I spent a long time mulling over which game framework to learn, and the biggest benefit of Unity was it’s export options to so many platforms. I’ve always enjoyed making web games, something quick and easy to play, which loads right in the browser, so I can easily show people by sending them a link or putting it straight on Facebook.
It’s so much easier doing that than asking for someone to download an executable file, which always seems like a big ask, or on a mobile to go to the app store (and the inevitable problem of being in ALL app stores, so that people aren’t excluded), and downloading, making sure they have enough space on their device etc etc, that all seems like a ballache compared to flinging someone a link to see what they think of the half-finished thing.
So Unity did still have that benefit. I could add a crappy game, half finished and buggy to Newgrounds, to see what people thought, and they didn’t have to do much (okay I suppose they had to have the plugin, but that’s only the same as Flash player for Flash games).
Chrome has now killed the Unity plugin
Which means it’s less easy to show a WIP, or a small game that only took a few days to make without the rigmarole of having to download it.
I’m hoping the time I invested in learning Unity wasn’t wasted, because it still is an awesome tool for exporting to Android and other platforms (although I haven’t made anything decent enough to distribute yet).
It’s not all bad, it looks like Unity has a way to export to WebGL, which means it should work in the browser WITHOUT even needing a plugin, which is even better. I just haven’t experimented with that yet.
But I probably will!
I use Unity for game jams and games for #1GAM, so I'm dealing with the same issue. I've experimented with the WebGL exporter some. It worked for one of my games, but I had some issues with another one so went back to doing a regular web player build.
I think WebGL in Unity is going to be awesome, but right now the exporter is still in beta (and I believe browser support for WebGL may still be somewhat inconsistent). So currently the options are:
-Try Web GL exporter...might work for your game, but may have some problems.
-Do a web player build and instruct players about how to enable NPAPI plugins if running Chrome Support.google.com
-Do a web player build and tell players to use Firefox, etc.
The situation is kind of a pain, but it's not a huge deal for me since I'm not currently trying to make money off of web builds. But I can see where it's currently a major problem for companies that rely heavily on Unity web player.