Why is game development so ineffective?

[Odoryuk]

The possibility to fix their games later without spending any money to deliver fixes to players totally changed the way the games are built, sometimes for the best, sometimes not so.
If you don't risk recalling all batches of printed CDs/DVDs/cartridges/whatever because of some bugs it really unties your hands as a developer.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the young employees coming in are lazy as hell.

i've been explained by a "work psychologist" why i've never been hired. the scenario was specific to italian laws, but i'm confident they have similarities everywhere. i went to interview knowing everything about the job and showing enthusiasm. worst mistake. they don't want employees who are going to ask for more money sooner or later, they want the worst of the worst, the suicidal zombie is the best candidate since he's not going to ask for a raise, knowing he doesn't contribute much on the job, and sooner or later he's going to quit or off himself. there's plenty of them, it costs zero to swap one another, when one goes away "and nothing of value was lost". they don't want to improve the workplace, if they want more money they can just squeeze the poor zombies some more.
knowledge and skill are the bane of employers, since they cost money and are hard to replace.

 

[Iucounu]

Is it ineffective? A gazillion games being released every year.

Could it be that some games never get released, because the staff (on all levels) miscalculate how long they can procrastinate before the studio runs out of money? Other games may get released only after huge delays, with lots of cut features and unfixed bugs. And maybe the resulting profit is so small (due to all the waste) that the studio never dares to try something equally risky again.

 

[Azdul]

Poor project management. From sticking to a schedule, sticking to the scope and goal, and staying on budget. New Vegas came about because there were real, hard constraints. Starfield came about because there weren't any. Even with a substantially larger budget, more resources, and unlimited time, Starfield bit a big wang.

The constraints put in place by the folks above those developing play a major role. Bethesda gave Obsidian a fixed window. They hit it, the game was released, and we were all relatively happy. Now look at The Elder Skyrim: VI. When will it come out? At least 2026. Why 2026? Who knows! When will people start actually working on the game? My guess is most work will take place late 2025.

It's crazy hit-driven environment. 95% of projects lose money - but 5% make up for it.

Almost none of the project managers that can expand the scope to add to the game when company gets an injection of funding - and wrap it up in few months when the investment climate changes - while not getting fired at the same time for butting the heads with the head honchos.

Daggefall went horribly over budget and over schedule. Battlespire was delivered on time and on budget. Both lead by the same deity - Julianos.

It's almost like we need new paradigm. But even if money is not an issue - you need more than 1 guy - and there are larger-than-life egos.

Terry Davis was right all along.

 

[Daemongar]

Poor project management. From sticking to a schedule, sticking to the scope and goal, and staying on budget. New Vegas came about because there were real, hard constraints. Starfield came about because there weren't any. Even with a substantially larger budget, more resources, and unlimited time, Starfield bit a big wang.

The constraints put in place by the folks above those developing play a major role. Bethesda gave Obsidian a fixed window. They hit it, the game was released, and we were all relatively happy. Now look at The Elder Skyrim: VI. When will it come out? At least 2026. Why 2026? Who knows! When will people start actually working on the game? My guess is most work will take place late 2025.

It's crazy hit-driven environment. 95% of projects lose money - but 5% make up for it.

Almost none of the project managers that can expand the scope to add to the game when company gets an injection of funding - and wrap it up in few months when the investment climate changes - while not getting fired at the same time for butting the heads with the head honchos.

Daggefall went horribly over budget and over schedule. Battlespire was delivered on time and on budget. Both lead by the same deity - Julianos.

It's almost like we need new paradigm. But even if money is not an issue - you need more than 1 guy - and there are larger-than-life egos.

Terry Davis was right all along.

Yah - I think maybe shorthand the problem is project management, but bigger picture I agree with you. That is, defining the project and the scope and budget - then as things proceed, staying on that same target even though an accurately produced product just isn't fun OR a big game comes along that shakes the industry (Dark Souls, Diablo, Girmoire) and makes every game being developed stop in its tracks. Not sure how I'd design for the way the industry itself is managed.

 

[Great Deceiver]

DEI

women

Kali Yuga

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

That is, defining the project and the scope and budget - then as things proceed, staying on that same target even though an accurately produced product just isn't fun OR a big game comes along that shakes the industry (Dark Souls, Diablo, Girmoire) and makes every game being developed stop in its tracks. Not sure how I'd design for the way the industry itself is managed.

