An interesting read

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Dropdeadqt
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An interesting read

Post by Dropdeadqt » 30 Apr 2012, 15:25

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Four-Gam ... ie/?page=1

Really makes you think about the possibilities (and the lack of them available now).
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Kayleb
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Re: An interesting read

Post by Kayleb » 30 Apr 2012, 21:19

It kind of states the obvious, but still a pretty good read I loved it.

It got a bit philosophical
Ideally, these sort of events would happen whether the player is there to witness them or not.
Does the tree make a sound if it falls in the forest?
In contrast, virtually every game today demands uniform success. Fail an objective and you die. Success becomes something scripted rather than one option out of several, and the fact that the gamer knows there's no other possible outcome takes away from the fun of playing through a second time
This is a HUGE point for me. It's so plainly obvious if I'm going the right direction, killed the right guy or done X task correctly, it's more like walking down a path. One of the main reason's I liked the GTA series and WoW, it allowed the freedom to explore and gave me the opportunity to fail and try something different in order to succeed. So many games are just rehashed and re-labelled order to steal all my money, the other main reason I don't really play games anymore. (Loved Bastion though)

The final paragraph of the article really sums it up and is something I've speculated lightly on for a little while, virtual reality - total immersion. After playing Black Op's, it cemented my belief that it's not as much as a game, as a simulation.
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Cartollomew
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Re: An interesting read

Post by Cartollomew » 01 May 2012, 12:06

Hmm.

I broadly agree with the idea that these tropes have become over common; but I disagree with the idea that the suggested remedies are cheaper than the poison.

The assumption in the article is that the rising costs of games can be curtailed if developers stop focusing on making the games look so damn good, and instead put these immersion elements in. That assumption is false.

Fancy graphics are cheap. They're cheap as shit (He mentioned voice acting being expensive, and that's true - but that's a necessary part of the immersion process, at least until we can simulate voices reliably) - licensing an engine is not terribly difficult or expensive, and it means your development and testing time can be predominantly for the improvements you built onto the engine itself.

The stuff he is suggesting is not cheap at all - it typically requires more development time than visual improvements, and definitely requires a huge amount of testing time.

Testing and fixing graphical improvements is a fraction of the cost of testing and fixing these "immersion improvements". This is pretty evident from Skyrim and the more recent Fallout games.
These games are huge, and despite what you may hear, they are extremely thoroughly tested. But they're so big and they implement so much more free reign than other AAA titles (I'm looking at you, COD/BF) that it's simply not possible to test them enough before release. Not every developer can pull that off.

Polishing an engine, hiring some motion capture and voice actors and shitting out another Call of Doody is cheap by comparison, and the dev cycle is much shorter and faster.

There will always be development studios that push the envelope, and we'll get Deus Exes and Portals from time to time. But for every one of those that breaks an old trope (and inevitably generates new ones in the form of copy-cat games) you'll have 10 cheap and easy to develop games in between.

See also:
Big Brother is Watching You Play
Suppose a game company discovers that almost nobody makes it to the end of their game, and that distressingly many players give up very early indeed. The light-side response to this information might be to, well, just make the next game more interesting, reduce padding and level-grinding, add a "casual" difficulty level, and so on.

The dark-side response is simpler. If few people played to the end of Generic Manshoot 1, clearly one should only expend any effort on the first half of Generic Manshoot 2, especially the first bit of the first stage, which is all you can play in the free demo. The end-game can be a bunch of repetitive corridors containing palette-shifted, hit-point-increased versions of previous baddies. Final cinematic? Nah, a wall of text'll do.
Who do you think you are? If you'd stopped winning, you could have been the Biggest Loser, if you gave up, you could have been a Survivor, if you'd stopped reading Orwell, you could have been on Big Brother!

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Re: An interesting read

Post by Dropdeadqt » 01 May 2012, 12:13

If it's not the visuals, what is the expensive part of the GD Lifecycle?

Upper Management?
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Re: An interesting read

Post by Dropdeadqt » 01 May 2012, 12:20

Apparently - http://www.videogameprices.org/video-ga ... ment-costs

32% retailer profit/markdown reserve
20% operating costs
16% of costs go into development
14% publishing licence
12% marketing
6% Goods cost

so of that 16% what sort of budget goes where (i.e Art Department, Story, Scenario etc. etc.)

