Unity Technologies is teaming up with everybody these days. Today, the San Francisco-based game development engine maker is partnering with Facebook to enable developers to create better games on the social network.

The deal will enable Facebook to hang on to its gamers by giving them a better overall visual experience with games based on Unity 3D, a cross-platform game engine. Facebook has historically been good for two-dimensional casual games, but it hasn’t been great at displaying 3D ones. Some specialty titles do work well on Facebook, but the goal with the Unity alliance is to make it much easier to create better hardcore games using the Unity Web Player.

David Helgason (pictured), the chief executive of Unity Technologies, told GamesBeat that both companies are working on features that allow players to engage in social functions such as sharing without popping out of the gaming experience in a Unity-based game. Normally, when that happens, the game issues a pop-up screen created by Facebook. On top of that, Unity-based titles will deliver a better installation process for players on Facebook.

It will be easier for developers to make cross-platform games that include Facebook. For instance, if a developer creates a Unity-based game, it will run easily on the web, Android, and iOS. Now it will also run easily on Facebook.

The alliance with Facebook is the third major deal in a week for Unity. The company has also announced partnerships with Sony for getting Unity games on the PlayStation 4 and a support partnership with Qualcomm for its Snapdragon processors.

“We are moving from strength to strength,” Helgason said. “Everybody wants to work with us.”

The reason this is happening is that every platform owner sees that the big hits are coming from developers on small teams, Helgason said. Hits like Supercell’s Clash of Clans (the top-grossing game on iOS) are paying off big, and platform owners want to be positioned to get those hits. Since Unity is used by so many small developers, the alliances make sense.

Unity has more than 200 million installations for its Unity Web Player, which can display games with cool 3D graphics. It is building a new social-network applications programming interface in the player to enable full-screen and full canvas experiences on Facebook. So far, 75 million active Facebook users have installed the Unity Web Player by playing games.

Some of the biggest Unity-based games on Facebook include Offensive Combat, Robot Rising, Wizard of Oz, Uberstrike, Kings Bounty, and I Am Playr. The new integrations will help make these existing titles better.

Helgason showed a demo for beautiful sci-fi racer The Chase that showed that Unity games are marching upward in quality. It has a large environment, atmospheric effects, and other cool 3D graphics features. A few years ago, Unity-based games on social and mobile platforms were unimpressive when it came to graphics. Now it is getting hard to tell them apart from triple-A console titles, Helgason said.

“Our customers are doing very impressive work,” Helgason said. “The mobile devices are becoming ridiculously powerful. I haven’t seen game that are more advanced than Unity on mobile. It has taken awhile as we have been doing this for 10 years.”

Unity has more than 250 employees, about half of them engineers.

“The Unity Web Player is an incredible browser-based platform for core games,” said Sean Ryan, the director of games partnerships at Facebook, in a statement. “People on Facebook are looking for the type of immersive games that have traditionally existed on consoles and desktop PCs. This collaboration will drive discovery of the Unity Web Player for Facebook users, make it easier for Unity games to integrate with Facebook, improve the full-screen experience on our games platform, and make it easier for these developers to build cross-platform games across desktop and mobile.”

At Facebook’s briefing at the GDC, Ryan said that core and mid-core games are priorities for Facebook, which believes in both the mobile and desktop markets for games as a service. He said Facebook’s share of the worldwide games-as-a-service market is $3 billion out of a total of $15 billion. Most of the rest of the market is hardcore and mid-core games, and Unity could help Facebook capture more of that share, Ryan said.

Unity has 1.5 million game developers using its tools. Rivals include Epic Games and Crytek on the high end and Game Salad, Corona, and others on the low end on mobile.

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GarageGames has been around since 2000 making tools for professional developers. But starting today, it is taking its goal of democratizing game making a step further. It advances the do-it-yourself dream: if anyone can make movies or music, then why not games?

The company is launching a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise $500,000 for its do-it-yourself software suite, dubbed 3 Step Studio.

Anyone could use 3 Step Studio to build games for the iPhone, iPad, Windows, or Mac. No programming skills are required for what GarageGames has in mind. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it competes directly with Heavy Water’s Kickstarter project, started yesterday, to make the Axis Game Factory for amateur creators who want to build 3D game worlds. Clearly, a trend to release tools that allow just about anybody to create his own game masterpiece has begun.

Larger do-it-yourself tech trends — that make it easy to create websites, fashion computer art, and launch apps on app stores without going through major publishers — have bolstered this phenomenon.