It seems like the more money a studio has at the moment, the more sloppy they get. It's understandable to a certain extent, but you look at the history of troubled AAA game development and this pops up a lot. Duke Nukem Forever and Diablo III are some fairly big examples of this. Bethesda seems to be in this situation now with Starfield. Fallout 4 was nearly ten years ago, and Starfield just came out. Sure, Fallout 76 was between those two, but I think that was developed under contract and Bethesda only got involved late in it's development? I might be thinking of something else, but I don't think Bethesda proper was that involved in that project. Plus it used a lot of the assets from Fallout 4 as well. But I'm refering to their teams that develop mainline games, and there's an eight to nine year development cycle between FO4 and Starfield. They had a lot of money from all the releases of Skyrim and Fallout 4, so they slopped around until Starfield was released. There's some rumors that Elder Scrolls 6 is "playable" right now, but Bethesda has yet to announce it for their typical November launch date. We'll see.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Because games are being treated like Microsoft Office, not like art.

 

[Haba]

One guy writes the code.
One guy does the art and music.
One guy writes the story for the manual, tests the game and hustles for money.

Once you add the fourth person, it all goes to shit.

 

[Jvegi]

Declining work ethic is a real thing. I don't work in computers, but the young employees coming in are lazy as hell. And I'm saying that as a classic "just do the bare minimum" lazy guy, but at least I do the bare minimum. These kids are doing well below that and then whining about having too much work while demanding raises and promotions.

Can't say with confidance, but I doubt people in that particular industry, one that's competetive and requires skills that are not easily obtained, can be compared with a typical lazy underachiever doing monkey work.

I can see them not being willing to do crunch we all know and fetishize. But that's a good thing.

 

[Ryzer]

The average 20s dev team:

View attachment 48254

More like the average p*lack team.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

 

[Hell Swarm]

Communists believe that all people that do a particular job are interchangeable, like the parts on a factory line. So, why keep them around so they can keep getting pay raises when they can be swapped out and cheaper people can be swapped in.

Isnt that the capitalists' way? You are confusing me here~

The Japanese clearly have the right of this. What should we call their way?

Working your employees to the bone then demanding they get drunk with their boss until they kill themselves is "the right way"?

Communists believe that all people that do a particular job are interchangeable, like the parts on a factory line. So, why keep them around so they can keep getting pay raises when they can be swapped out and cheaper people can be swapped in.

Isnt that the capitalists' way? You are confusing me here~

The Japanese clearly have the right of this. What should we call their way?

You still try to confuse me? Japan is obviously capitalism for the win. Nobody ever call them communists~
Or are you trying to call Japanese commie now?

He's retarded. Don't take him seriously.

 

[Azdul]

One guy writes the code.
One guy does the art and music.
One guy writes the story for the manual, tests the game and hustles for money.

Once you add the fourth person, it all goes to shit.

I've very rarely seen 'art and music' role. Usually it was the younger of two brothers .

I've seen one, single guy doing really decent code, graphics and music.

More often it is code+graphics guy getting help with music. Of course any decent musician - like Rob Hubbard - knows assembly enough to inject his music into a game - if you'll leave enough free memory and CPU cycles for him. For most programmers - it's either getting help from one of these guys - or stealing from some German that died 200 years ago and cannot sue you.

I've seen code+music guy getting help in graphics and animation department. Just remember to tell the graphics guy what palette of colors he can use - and what is the pixel width and height of each element. Or you are in deep shit - and whatever you do - it will look nothing like the original picture.

Separate 'coding' role came about with this newfangled 3d graphics. Then you need a weirdo who does matrix multiplication in his head - and read research papers about binary space partitioning for fun.

Of course he cannot draw or play music ...

 

[Raghar]

That is, defining the project and the scope and budget - then as things proceed, staying on that same target even though an accurately produced product just isn't fun OR a big game comes along that shakes the industry (Dark Souls, Diablo, Girmoire) and makes every game being developed stop in its tracks. Not sure how I'd design for the way the industry itself is managed.

It seems like the more money a studio has at the moment, the more sloppy they get. It's understandable to a certain extent, but you look at the history of troubled AAA game development and this pops up a lot. Duke Nukem Forever and Diablo III are some fairly big examples of this. Bethesda seems to be in this situation now with Starfield. Fallout 4 was nearly ten years ago, and Starfield just came out. Sure, Fallout 76 was between those two, but I think that was developed under contract and Bethesda only got involved late in it's development? I might be thinking of something else, but I don't think Bethesda proper was that involved in that project. Plus it used a lot of the assets from Fallout 4 as well. But I'm refering to their teams that develop mainline games, and there's an eight to nine year development cycle between FO4 and Starfield. They had a lot of money from all the releases of Skyrim and Fallout 4, so they slopped around until Starfield was released. There's some rumors that Elder Scrolls 6 is "playable" right now, but Bethesda has yet to announce it for their typical November launch date. We'll see.

