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[MasLegio]

So your saying developers should take some self responsibility and not blame the hardware?

Fuck that! The hardware is too powerful! Every developer have to spend over 100 million to compete with the big franchises! it's not like they have options to make cheaper games for the wii or develop for xbox live, psn, steam or actually be somewhat responsible like CD Projekt RED did with the Witcher 2.

Nope, it's all hardware. I hope sony/ms charge me over $300 for dated hardware so everyone can keep their jobs.

why should every developer even try to compete with the big franchises?

thats just stupid and suicidal

 

[MrPliskin]

Publishers should focus on having their beat studio build a framework that supports multiple platforms, and use that as a basis in which they will have all of their studios build games.

The current process is pricey and inefficient, even if it does yield us a few good looking games here and there. I'd rather have smaller budgets and more creative freedom than higher budgets and very similar competing franchises.

Military shooters can die off this gen as well. GOD I HATE THEM. So bad.

 

[Neo C.]

Aren't rising costs a danger in every industry?

Generally, yes. Marx wrote about it over a century ago. In every industry you have to fight against declining profit rate, and you have two possible directions to go: make your production more efficient (less workers) or expand your market (alternatively, find new market).

Currently, the gaming industry fails in both category when it comes to home consoles.

 

[MrPliskin]

Generally, yes. Marx wrote about it over a century ago. In every industry you have to fight against declining profit rate, and you have two possible directions to go: make your production more efficient (less workers) or expand your market (alternatively, find new market).

Currently, the gaming industry fails in both category when it comes to home consoles.

There was potential to be successful in a new market with the Wii, Kinect, and Move, but all of the big 3 failed to do what was important, and that's deliver a price point low enough to cater to that market. Instead, the current high price model was shoe horned into the new market, and ultimately fell flat on its face.

 

[kruis]

Most industries are constrained by materials, which even when they spike rarely do more than double, and are linear per unit.

Gaming is constrained by R&D, which went up an order of magnitude between 16-bit and PS2 and another order of magnitude this gen, and doesn't lessen at all for smaller production runs.

It's funny how it's seemingly impossible to curb rising development costs by simply sticking to a fixed budget. Make the best game you can within the allotted budget, how difficult is that? In the upcoming console generation there can realistically be only a handful devs who can safely raise their development budgets once again, but almost every other developer should forget about keeping up with the Joneses, because it's not financially feasable anymore. But is that really that important to keep pushing the limits? A Wii game like The Last Story was made for a modest budget and it still looks like a PS360 game in 1080p on Dolphin. I don't see why this cannot be the case for the next gen too. A good current gen will look even better on next gen hardware without spending a fortune.

 

[Sgt.Pepper]

I REALLY want to play xenoblade but im not buying a wii for 1 game

There are many excellent games on the Wii. Hell, I'd say the Wii has tbe bigggest number of quality exclusives this gen by far.

 

[Mandoric]

It's funny how it's seemingly impossible to curb rising development costs by simply sticking to a fixed budget. Make the best game you can within the allotted budget, how difficult is that? In the upcoming console generation there can realistically be only a handful devs who can safely raise their development budgets once again, but almost every other developer should forget about keeping up with the Joneses, because it's not financially feasable anymore. But is that really that important to keep pushing the limits? A Wii game like The Last Story was made for a modest budget and it still looks like a PS360 game in 1080p on Dolphin. I don't see why this cannot be the case for the next gen too. A good current gen will look even better on next gen hardware without spending a fortune.

Like I've said, if you want to see the results of that, look at Japan this gen. Being the one guy who can afford to drop $100mil on development and not bomba earns you $300mil back, being one of the many guys who drop $5mil may cover cost of capital if you're lucky.

 

[muu]

There was potential to be successful in a new market with the Wii, Kinect, and Move, but all of the big 3 failed to do what was important, and that's deliver a price point low enough to cater to that market. Instead, the current high price model was shoe horned into the new market, and ultimately fell flat on its face.

There was definitely an opportunity to make more people realize that gameplay >> graphics when the Wii came out, but clearly the big third parties had their minds set on HD gaming and kept with it, bleeding themselves red in the process. The 'motion controls are a gimmick' thing became a self-fulfilling prophecy since most devs didn't bother to spend the time to build those controls into their better games, and it didn't help that Ninty didn't have a good grasp on what they could do with it either. The Wii started dirt-cheap compared to the other consoles, and its accelerated adoption rate I believe reflects that.

