Hi Everyone,
I’m a beginner Unreal developer and loving the course I’m taking - however I’m wondering if the Lifetime membership is worth for myself as a beginner trying to develop a game.
In particular I’d still like to learn creating interactive widget blueprints, simulating physics for 3D characters ( Humans fall flat as example ), and some of the newer features in Unreal 5.5+ ( meta human, updated third person base project, etc )
Are these topics gamedev.tv might produce at some point?
Hi,
That’s a good question. The Lifetime membership’s value is to each developer. There are many courses for Unreal (about 15 I think) and new courses are added and some retired. The lifetime membership will give you access to newer courses slightly earlier as well.
Is it worth it? I jump between engines so it makes things a lot more valuable, as well as the Blender courses too. I’m the TA for a good portion of the Unreal courses so I’m kind of biased but I also use Godot more recently, as well as occasionally Unity.
In the end, take a look at the course catalog and decide for yourself.
Widget blueprints are not heavily covered, physics are used in most courses but not anything specific and there is use of MetaHumans but again, only creating and using as a player character, not voice tracking or anything like that.
Most of the content is aimed at beginner developers to be honest with a few more advanced ones as well like multiplayer and Action Combat which deals heavily with Behaviour Trees specifically. There’s also fun courses like the 2D Unreal which I absolutely love.
In the end, you are spending the money so you have to make the decision yourself.
I hope this helps.
Main value of membership is for people who:
I’m reviewing this again so adding some content.
First, while the lifetime membership may not be of value for just a specific engines, I personally use the blender content, the Unity, Godot and UE content as well. Plus there are exclusive events, early access and new courses added all the time which lifetime members get for free. So, over the lifetime the course catalog has grown significantly. Plus there’s the non-engine specific courses - not many but a couple.
Game Jams - no guarantee a course will be provided.
Price - no guarantee the price of a course will be 13USD and even at a discounted rate.
Overall, it is a lot of money but you get way more than just courses.
There is also the opportunity to try other engines out and honestly, play with the courses for other engines and bring into UE for fun…I do this.
I’m biased a little, as I’m a TA here. I love the Lifetime membership.
I can clarify further on those points:
Game Jams - no guarantee a course will be provided.
If the jam provides course, it will be mentioned. The upcoming Halloween jam does NOT provide a course for participation, it is not the main jam.
The annual main game jam by gd.tv notoriously provides course to participants each year, as mentioned in the rules each year.
The only thing you need to do is submit a working prototype. A lot of newbies do not participate at all because they overthink how much game jams generally expect from developers. Many game jams accept simple games, even if from a player’s point of view it is a huge stretch to call it a game at all.
Price - no guarantee the price of a course will be 13USD and even at a discounted rate.
I’ve been following gd.tv for years, they ALWAYS have discounts on their courses. I genuinely never saw courses not being on a discount, except the most new ones. Which is good for me as a client, but from a business point always boggled me lol. If they don’t have the discount here, they have it at the other platforms like udemy and humblebundle. So for an attentive potential client there’s no reason to buy any gd.tv course for full price, which also cheapens the lifetime membership because right now there’s not much to invest into.
Overall, it is a lot of money but
in terms of the price, the lifetime membership is cheap, actually. The problem is, it is currently higher price than all the courses combined simply due to their discount strategy. But discounts or full price, the membership is still cheap for the amount of hours and skills provided, especially because they finally updated most courses to newest software versions.
The price isn’t the problem, the content is. And the content is just too spread-out and also too low level:
Same as Udemy and stuff like Duolingo, currently gd.tv only provides a base for further education, not a standalone resource. Most clients will have fun learning, but will not seriously advance anywhere because the info is not detailed enough from course to course. It is normal for these platforms, and there’s nothing wrong with that, they will still have clients regardless. Gd.tv has a good reputation and works with known names among students, so as I stated in my original answer, the membership is fully worth it for casual learners.
I am also biased since I have been looking into indie dev education for last 10 years. From my standpoint, gd.tv provides a good basis only for people that have zero knowledge about indie dev skills. For someone that has been learning gamedev (in general or a specific tool from the list) already for 2+ years, the membership isn’t giving much. I still suggest the platform to everyone, but membership itself I can suggest only to people that start from practically zero.