Another good followon read - http://www.slideshare.net/Eth0s/video-g ... try-trends
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Re: An interesting read

Post by midi » 01 May 2012, 12:25

I think the fancy graphics isn't the engine itself cart, but the art assets that leverage the engine. Textures, models, animations, etc... They all take time to make and I can only imagine how much more intensive given the level of realism that is expected now.

Example here is the id tech 3 engine. Used in Q3:Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and a Star-Trek game. While the underlying engine graphics are the same, the art assets are very, very, different between those three games. That's where I expect the time/money is spent on "fancy graphics".
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Re: An interesting read

Post by Dropdeadqt » 01 May 2012, 12:54

Conceptually creating something like... a cup.

You create the model in whatever application. A cup (say a goblet) would be probably crafted quickly using a generic shape block and extruding and beveling the thing into a goblet shape.

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Obviously not as many polys and certainly not having a bevelled top (would do that with bump maping or eqivalent later).

After the model is made you have to pull the mesh off and texture it.

A basic splash of colour is simply but creating realistic surfaces can take a fair bit longer. You also probably will create variations in the texture so that not every goblet looks the same either with additional textures or texture overlays. You also have the bump mapping or whatever its called these days and you end up with a goblet. Maybe a half days work or so for an item the user will probably pick up and throw at some random NPC once and never notice again.

In that respect I can see a hell of a lot of time and hence resources going into the art department since there are thousands of objects like that on top of the thousands of other objects.

I'd guess even if you put each item and object at 4 hours a pop and allowed for say 2000 items/objects you're looking at 8000 hours work, 1067 days working time. 53 days work with a 50 person art/modeling department.

And thats not even taking into account that heaps of models are far more complex than a goblet (and human modeling sucks ass).
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Re: An interesting read

Post by Handofdesu » 01 May 2012, 17:05

the engine is 'cheap'.

creating art assets for the engine to use is not.

Anyway, on actual games, since I follow Nintendo for the most part, I'm going to use nintendo examples (suck it)

Having quality gameplay that people want to play is the most important thing - everything else is super secondary. 3d Mario games like Galaxy or Sunshine are well made, no doubt. But they aren't the games that people want to play. 2d Mario games are what people want to play, which is why new super mario brothers DS is the best selling DS game (notably, mario 64 ds is 10th best seller with 1/3rd of the sales, and it was a release title). NSMBwii is one of the top selling wii games and singlehandedly led to the Christmas 2009 wii sellout in America. NSMBwii had 2.5x the sales of Galaxy 1 and over 4x the sales of Galaxy 2 - Even though both the galaxy games were made with the intent of getting people who play 2d mario games to play the 3d mario games.

Story (in modern games, this would be called 'narrative' because game executives fancy themselves as movie directors) is definitely a minor concern overall, but for some reason it's the MAJOR concern in modern games. Like, Metroid went from Samus being a badass shooting things and exploring and etc in Metroid and Metroid prime and things to being a narrative about MATERNAL INSTINCTS and daddy issues in Other M.

Gotta run now but happy to talk more about this or whatever later.
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Cartollomew
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Re: An interesting read

Post by Cartollomew » 01 May 2012, 18:21

I'm still skeptical that art assets would be more expensive than dev and testing for the complications he puts forward.

Art is a relatively easy thing to budget and time manage - compared to development and quality control.

For a well built piece of software, you're looking at at least 2-4 times the development time in testing. For the changes he proposes, you're looking at huge increases in development time, and therefore QC.

Regardless of the actual figures, I don't think switching focus from art to immersion elements is going to stop the escalating cost issue or alter the trend for AAA titles as it is.
But that's cool, they don't have to, some developers will do it, at great cost anyway. The real issue as I see it, is the one put forth by Dan Rutter - a large chunk of releases aren't finished by the players, so the next iteration doesn't get finished by the developers.

Art is a good investment in this case, because you see the benefits most at the start, and then throughout the game.

Solid content or immersion isn't, because it costs you to do it all the way to the end.
Who do you think you are? If you'd stopped winning, you could have been the Biggest Loser, if you gave up, you could have been a Survivor, if you'd stopped reading Orwell, you could have been on Big Brother!

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Re: An interesting read

Post by Handofdesu » 01 May 2012, 18:59

hm

'immersion' is a loaded word - what do you mean by it?
Art is a good investment in this case, because you see the benefits most at the start, and then throughout the game.

Solid content or immersion isn't, because it costs you to do it all the way to the end.
Solid content is what sells games. Not graphics, not narrative/story, not immersion.

Not having solid content is the killer.
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