 

[Desty]

It would be nice to see the budgets go into better gameplay. It would be cool to see some planning or logic like in Chess go into enemies. Like if the player does A then I will do B and then he'll probably do C so I maybe instead I should do X. Like try to predict player behavior more than in the immediate context.

However, it is far easier just to hire 10 more artists and up-res everything. :/ Moar gloss!

 

[Neo C.]

There was potential to be successful in a new market with the Wii, Kinect, and Move, but all of the big 3 failed to do what was important, and that's deliver a price point low enough to cater to that market. Instead, the current high price model was shoe horned into the new market, and ultimately fell flat on its face.

They also failed in placing console gaming in third world countries and emerging markets like China. I hope they can step up their effort in this regard.

 

[News Bot]

Wow, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried. These days nobody gives a crap about game design...they want production. Production IS game design these days. "Cool" "Awesome" and "Epic" are just shallow words saying the same thing. You take those 3 words out of Gaf and you got very few compliments. Hype is king. Attention grabbing (competitive production) things are what makes hype when you're business model is geared toward the gamer's demographic.

It's become a "competing with the jones" scenario and gamers have indulged themselves in it and flame the fire. They have voted, again and again, that they want to play the same game (same game design, if not a little worse) but with more "wow"

That's marketing, not a bloated budget spent on worthless shit nobody notices or cares about.

 

[KevinCow]

Its not as simple as that. Higher power doesn't just give you the excuse to be lazy I remember asking my lead engineer once what the differences between the 360 and PS3 are. He said it was the difference between driving a manual car (driving stick) and driving auto.

Also as an artist, if I was told to just make the graphics 'good enough' I would probably hand in my resignation the next day. Artists don't want to just make uprezzed ps2 graphics haha. We have access to more powerful shaders, more drawcalls and larger draw distances. We are given more bones per chunk and higher textures. All of these will take more time to make. Place 1000 barrels and crates.. more time needed to do that then placing 3. We want to be able to smash all these things up. Shit now I have to make destructible meshes (if no auto destruct script is available)
We want to make it better and closer to the art directors vision. Sometimes that means more (like an uncharted 2) or that means less (like journey) But rest assured we will always try to make it the best possible thing we have ever done with the resources we are given.

I can appreciate the desire to make everything you do look as good as possible. I'd like it if every game I played looked as good as possible.

But I'm saying that, unless you're one of the handful of studios who can guarantee that your massive budget game will sell 5 million+ copies, you need to be realistic about what your studio can accomplish. It's poor business sense to spend 500 man hours painstakingly modeling and animating this character when you could have something perfectly serviceable in 100 man hours.

I want to be clear though, I'm not saying you should compromise on your vision. I'm saying you should develop your vision with your limitations in mind. That's what the best indie devs do. That's what, say, a film student does. He can't afford the special effects that would be required to make a decent epic sci-fi action movie, so he doesn't do that. He could probably try, but the results would be blatantly and noticeably inferior to anything he's trying to compete with. So instead, he might make a character drama, because all he needs for that is a camera and actors. He didn't settle for making a certain genre. He just acknowledged his limitations and chose the best kind of movie he could make within them.

This doesn't mean you can't make a first-person shooter or whatever. You can. But you can't just brute force it and make a modern military shooter with crazy setpieces, because you'll just wind up with something that is noticeably inferior to Call of Duty or Battlefield. If you want a first-person shooter, you need to do something different, and you probably need to do something kinda unique to stand out from all the rest. And if you can't come up with a unique FPS? Then maybe that's not the genre you should be working on.

More complex games, mean higher chance of bugs, which means more time needed for the coders to get things right. Also higher graphic levels means more demand on the art team.

But this is my point. This starts with the assumption that the game needs to be more complex and the graphics need to be vastly superior just because it's on more powerful hardware. This isn't the case.

There are plenty of last-gen games that still play just fine. There are even last-gen games that still look just fine, and would look even more just fine in HD and touched up a bit. You don't have to bloat your budget way beyond last-gen just because you can make a game way more complex than last-gen.

It seems like the only people who understand this are indie devs. But there is a middle-ground between the BIG EPIC AAA BLOCKBUSTER and the small indie 2D pixel-art platformer.

 

[Mitsurux]

Alot of good posts here..

I think another reason why the game industry is in trouble is because they do not have that many different revenue streams. If the AAA title fails to meet sales goals, there is no other revenue to help fill in the loss...