This is actually quite insulting to assume this. Sorry. You may have well said “don’t bother - you’ll get nowhere.”
I personally have worked on commercial VR Products after completing the Unity Course. Kory on discord is heavily involved in a released game using Unreal and while he no longer relies on course content helps out in the community.
I can recall quite a number of people who have successfully released games, whether it be on itch or on steam. Many others have gone on to land a dream job in game dev companies. It is down to the motivation of the individual student. Some are happy just to learn and play and that is fine too.
There are a lot of other assumptions you’ve made too.
You’ve said that we give away a course - this cannot be guaranteed to continue. It may but is certainly not a given.
Similarly, discounts and pricing - first courses I bought were only 8 euro and they’re now typically 15-20. They could go to 30 and still offer value. Discounts may stop. The price point of lifetime membership is actually a great example of this as it has increased in price over last year.
The last bit is the assumption that people only use a single engine. I am limited to Godot in my day-to-day job for certain things (licensing reasons) but I use also Unity and Unreal for various projects away from work. All engines have their strong points and weak points. I also dip into the blender courses when I need to figure stuff out or create my own assets. In fact, again on discord, if you pay attention to the Unity and Unreal channels in particular, many members post regularly on those channels because they are involved in projects on multiple engines.
Honestly, training only gets you so far anyway and that applies to Degrees from universities/colleges too. I’ve seen successful developers who are high-school graduates and also folks with degrees that are next to useless. Education does not guarantee ability. My day-to-day recruits a lot of graduates every year but then places them in a 2 year training program to actually get them to the point they need to be to develop. This is because most university lecturers teach what they are interested in and not necessarily what the industry wants or needs. I’ve always said about 90% of any software development college degree is garbage and the biggest take-away is not how to code but how to approach coding.
The key word is advance, as in progress to higher level, aka advanced level.
I meant if used as fully standalone course, what I assume the original poster was trying to gather. As I already paraphrased multiple times, the courses here are a good basis, but not enough by themselves to provide in-depth information for people that seek beyond newbie tutorials.
If you read my original answer, you can see I was the only person giving a very detailed pros and cons regarding the question. My original answer fully makes sense to anyone that already used the courses on this platform and understands gamedev enough to have any opinion on educational materials provided. The recent answer is just a clarification from my observations to the points you raised.
I am not surprised Unity courses are more advanced in general, and in this platform specifically.
My opinion was based on solo dev and small indie dev. I don’t know the details about this person, and not every released game sells.
My original answer is detailed enough to highlight all those points. Please check out the full topic.
I replied to the original author based on information I gathered over the last few years. Nobody knows the future, but my answers clearly stated “if the course is given, it’s in the rules”.
I know, didn’t wanna load my answer with extra details to the original poster.
I know value of education. My overall point wasn’t about courses being worthless without a discount, but that membership doesn’t provide enough value for people that choose only one specific topic they want to learn.
It wasn’t an assumption. I know people end up learning a bunch of engines. It makes sense to go for Godot or Unity for certain things. But people that stop on Unreal Engine tend to stick with it because they want specific aestetics or prefer it to Unity in general or coding in Godot. For Unity, same as Blender, youtube has plenty of free courses on a high level, so many people learned there enough of stuff before discovering gd.tv. hence why again my point is, membership makes more sense for newbies.
Whole IT sector doesn’t need university education, I’m well aware. I’m also a professional in IT.
Literally my point about current choice of courses on gd.tv
Please next time check the full topic to see if the author already answered your upcoming criticism, not the reply you personally got.
I did check the full topic. I spoke to my colleagues at gdtv before replying in the first place, see feedback from students and drawing on my own experiences too, both as a student and lifetime member, and also as a team member for the last 5 years - you may have missed that part. There’s also the subjective part which is what I want and also from my years of industry and training experience. What you have also expressed is also largely subjective. It certainly isn’t fact or necessarily accurate either is my point, because you can’t and don’t have all the information.
There is information about why lifetime actually costs as much as it does which you would not be privvy to. I know bits of it but certainly not all.
Once such piece is that for each 10 minutes of a course it takes a full day to author it including all the time to prototype. The recording of a 10 hour course for example takes 60 days give or take depending on the content complexity, and occasionalyl longer, then QA ongoing support on top. So, given that 60 days at X per day (my rate would be around the 1000/day mark for contracting) it adds up.
