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[DocSeuss]

I remember reading that piece by the War Horse studios guy that was all "there's way too much bureaucracy. You've got infighting, or different people coming up with different stuff to justify their position that causes a lot of waste, or they'll have twenty guys doing the writing for a linear FPS, or whatever..."

And I find myself going "yeah... so why do they need 600 people?"

I get that for an open world game, you probably need a lot of people, but the games seem to repaste so many assets

Granted, localization takes a lot of effort, and I know Ubisoft always credits localization people in their games' credits, but still. Six hundred? What for? Do they have, like, two dozen people working on Far Cry 3's gun models? If so, why? Surely they really only need one good person to create models of guns that already exist, as well as animate and texture (if not, that's still just three people).

There has got to be a way to slim those games down in terms of staffage.

I think the huge team problem is the reason AC3 was so broken. I've been saying for a while that the game feels as if it's sewn together with a bunch of disparate parts, and it seems like I'm right, based on Ubisoft's organizational structure.

 

[shinobi602]

Kind of funny there are developers out there that make much better games with far, far less people.

 

[RoKKeR]

Kind of funny there are developers out there that make much better games with far, far less people.

And much, much shorter credit rolls.

*thinks of AC3's credits*

 

[Geoff9920]

I wonder how much they focus on streamlining development processes over simply throwing more bodies at a game. I'm guessing making the process more effecient isn't a priority for them...

 

[kswiston]

Since Assassin's Creed 3 got up to 600 people, I imagine that next gen games will get up to 1200 people. Then we'll have profits of $60 million dollars on multibillion dollar projects.

Over 2500 people worked on the Avengers movie. Avengers ended up making $1.5B, but I am sure the production would have been profitable at about half that. A number of videogames have made $500M-1B in revenue this generation. I don't see why it is that surprising that some would have blockbuster budgets.

 

[shinobi602]

This is what scares me about Watch Dogs. It is an amazing game of what has been shown so far, but I remain skeptical because of the mass amount bugs that plagued AC3...

 

[I NEED SCISSORS]

Polyphony doesn't release two or more games every year.

No, they just release one every 5. Which is arguably worse.

 

[anon_mastermind]

RE6 showed that more does not equal better.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Kind of funny there are developers out there that make much better games with far, far less people.

I'll try elaborating. These so-called "far, far less people" i.e. indie teams are people who are investing their own money into making a game and are people who will not "quit" their workforce or don't need to hire any new muscle.

Sometimes they open up positions that aren't needed to ensure that they hire new graduates or employees with little experience and ensure that they are directed towards other projects instead of outsourcing.

Spoiler: Assassin's Creed 3 credits - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klsQrPNAye0

Read all the titles and imagine how it plays into the game. Read their roles and visualize what they'll be doing. Look at the list of voice actors alone. It's staggering. It's massive and it's a must for AAA titles if you don't want the same guy recording gazillion voices.

 

[Hindle]

Out of all the people they hire you would think at least one would say "our games are shit" gameplay wise. Seriously how do they make games as bad as SC conviction or Blacklist or AC III with so many developers?

 

[Lime]

And you still can't find one goddamn guy to do a decent job writing the modern-day stuff in AC!?

Dat first post.

 

[kswiston]

Also, it's not like the entire 600 people will be working on the game for the full duration. They probably have a smaller core team of 50 or so people tied up on the project for the entire duration, maybe another 100-150 working for a year or more, and then the rest pitching in on specific tasks for a few months. At this point, I would guess that Ubisoft has 3 major Ass Creed titles in development at a given time, with the majority of their devs working on whichever title is closest to release.

 

[metalslimer]

Over 2500 people worked on the Avengers movie. Avengers ended up making $1.5B, but I am sure the production would have been profitable at about half that. A number of videogames have made $500M-1B in revenue this generation. I don't see why it is that surprising that some would have blockbuster budgets.

Let's not forget the fact that these games come out yearly which is why they have such high staff. Assuming Ubi makes 40 dollars from each AC copy, they already made 480 million dollars off of AC3 alone. And no you aren't paying 600 people a full salary all year long. Of course if Assassin's Creed crashes into the next gen they are screwed.

 

[shinobi602]

I'll try elaborating. These so-called "far, far less people" i.e. indie teams are people who are investing their own money into making a game and are people who will not "quit" their workforce or don't need to hire any new muscle.

Sometimes they open up positions that aren't needed to ensure that they hire new graduates or employees with little experience and ensure that they are directed towards other projects instead of outsourcing.

