When we began creating Unity, we were just three programmers working on a beautiful little game. There weren't any good game engines that one could license without putting down wads of cash, so we created our own. We eventually decided that we enjoyed the challenge of making great tools even more than making games, and after some soul searching we realized that the tools we had been creating—combined with a simple licensing structure and an open community—had the potential to change the way that developers create, distribute, and play games.

It wasn't always an easy road to where we are today. Ridiculously long days and late nights, gigs serving sandwiches and making websites for law firms, and general hardship. Once, we were told by a potential investor (he passed on the deal) that our dream of 'democratizing game development' had a 1 in 1000 chance of working out. We could think of nothing better to do than take on the odds!

Stuffing insanely complex technology into a polished package, and making it as simple as humanly possible was job one, and so we were thrilled to see the first book about our software, Unity Game Development Essentials released in 2009. The book helped many people get off the ground with Unity, and so when Will told me he was due to release an updated edition I was only too happy to be asked to write its foreword. A long standing member of the Unity community, we first met Will back in 2007 when he was teaching game development with Unity at UK based Bournemouth University. He went on to produce some of the first Unity video tutorials for his students and shared these on our forums, helping a generation of early adopters pick up Unity version 1.5 and upwards.