AAA games are cheaper to make than you think

[felipepepe]

Nothing surprising. Just look at Blizzard as a texbook example of this -- somehow they manage to make worse games with a thousand times as many people working on it.

Indeed, the little ammount of DIablo 3 development info that went public is already ridiculous...after 10 years of development one of the producers quit and then they go on to make massive changes that should have been decided ages ago...only to end up with a boring hack n' slash that I coudn't bring myself to even play through Nightmare...

 

[Gord]

Somehow his descriptions of the inner workings of AAA publishers sound more like a state-owned enterprise in Greece(sorry greek bros) than big business.

 

[Achilles]

Believe me, that was my first thought as well.

 

[thesoup]

 

[asper]

I know people who worked on some famous franchises. When you ask them what their work on the game was, they usually answer: “Minigun for the second level boss and enemy soldiers in red shirt and blue shirt.”

 

[Morkar Left]

It pretty much sums it up what I already thought about the industry.

The results are obvious. You have a task for one person, but because somebody is unable to take personal responsibility, you have several people to do that task, because it feels safe. It’s not safe. In fact it’s disastrous. Most of the time, those people will be fighting each other, duplicating their work and protecting their asses. They will hardly produce anything special or try something risky. The fact, that very often, their assignment will change, just because John or Steve changed their minds, which is happening all the time and usually scratches all progress that was made, is also not very helpful. After some time, most talented people leave and all you have is an empty shell of a once famous company and hyper expensive rip-off of some other game. At the end, when the project fails, no one is personally responsible. It failed “because the market is changing” or the team “wasn’t good enough”. So the team is laid off and Steve and John are perfectly safe. If it’s successful for some miraculous reason, and against all Steve’s and John’s “great ideas” and experiments, Steve and John get all the glory (and Ferraris and blow jobs) and the team is restructured (laid off) anyway.

This isn't restricted to the gamesindustry but any business were tasks and responsibilities aren't strictly defined for each position and positions are overlapping.

 

[Thane Solus]

tweaked to oblivion you say
yeah for this example tell me how much of this tweaking went to the famously broken ps3 port or pc ui and hilarious memetastic bugs

and what about the famous Crysis 2 barricade with a zillion tesselated polygons

come on bro I don't think good polish or recognising that a camera needs work is a reason that studios spend as much money these days as you like to think, it's all about the makework and bloated asset pool

in closing I feel the point of the article is to
1) point out the diminishing returns associated with AAA budgets
2) how good knowledge of what needs to be done to make a complete game without the chaff can reduce even the requirements of something that equals the 'enjoyment' of AAA and cost far less

Skyrim had tons of content to justify its development cost.

Lol! Do you know how easy is to make that generated crap content...

Most of the budget went into marketing and voice overs...

 

[Thane Solus]

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

This is why Warhorse and Larian are cool. This is, and you probably never heard me saying that before, why I'll buy their games Day 1.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

One small step for a man, one giant leap for humanity.

 

[poocolator]

So what would other 10 lead programmers do?

It's not unreasonable to have more than ten of these in a big project.

But CoD isn't a big project. It's a linear corridor shooter on a Quake 3 engine. And 5 years ago the team was much smaller while making 2 times longer game.
This will look especially silly if you will look how many programmers they had working on CoDBlops (more than artists) - even though only maps and models change from game to game save for 1 or 2 new "features"

But I think it would be nice to actually get some insider info on how these projects operate before declaring they have too many people in this or that specific position.

Dude I bet Bobby himself doesn't know who are all those people. I mean I just open DSO and

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/rober...-lead-of-infinity-ward-is-leaving-activision/

Creative Strategist

What the fuck does that even mean? Do they use a random phrase generator to have some positions to put more people in?

the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy
also, corporate interests and financial trading all ensure that game companies will never be the same

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

AAA games: What lies ahead?

Another article from Gamasutra about how AAA games in the future are going to be more expensive, risky and just fucking dull.

 

[circ]

Took a lot less for the previous crash to happen, and there have been E.T.'s released now too, and companies are such huge conglomerates now that it just takes a nudge to make all the dominoes fall. What's taking so long vidya game industry? Casuals have got to be getting tired too sometime.

 

[MetalCraze]

They can't get tired because they have no alternative. Bobby Kotick said CoD is cool and so it will be unless some notably different CoD-killer arrives.

Unfortunately 'no effort instant gratification' "cinematic" shit is here to stay.

 

[Castanova]

You need a 100 person asset-generation team from the very beginning because if you show a prototype with placeholder graphics to the suits at the publisher they'll shit their pants, fire you, and install some tool in your place.

 

[Jaesun]

AAA games: What lies ahead?

Another article from Gamasutra about how AAA games in the future are going to be more expensive, risky and just fucking dull.

