visuals.

It was daunting.

I was working late into the night, using the best of my skills, but I just couldn't make it work. The numbers didn't add up. Not by following the traditional asset management workflows. I didn't have the budget or time to accomplish my mission.

I'll admit, the frustration I was feeling was starting to show to those around me. I was short-tempered and not pleasant to be around.

But I kept pushing, because I knew we, game developers, are here to pull off impossible feat. We are here to surprise our players.

And that's when a new hero spawned on my screen.

THE ADDRESSABLES PACKAGE

What's that? I thought.

I had not heard of it before, and despite its lack of documentation, I managed to see the only keyword I needed — Indirect References.

So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. Prototype after prototype; all of them succeeded in delivering what I needed to port the game successfully.

Namely, having full control over when I loaded the big assets that my players expected for great gameplay.

Addressables Joined the Game

I have to say, Unity hired an excellent team to develop this powerful API, because it combines:

The simplicity of the Resources API
With the modularity of Additive Scene Loading
And the power of Asset Bundles

Addressables is a beast of a package. And if you can learn to tame that beast, you'll take your game to the next level.

Lower Loading Times

Meet your players' requirements on loading times

Tiny Iteration Times

Massively reduce editor play and deploy times

Eradicate Memory Pressure

Target more devices
Reduce crashes

Sell Your Next DLC

Plan, produce and ship your DLC with almost zero effort

Overwhelmingly Positive Reviews

Cure the technical issues plaguing most of the games made today.
Cure the pain of your users' gameplay.
...And remove negative reviews.

When I shared the results I got with friends and colleagues, they naturally wanted to know how to do it. But, how could I explain to them what had taken me 6 months to learn by trial and error?

It was a problem.

Unfortunately, the Unity developers are incredibly busy improving the overall package, and the Addressables documentation is still very much lacking. Only after a long period of grinding, as I did, could others sharpen their skills enough to get to the production level they wanted.

Then it struck me — it was possible to achieve the kind of results I was getting if I applied the 80/20 principle to my knowledge. The Pareto law enabled me to distill the most useful aspects of Addressables into a simple to follow set of instructions, that meant I could help others share in my techniques.

And now I want to make the instructions available to you.

So, here I present you the best piece of content I ever created. A course carefully crafted with one unique goal in mind: to secure you instant gains in your game right from the start.

You'll be gaining 80% of the Addressables benefits by just spending 20% of the time on it.

My course will show you how to:

1
Halve the memory usage of your game
2
Reduce your game download size below 100MB
3
Ship your next DLC in less than a week
4
Get your loading times under 4 seconds in a single day
5
Remove 1-star reviews from the store due to these trendy issues

And this is the map of the journey you and I are about to go on...

It is time for you to level up.

Addressables for the Busy Developer

Gain 80% of the benefits in 20% of the time:

Ridiculously Low Loading and Iteration Times
Reduce Memory Pressure up to 75%
Blazingly Fast Purchase-To-Play Times of under 1 Minute
Say goodbye to 1-star reviews due to memory and loading times
Substantially boost sales and reduce refunds

Start Your Journey Now

Indie

Your price

€197

Enroll Now

Includes

Full Course Access

Free Future Updates

Community Support

Rubén Torres Bonet

Unity Game Performance Expert

About the Author

I'm a videogame programmer who's led and/or shipped several titles on Steam, PS4, Switch and Oculus Quest, including Star Trek Bridge Crew, Time Stall, Catan Universe, Carcassonne, Diamond Dash and at least 10 more, accounting for more than 30 million players worldwide.
In my free-time I write blog posts and craft courses based on my hands-on wide industry experience. I'm also an expert blogger in places such as Gamasutra and GameDev.net.
Ever since I started developing games with Unity about 10 years ago, I witnessed several key turning points in technology that greatly changed the way I worked.
Additive scene loading was a paradigm switch for me, just like scriptable rendering pipelines also was.
This is the last shift I experienced: Addressables. It changed my workflows so much that I decided to write a course on it to help you leveling up your development skills.

I am very proud of the course that I have put together, but don't just take my word for it. Here's what previous students have said about the course and my coaching.

Emanuel Amler (VFX) 3D Character/Creature Animator

Unity Game Performance

I am a artist and not very skilled in technical things to properly optimize a project in Unity. I know some bits and pieces but definitely not enough to do it properly. Rubén was very helpful with that. Especially by going through things directly on my project with Teamviewer. That way, he could make quick changes while explaining to me what and why he is doing them. I also got a lot better understanding on how to use the built-in Profiler from Unity and other tools. Last but not least, I am very happy that he offers this 1:1 coaching at all, because I can read through tons of articles and lists of possible improvements, and still not understand (or be able to apply) the different steps to my very own project. The 1:1 coaching, with my own project, was definitely not only a time- and money-saver for this project, but also gave me a much better understanding on what to consider for future projects. Rubén is very efficient, professional and has great skills to boil down complex information into chunks that are easy to understand and apply. I can highly recommend him!

Brian Hunsaker Technical Director at Dark Tonic Games

Consulting On Performance

Ruben is deeply knowledgeable about every aspect of Unity development.

He figured out the issue I had been struggling within minutes.

His expertise is worth any price.

Ryan Yoon Game Engineer at Max Gaming Studios, LLC

Addressables Course

Before signing up for this course, I used to frantically search Unity Answers, Forums, Documentation, and YouTube for relevant information, but there just weren't many useful information around regarding new Addressables System.

I decided to your course on Addressables because, well, you were pretty much the only one who's trying to help and make new system easier to implement to other developers.

One thing I know now about Addressables is that it is a very efficient system compared to Asset Bundles or any other previous system in terms of loading and updating assets.

I will be applying addressables for both of our current project and future project to improve development cycle as well as Live Ops for our players.

Yorai Omer Lead Game Developer at Re-Logic

Great Course on Unity Addressables

Allow me to begin by saying I am a happy customer, it was a lovely course on Addressables!

After requesting additional content on integrating Mirror Networking with Addressables, Ruben went as far as to add a lesson about it.

Ruben: if you ever make another course, please do hit me up with an e-mail!

Ido Ben Shalom Unity Developer at D.I.C Network Technologies

Addressables for the Busy Developer

I want to let you know that I appreciate all the posts you wrote. They really helped me grasp the true power of the addressables package.

I used to struggle a lot with memory consumption, crashes, high cpu usage etc.. and your content helped me overcome a lot of obstacles.

I signed up to the course you've created and finished several chapters already and am very excited to keep reading

Robert Wetzold CEO at Wetzold Studios

Unity Performance

It's thanks to Ruben and his really well structured blogs that I was able to first of all understand these and then also to transform my whole project to Addressables in record time.

He looks at so many angles and even has been available to personally help with additional questions I had. I can only applaud his passion and willingness to share as this is what in my eyes moves game-dev forward for all of us, helping us to reach more professional levels easier and more confident.

His new blog posts are always an instant read for me.

Jonathan Weinberger CEO at GameDevHQ

Unity Game Performance

The knowledge and passion Ruben has for optimization is to be admired.

I highly recommend his course.

Now, if you have the time, you probably can piece Addressables together by yourself, just like I did. But, I am offering to save you all that extra time and heartache in figuring it all out for yourself.

I'm so pleased with the course, and how comprehensive it is, that I feel confident in offering you a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. If you don't get the benefits that I promise in 30 days, then send me an email to [email protected] and I'll send you a full refund. And I offer this because I'm sure you'll love it.

As the saying goes — if you want different results, then you have to try different things. Commit today to learning a new approach to high-performing game asset management.

You can start getting results this week, click on the button below to order now.

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