Spoiler: Assassin's Creed 3 credits - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klsQrPNAye0

Read all the titles and imagine how it plays into the game. Read their roles and visualize what they'll be doing. Look at the list of voice actors alone. It's staggering. It's massive and it's a must for AAA titles if you don't want the same guy recording gazillion voices.

I wasn't even talking about indie teams, I'm talking about AAA studios with between 50-200 devs.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Over 2500 people worked on the Avengers movie. Avengers ended up making $1.5B, but I am sure the production would have been profitable at about half that. A number of videogames have made $500M-1B in revenue this generation. I don't see why it is that surprising that some would have blockbuster budgets.

Funny you mentioned The Avengers. VFX Studios are the first ones to go down and declare bankruptcy when shit hits the fan.

 

[InPlosion]

I would not go around boasting such numbers, it only shows how inefficient your way of doing things is.
Throwing people at a creative process does not guarantee a fun, successful game.
It might give you a finely packaged, standard and boring to the max product, I admit it.

Having a bloated team is going to cost a lot, to break even they'll have to dumb anything down to dust, to appeal to the widest audience possible, hike up prices, with overexpensive DLC offerings tacked on.

I don't want this kind of game, sorry. I'd much appreciated something else, made by a smaller, but tighter knit team, with less prospect of "We have to make money in order to pay off these astronomical production costs", and more "Let's make a game first, and turn a profit as a result".

I don't see this kind of business model sticking around for too much longer, It can't possibly be sustainable imo.

 

[aquavelva]

There's no way this is sustainable. The market is going to eventually crash.

 

[Ferrio]

I hope AAA games die a big fiery death.

 

[kswiston]

Funny you mentioned The Avengers. VFX Studios are the first ones to go down and declare bankruptcy when shit hits the fan.

That's due to the nature of outsourced contract bidding and independent VFX studios needing a constant supply of work to pay their overhead. Not due to movies like the Avengers not making money.

Same thing is true in Gaming. Independent studios that do work for hire collapse like a house of cards if a major contract or two falls through at the wrong time.

 

[BigBoss]

600 people and they still can't create a decent animation for walking/running up or down stairs.

 

[DocSeuss]

I'll try elaborating. These so-called "far, far less people" i.e. indie teams are people who are investing their own money into making a game and are people who will not "quit" their workforce or don't need to hire any new muscle.

Sometimes they open up positions that aren't needed to ensure that they hire new graduates or employees with little experience and ensure that they are directed towards other projects instead of outsourcing.

Spoiler: Assassin's Creed 3 credits - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klsQrPNAye0

Read all the titles and imagine how it plays into the game. Read their roles and visualize what they'll be doing. Look at the list of voice actors alone. It's staggering. It's massive and it's a must for AAA titles if you don't want the same guy recording gazillion voices.

Are you saying Nolan North isn't good enough?

Infidel.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Are you saying Nolan North isn't good enough?

Infidel.

LOL! <3

 

[orioto]

And his saying is a new proof, it it was needed, that it's not graphics nor tech that kill video game budget, but the idea that every game has to be open world

 

[Kinyou]

It seems like the reason why they're making so many open world games is because those are more easy to split up between various teams. Let the guys in Shanghai model the east district, the guys from Ubisoft Germany the west district, Ubisoft Ukraine makes the random encounters etc. etc. Having those studios focus on actual game design would be a lot more difficult.

This makes their games big but also inconsistent. I think Assassin's Creed 3 was a prime example for that. Stuff like the crafting/trade system or the cities' undergrounds were just thrown in.

 

[MikeE21286]

That sounds more like mismanagement. 600? No way.

 

[exmachina64]

Over 2500 people worked on the Avengers movie. Avengers ended up making $1.5B, but I am sure the production would have been profitable at about half that. A number of videogames have made $500M-1B in revenue this generation. I don't see why it is that surprising that some would have blockbuster budgets.

The companies that actually make the movies, the CG production companies regularly go bankrupt. The money made by movies goes to studios, not to the people that work on movies. Movie studio = game publisher.

That sounds more like mismanagement. 600? No way.

It is.

 

[DashReindeer]

So that's why the design of their AAA games are always confusing, muddled messes. Both AC3 and Far Cry 3 needed a whole bunch of reworking in order to be the games they could have been.

 

[Burt]

The 600 probably has more to do with tight production schedules than anything. More people = less time. Ubisoft pushes out 6-7 open world games in the amount of time Rockstar does 1. They're probably not doing much outsourcing either, for whatever reason.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

That sounds more like mismanagement. 600? No way.