“We see a problem that should be addressed,” said Kyle Miller, a producer at GarageGames, in an interview with GamesBeat. “Very few people can use available game engines and create a product for the masses. But there are a lot of people who want their own ideas for games to come to life.”

To date, developing games requires expert programming knowledge. But GarageGames, which has made tools based on the Torque engine, believes that we’ve reached a point where they are easier to create. In contrast to Heavy Water, GarageGames focuses on 2D games for now.

With 3 Step Studio, you choose a template in a genre, such as physics launcher, tower defense, blackjack, platformer, or role-playing game. You can then make it your own by tweaking the design to express your own creativity. You can import your own art work and audio. And you can create your own backgrounds, characters, music, and visual effects. Then you can use the templates to tweak gameplay items such as power, hit points, physics, or speed. You can make these changes by clicking on a user interface menu, not by writing code.

GarageGames created its own Pac-Man clone with the tower defense template, and it made a pinball game using physics launcher. After you finish your project, you can use the studio tools to share it with friends and family.

GarageGames believes it can succeed because it has rich history of working with indie game developers. Its Torque engine appealed to indies at a price that hobbyists could afford. At the moment, the tools are available for licensing at a variety of prices, mostly around $100 or so. But the company is on a path toward making everything available on an open source basis where GarageGames would focus on making money via training.

Others are driving in this direction. Rivals include Mojang’s Minecraft (at least in terms of customizing your own worlds), GameGlobe, Jumala, and Roblox. And Game Salad is another startup with a goal of democratizing development on mobile devices.

“This speaks to the fact that there is market demand for this kind of tool,” Miller said.

Miller said that GarageGames frequently tests its tools by holding its own “game jams,” where the staff of 20 employees uses the software to create games. Professional programmers often find templates to be limiting, but Miller said that the unique thing about 3 Step Studio is that it allows a developer to create something that looks far different from the original template.

If the company raises more than its stated goal, it will try to do web, Android, and Linux versions as well.

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GameSalad

The Austin, Texas-based company has made a suite of tools with a drag-and-drop user interface, making it easy for users to develop their own games even if they don’t know any programming. The technology is another example of how we’re becoming a “creator economy” in which everyone contributes digital content.

The round was led by Disney’s Steamboat Ventures, with participation from Greycroft Partners, DFJ Mercury, DFJ Frontier and ff Asset Management. The company will use the money to grow its technical and product teams and further develop its game creation technology. Steve Felter (pictured), who recently joined as chief executive, said the company will unveil some new technologies this year that bring people together through the creation, sharing and playing of games.

Beau Laskey, managing director at Steamboat Ventures, has joined GameSalad’s board of directors alongside existing director Blair Garrou from DFJ Mercury, who led the company’s initial seed round. Dana Settle, partner at Greycroft Partners, joins as a board observer.

GameSalad’s tools can be used to make games for Apple iOS devices, the Mac, and the web. It has been used to create more than 8,500 games to date.

The market for these tools is heating up just as enthusiasm for mobile game companies is picking up. Disney recently acquired RocketPack, which specializes in making tools and games based on the HTML5 web format. Mobile games are taking off because demand for smartphones and tablet computers is also skyrocketing. More than a third of adults say they now play mobile games.

Felter recently replaced co-founder and former CEO Michael Agustin, who is now chief product officer for GameSalad. So far, the business is going well.

GameSalad appeals to anyone who has ever dreamed of creating a game. Abdulrahman Al-Zanki, a 14-year-old student in Kuwait, accepted a dare from a friend who said he was incapable of building an iPhone game. He downloaded GameSalad, which is available for free in its limited form. Three days later, he submitted his first game to the App Store. Now that game, Doodle Destroy, has been downloaded more than 1 million times and has been featured on CNN.com.

“It’s like a lottery. There’s always the chance of making the next Angry Birds,” Felter recently told us, referring to the Rovio game that has been downloaded more than 100 million times.

Once game makers get the hang of it, they can buy the professional version of GameSalad in order to better monetize the games.

GameSalad was founded in 2007 by Agustin, Daniel Treiman and Tan Tran. The company had previously raised at least $1.2 million from Steamboat Ventures (Disney’s investment arm), DFJ Mercury, DFJ Frontier, and ff Asset Management. Rivals include Unity Technologies, which makes tools for the professional and amateur crowd. While GameSalad focuses on two-dimensional games, Unity’s tools (which require programming knowledge) can be used to make sophisticated 3D games. Other rivals include non-game app makers WidgetBox and Cabana. GameSalad has around 20 employees.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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