While i hate to say abmit it.. this is partly why Hollywood can finance Extremely expensive films, because they know that they have multiple revenue opportunities.... and multiple chances to reach their customers.. Hollywood can function as it does because of the multiple revenue streams that it has created for itself.


The games industry will need to figure something similar or it will probably contract in overall size..

Just a few of my thoughts

 

[Joni]

But this is my point. This starts with the assumption that the game needs to be more complex and the graphics need to be vastly superior just because it's on more powerful hardware. This isn't the case.
.

But isn't that the reason so many people are asking for new consoles? Because the current ones don't offer good enough graphics in their opinion. That is all I see: we need new consoles because the old ones are graphically outdated. How are those people going to react to games that aren't up to par?

 

[Barkley's Justice]

Do your part: Stop buying sequels.

 

[CoconutTank]

But this is my point. This starts with the assumption that the game needs to be more complex and the graphics need to be vastly superior just because it's on more powerful hardware. This isn't the case.

There are plenty of last-gen games that still play just fine. There are even last-gen games that still look just fine, and would look even more just fine in HD and touched up a bit. You don't have to bloat your budget way beyond last-gen just because you can make a game way more complex than last-gen.

It seems like the only people who understand this are indie devs. But there is a middle-ground between the BIG EPIC AAA BLOCKBUSTER and the small indie 2D pixel-art platformer.

I think the idea is that since the hardware is a vast improvement over the previous generation, then the software should also be making strides forward. If the software doesn't rise to similar heights of power, folks get the idea that less effort was put into it or that it's outdated.

For example, make an NES level game and releasing it on PS3 as a retail title. Why do they not make the most of the hardware? Why are they using such shitty graphics? Why is the gameplay so shallow? Questions of that nature will come up. My example is a little out of your bounds since you only went as far back as last-gen, but I hope it illustrates the point.

But isn't that the reason so many people are asking for new consoles? Because the current ones don't offer good enough graphics in their opinion. That is all I see: we need new consoles because the old ones are graphically outdated. How are those people going to react to games that aren't up to par?

Yeah like this. I want to add that I don't want to illustrate this opinion in a negative light, just that it should be expected.

 

[KevinCow]

I think the idea is that since the hardware is a vast improvement over the previous generation, then the software should also be making strides forward. If the software doesn't rise to similar heights of power, folks get the idea that less effort was put into it or that it's outdated.

And these graphically impressive games will continue to exist. I'm not saying they won't or shouldn't. Just that it's not a sustainable business model for everyone in the industry to try making them. We have observed that this isn't a sustainable business model. Yet everyone continues to try.

These types of games would probably sell less than the big AAA games. That's okay. That's the point of having a lower budget. A game with a moderate budget only needs moderate sales to make back its development costs.

And I'll also argue that technically impressive graphics aren't nearly as important as you and publishers seem to think. Games like Wii Sports, Pokemon, and World of Warcraft outsell games like Uncharted and Gears of War. Call of Duty outsold Crysis. People just want a fun game. They'll be turned off if it looks outright bad, sure, but as I have repeatedly said, you don't need a massive budget to make a game that looks good.

For example, make an NES level game and releasing it on PS3 as a retail title. Why do they not make the most of the hardware? Why are they using such shitty graphics? Why is the gameplay so shallow? Questions of that nature will come up. My example is a little out of your bounds since you only went as far back as last-gen, but I hope it illustrates the point.

When they make NES level games these days, they price them accordingly. Mega Man 9 was $10. That's why I said that these kinds of games should be priced at $40 or $50.

And, again, I'm not saying they need to compromise on their vision, or actually make a game to PS2 specifications. Just that they don't need to try to chase Gears or Uncharted levels of graphics just because. You can make a game that looks genuinely good for a lower budget. XBLA and PSN do it frequently.

 

[Theonik]

Rising marketing costs are an equal concern imo, these days you see games with equal or greater marketing budgets to the game development budget. The "AAA" model as it stands is a bloated colossus that will bring itself down sooner rather than later while anything lying between these over-promoted behemoths and Indy games gets crushed.

Also the rising dev cost has less to do with "HD" and more to do with a large spike in the need for high quality assets more than anything that no studio was really set-up to accept.
Next gen would presumably not have anything of that sort.