WTF they did in these years?

Daggerfall was big because it used decent automatic environment generation. (Aside of dungeons, dungeons WERE atrocious.) Morrowind land was done by hand because they wanted tight control. Oblivion and Skyrim were kinda average in terms of landscapes.

Frankly there are not that many things to do when decent game company wants to make game like Skyrim. Bethesda has a lot of experience and tools from making previous TES games, which should allow them to make decent large seamless world with ease. Well 6 years is on the long side and team likely sucked, or they were 80 percent of size, or they should use more automatic content generation. I actually suspect the relatively longer development cycle was because of stuff like dragon shouts...
Oblivion was 1 year in pre-production 4 years in development. (Actually Bethesda tried to put it on Xbox 360, and lately on PS3. Which might explain all these limitations and under par graphics.)
Morrowind was 6 years in development. But that could be explained by theirs attempt to have proper alien looking world, and moving into full 3D.

So, Bethesda has kinda slow development cycle, and for some reasons they tend to release weirdly high number of bugs. Considering they had time to create mostly bug free Skyrim...

Funnily Fallout 3 was 2 years pre-production, and 2 years production.


edit: Actually I wonder, if some of critical members of Bethesda teams didn't retire already. That could explain the fucked up development cycle of TES 6. (and to some extend Starfield)

 

[Butter]

Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlmann both did systems design on Shartfield. Everyone declines.

 

[Rodcocker]

I was going to write about why most programmers ("software engineers" lol) are unbelievably shit nowadays, but it really doesn't matter. No skilled artist, writer, level-designer, or programmer, will ever show-off their true abilities in the over-managed, sterile, modern workplace.

It's the overemployment crisis. Product Managers, Project Managers, QA Managers, Agile Process Managers, [Insert Any Random Words Here] Managers. Throw increasing numbers of people at a problem for scatter-brained decision making, more meetings, politics, corporate rituals, and a never ending blame game. This creates an environment where ladder-climbers and backstabbers thrive, and once that culture is embedded, it is terminal.

The gaming industry's problem is that is started making too much money - and now the corporate psychopaths with their madhouse business practises have arrived.

 

[toro]

All modern issues are caused by the same problem: easy money.

As long as banks are able to print money without consequences then there is no reason to enforce QA because the big companies's existence or profit is not directly proportional to their performance.

Most too big to fail companies are owned by banks (indirectly) therefore they are bailed out regardless of mistakes and performant companies are simply bought up because they are a bad example for the market. The great principle of free market is all about monopolies in practice.

Ultimately easy money will hollow out everything of quality or human aspects: software, games, movies, music, comics, cars, food, women and so on. Basically under the current monetary system everything will become insupportable crap over time.

That's why we desperatly need to go back to gold or a non-inflationary monetary system.

 

[ind33d]

Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlmann both did systems design on Shartfield. Everyone declines.

their systems aren't in the game, amigo. you think they purposely made a game with no gameplay? LMAO

 

[GamerCat_]

Communists believe that all people that do a particular job are interchangeable, like the parts on a factory line. So, why keep them around so they can keep getting pay raises when they can be swapped out and cheaper people can be swapped in.

Isnt that the capitalists' way? You are confusing me here~

The Japanese clearly have the right of this. What should we call their way?

Working your employees to the bone then demanding they get drunk with their boss until they kill themselves is "the right way"?

Name the ten most prominent suicides in Japanese video games.

Next you're going to start talking about used panty machines and 6 million unreported molestations per hour on the trains.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Name the ten most prominent suicides in Japanese video games.

Ching Chong, Ping Pong, Flied Lice, Change Wang, Bucktooth Asuka, Slant eyed Shinji, Hideo Kojima, Ling Ling's circus, Goku and Toriyama.

Denial that Japan has serious work place issues is such a huge cope it's even a push for you. I'm convinced you're a slant eyed pedo angry his white daddy fucked his gook mother and this is how you deal with being a half breed. The sooner you're banned for being a pedo the better the forum will be.