Here's how I see it. Fully-fledged AAA game takes 3 or so years to make. Some companies have the privilege to release the game in 3 years time. Others are forced to do that in one year, including all the future DLC and preproduction for the sequel. It is mismanagement but it's also tossing everything to ensure the game releases within a yearly cycle.

 

[Kandinsky]

Dat videogame crash.

It will be glorious.

 

[Vlodril]

Dat videogame crash.

It will be glorious.

Yea they are going to crash hard at some point in the future.

 

[DocSeuss]

It seems like the reason why they're making so many open world games is because those are more easy to split up between various teams. Let the guys in Shanghai model the east district, the guys from Ubisoft Germany the west district, Ubisoft Ukraine makes the random encounters etc. etc. Having those studios focus on actual game design would be a lot more difficult.

This makes their games big but also inconsistent. I think Assassin's Creed 3 was a prime example for that. Stuff like the crafting/trade system or the cities' undergrounds were just thrown in.

I feel like it could work to have a bunch of random teams all over the place... if the game was designed as if Hitchcock planned it. That is, the entire game is designed, all mechanics are pre-planned and thought out (though I've recently discovered this isn't a common skill?) as best as possible, and all that's left is to build and iterate.

AC3 feels like someone went "oh, hey, we want fast travel, so that's your responsibility, get back to us when it's done."

Contrast this with Far Cry 3, which feels very consistent (despite having a significantly larger world, more quests, presumably more AI behaviors, etc) and polished. It feels as though a handful of people got together, planned out how all the gameplay and systems worked together, laid out a genral idea of the missions, and theen developed, allowing for improvisation as they needed.

Granted, Ubisoft's writing teams are almost universally awful, so that threw a wrench into things.

 

[Biggzy]

Yup, it's largely this. Ubisoft opens studios in places where the government gives them a large tax break / credit. That is how they can afford to throw a lot of people onto a project.

And the Quebec government like to throw money around. It's why a lot of big publishers have large studios in Quebec, or Canada in general.

 

[LightofRohan]

Dammit GAF, why you filled with such smarmy people. Gaf should really get together and make their own game, all those superior minds in one place would probably make the best game of the decade.

 

[I NEED SCISSORS]

Dammit GAF, why you filled with such smarmy people. Gaf should really get together and make their own game, all those superior minds in one place would probably make the best game of the decade.

about that..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudebr...hoot/Slice_You_II:_It's_Straight-Up_Dawg_Time

 

[Kunan]

The entire 600 are not there from day 1. It expands up from about 15, slowly over time. Then about 1 year out you will be at about 80, and that number will swell to the 600 number by the time the game is 8 months out.

Most of the time is spent with core teams that build the core game and narrative, which is then expanded and fleshed out when the truck-ton of people arrive. At that point the script, the level design and everything is complete. These new people come in to generate assets, debug and script sequences based on the designs.

With effective tools this number can remain relatively stationary.

 

[LightofRohan]

about that..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudebr...hoot/Slice_You_II:_It's_Straight-Up_Dawg_Time

 

[MoogPaul]

And people think next gen will still cost 59.99 lol

 

[anddo0]

Too many hands in the cookie jar.. That many people on a project and they still produce mediocre games.

And people think next gen will still cost 59.99 lol

They will.. God knows why Ubi teams are so big.

 

[Sentenza]

That's the very definition of overbloated.

Never forget:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=484151

 

[Kunan]

Too many hands in the cookie jar.. That many people on a project and they still produce mediocre games.

600 people don't design the game. About 15 do.

 

[Dark Octave]

They're still hiring a lot of people for the game.

Isn't it out this holiday? This means that they have about six or seven months and they are still hiring people?

I hope it isn't rushed but I guess it's mostly assets production at this point.

 

[kr2t0s]

$150k for a character is an outrage! Obviously skull girls is scamming the public.

 

[flyinpiranha]

How many Ubisoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb? Nobody knows, they're still hiring.

 

[anddo0]

600 people don't design the game. About 15 do.

True enough.

But if they slowed down with the yearly releases. Maybe they could cut down on staff a little.

 

[Pociask]

So they're developing the game in Montreal, the UK, Barcelona, and Bucharest?

 

[Kunan]

True enough.

But if they slowed down with the yearly releases. Maybe they could cut down on staff a little.

That is the probable outcome; yes.

 

[Always-honest]

Just make the new rainbow six game a launch window game for ps4. Goddammit.

 

[SquiddyCracker]

I think we're in for another videogame industry crash.

 

[ComputerMKII]

How is this possible to lead a project with that many people without the game ending up in a disaster?