They are already expensive and dull, what has changed?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

http://www.warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=blog&entry=blog_007

You just need to have people who play them developing them.

He writes all this stuff that you intuitively agree with and then he gets to the end:

We are a small team. Currently we have 19 people working for us for the preproduction phase of the project. We plan to at least double this number as the project will move into full production.

And then at the end, I found that the article was written by:

Dan Vavra, Creative Director

And I lol'd.

I lol'd hard.

He gives this whole speech about "how he used to do everything" and now he's just a Creative Director, for a team of 40+ people.

And remember kids, that's "small".

Then he goes on to talk about these Director types and all their hype...

 

[Metro]

The Creative Director directs the creativity. 'dats crucial, son!

 

[Kane]

AAA games: What lies ahead?

Another article from Gamasutra about how AAA games in the future are going to be more expensive, risky and just fucking dull.

They are already expensive and dull, what has changed?

they'll be even more expensive and more dull.

 

[MetalCraze]

DarkUnderlord
There's no difference between a team of 40 people making an open-world game and a team of 150 people making a 5 hours long corridor popamole

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Yeah and because every popamole corridor shooter had 150 people working on it.

His comparison is to games that were made with (literally) 3 people. He even starts off saying "In the last century it was anywhere from one nerd, to “big” teams of 15 to 30 pizza-eating individuals in a garage". I'll repeat that again: 30 people was a big team for a AAA game back in the good old days.

But then he goes on and spends a few more paragraphs talking about how things are easier now. He even gives an example:

Yes, graphics and animations are getting more and more complex and you need more people to work on them, so it costs more money, but not that much. And yes, some of the games are so big, that they must be made by hundreds of people, but most of today’s development is just wrong. Fifteen years ago, when you needed to model a wooden box, it was just a box with a very small texture. Today it could have thousands of polygons and several huge textures and normal maps. But... Fifteen years ago, there was no Google, ZBrush, digital cameras, CGtextures, Crazybump, 30 inch diplays or Cintiq tablets. When you needed a texture for a medieval wooden box, you had to pick your ass up from the chair, go to a museum, buy a ticket, take a picture with your analog camera, send it to a minilab, wait a day and then scan it, or draw it with your mouse (Hell yeah a DAMN MOUSE!) in Photoshop 4. Today, it took me exactly two minutes to Google for perfect pictures of medieval chests that could be used as reference and for textures. Now think twice before you tell me, that making games is more complicated today.​

His point: Games are actually easier to make today, and therefore you can do a lot more with less people.

Then for shits and giggles he ends with some bonus hype of "clever decisions" and "perfect bulletproof design".

But wait, he even talks about "Special Forces"... People who apparently he can't afford anyway so "we had to bet on some younger, less experienced" people.

So if games are easier to make then they were 15 years ago - Look at me! I found a box texture online! That's totally why things are simpler! - and 15 years ago 30 people was a big team, why is he calling 40+ people a small team?

What I saw was an article full of contradictions, hype and mostly bullshit.

The Creative Director directs the creativity. 'dats crucial, son!

I know. Such a demotion too for a clearly talented guy. I mean, he can write most of the game design, mission design, complete story, most of the dialogues plus design controls and parts of the GUI and HUD. Such a shame to see all that talent wasted on just "directing the creativity".

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

ITT, DU does not understand the difference between game development 15 years ago versus now.

 

[Kane]

What I saw was an article full of contradictions, hype and mostly bullshit.

His main point is that you don't need a 200 man team and 500 million dollars to make a good game and conversly a smaller team often makes the better game, because it doesn't suffer from redundancy, infighting and lack of personal responsibility as much. That's hardly bullshit. 'Course he is jaded by the olde days but who here isn't?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

ITT, DU does not understand the difference between game development 15 years ago versus now.

Yeah because like now, it's easier because you can google for textures of wooden boxes!

"Now think twice before you tell me, that making games is more complicated today."

So are you saying that games really are more complicated to make today - that they do need more staff? Because that's counter to a major section of his article.

What I saw was an article full of contradictions, hype and mostly bullshit.

His main point is that you don't need a 200 man team and 500 million dollars to make a good game and conversly a smaller team often makes the better game, because it doesn't suffer from redundancy, infighting and lack of personal responsibility as much. That's hardly bullshit. 'Course he is jaded by the olde days but who here isn't?

I don't think any of us disagree with that. My point is that he then goes on to say that his team of about to be expanded to 40+ people (which is how many exactly? 50? 60?) is a "small team" - or in some way "keeping it small".

Small and good is Mount & Blade (2 people), Minecraft (1 person), Knights of the Chalice. 40+ people is AAA+ staff level.

 

[Infinitron]

By today's standards it's more like AA, to use the : x terminology.