I looked at the coursera myself as a suplement to my knowledge at one point and it costs annually more than the lifetime membership.
So, my information is well informed based on fact and not just opinion. I think we should perhaps leave this here.
I’m not sure how to articulate it to be understood. I’ll try again.
I checked all the courses currently provided, my answer to the original poster regarding the level of the provided courses was based on the fact that there is only 1 advanced level course (Unity procedural generation), the rest are intermediate and beginner. Based on the courses I own, intermediate and beginner between Unreal engine isn’t that different (excluding C++ specific courses).
I didn’t want to make a very long detailed post, so I omitted my thought process for the newcomer and used “pros & cons” summary for them to make a better guess, if the fulltime membership suits them.
I also clarified, if the style of the platform is enjoyable and easy to follow for this user, it is a good idea to stick with the platform and get the lifetime membership.
Based on all your answers so far, it seems to me you pay attention to what you consider a negative review of the platform and the courses, excluding everything else I broke down for the newcomer.
also as a team member for the last 5 years - you may have missed that part
which makes you highly subjective regarding how useful the platform is for people that consider membership, imo. I didn’t miss it either.
Every opinion is subjective by definition. Even chatGPT can be arguably influenced by their primary user to be truly objective.
There is information about why lifetime actually costs as much
Again. You keep missing the part where I’m not arguing about the full price of it. It’s a choice of educator to price their product and their knowledge can be given for free or paid - up to them, because they sell their mentorship, rather than the secret information or something.
The problem, as I see it, with the membership and platform is the discounts system. If half the year everything is on a discount, I assume it is the new base price. To illustrate it better, this is how it works for games that are always on a 60% discount on Steam for years: nobody buys them on full price, they are always in humble bundle and other services like that, and active users of the platform are fully aware of it. So, even though the full price of Resident Evil 7 is 40 euro, current discount makes it 10. And every next year each title of RE franchise drops per 10 euro. This is the standard for the company called Capcom. And gfd.tv also a company that has their own standard that can be observed by a person that cares to take notice. Just an example to make you understand what I mean by discount problem, which for me, as a client is of course not a problem at all. And I basically do myself disservice even addressing it. You seeing my note on that as a negative criticism is weird because I literally point out why membership isn’t as profitable as it could be. I honestly don’t know how much more can I dance around it to make you see what I mean.
Once such piece is that for each 10 minutes of a course it takes a full day to author it including all the time to prototype. The recording of a 10 hour course for example takes 60 days give or take depending on the content complexity, and occasionalyl longer, then QA ongoing support on top. So, given that 60 days at X per day (my rate would be around the 1000/day mark for contracting) it adds up.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes. There’s a famous quote about Picasso and his client, when the artist drew very quickly a commissioned sketch:
“But You Did That in Thirty Seconds.” “No, It Has Taken Me Forty Years To Do That.”
It is up to the creator to decide how to price their work. It is up to the client to decide if it’s worth it. Steve Jobs and Apple built their whole business on it. It isn’t about the product itself and never was, but about marketing, scarcity and in case of Apple, prestige of owning a premium product (isn’t premium by quality, but marketed as such).
I looked at the coursera myself as a suplement to my knowledge at one point and it costs annually more than the lifetime membership.
To my knowledge, Courcera, Udemy and all the similar services and in majority these platforms are the same as Duolingo: an entry point and a hobby, not a professional level education or standalone full courses. Edx used to provide university level education, but they seem to have changed something or they have more “entry level” courses now.
So, my information is well informed based on fact and not just opinion.
Ironically, I said to OP the course is worth the money and is cheap for the content they get, just not necessarily good idea if you only want to learn Unreal Engine. You said the course is expensive but worth the try. Yet you keep replying to me reading the information I provided as offensive. I kept replying to OP, as an Unreal engine developer to unreal engine developer. Your main experience is with Unity, as I understood. So please excuse me if I fail to comprehend why are you trying to prove I’m subjective and pull my “facts” out of my a$$.
The topic of this post is literally “Lifetime Membership Worth for Unreal Developer”.
Closing the thread. I see there is no constructive discussion to be had in a civil manner.