 

[lenovox1]

Rising marketing costs are an equal concern imo, these days you see games with equal or greater marketing budgets to the game development budget. The "AAA" model as it stands is a bloated colossus that will bring itself down sooner rather than later while anything lying between these over-promoted behemoths and Indy games gets crushed.

It depends on if there's new hardware releasing, but money spent on marketing has been stable according to Nielsen. And if we see less AAA fare, you might actually see the money spent on marketing go down.

 

[Wyndstryker]

And these graphically impressive games will continue to exist. I'm not saying they won't or shouldn't. Just that it's not a sustainable business model for everyone in the industry to try making them. We have observed that this isn't a sustainable business model. Yet everyone continues to try.

These types of games would probably sell less than the big AAA games. That's okay. That's the point of having a lower budget. A game with a moderate budget only needs moderate sales to make back its development costs.

And I'll also argue that technically impressive graphics aren't nearly as important as you and publishers seem to think. Games like Wii Sports, Pokemon, and World of Warcraft outsell games like Uncharted and Gears of War. Call of Duty outsold Crysis. People just want a fun game. They'll be turned off if it looks outright bad, sure, but as I have repeatedly said, you don't need a massive budget to make a game that looks good.



When they make NES level games these days, they price them accordingly. Mega Man 9 was $10. That's why I said that these kinds of games should be priced at $40 or $50.

And, again, I'm not saying they need to compromise on their vision, or actually make a game to PS2 specifications. Just that they don't need to try to chase Gears or Uncharted levels of graphics just because. You can make a game that looks genuinely good for a lower budget. XBLA and PSN do it frequently.

I fully agree, I became mostly a PC gamer these days due to indie gaming. Been getting way more fun with RPGMaker titles and other simpler works than big budget games these days.

Consoles though come with a specific market with specific expectations that people want to cater to. Sadly in order to cater to a lot of those people, they need to go AAA or bust.

Unfortunately developers WANT to make big games, publishers WANT big games to sell.

 

[Shaheed79]

No wonder very few developers come here and spend the time to give us some valuable insight into actual game development. No matter what Anuxinamoon said, people either didn't believe him or tried to offer some sort of simple solution without having a fundamental understanding of what the problem actually is.

You simply need to work within your limitations Anux. Go and give your next game director that handy piece of advice. I am sure that it will make all the difference with cutting down on those required man hours by 1/4 and save the publisher millions.

Why spend time animating a game to have realistic movement like Uncharted or RE5 when you can simply animate it to the standards of a PS2 or Xbox game? Why spend time making hires outdoor environmental assets when you can simply reproduce a bunch of identical blades of grass to deliver a similar "outdoorsy" effect? Why even spend time developing and perfecting new high res textures and normal maps when you can simply implement some more advanced lighting?

I sure hope some developers are taking notes from this topic. It could potentially save their company millions in developer man hours next generation.

 

[Anuxinamoon]

I can appreciate the desire to make everything you do look as good as possible. I'd like it if every game I played looked as good as possible.

But I'm saying that, unless you're one of the handful of studios who can guarantee that your massive budget game will sell 5 million+ copies, you need to be realistic about what your studio can accomplish. It's poor business sense to spend 500 man hours painstakingly modeling and animating this character when you could have something perfectly serviceable in 100 man hours.

I want to be clear though, I'm not saying you should compromise on your vision. I'm saying you should develop your vision with your limitations in mind. That's what the best indie devs do. That's what, say, a film student does.

In a perfect world you would know exactly what you want to make from day 1. The project manager would then say; "okay guyz based on our resources (time/money/staff/talent) we can get this done to X quality in 2 years. OKAY TEAM LETS DO IT! *team roars and gets to work*
After 2 years here is our perfect game.

It most definitely is not like that. Pre pro on a new IP can take 6-12 months with a small core team. Over the course of its development cycle it will no doubt be altered or completely flipped on its head at least twice. Specifications and rules you set up 18 months ago you now realise don't work for the new scope and you have to brute force all the new content into it because the pipeline is set and it will take 3-6 months to recreate it from scratch.
New ideas are presented, new feature creeps which usually derive from focus testing or publisher/higher up intervention. Ad mountains of work to an already teetering pile of content.
It usually is a chaotic mess. That's why there is always crunch at the end, because at 6-8 months to go, the (I'm drawing a blank here about the right title for this guys job but I think it is) Executive producer will then say; "OKAY! These are exactly the things that will ship on gold." (this is obviously worked out with each department and the project manager)
So now there is a 6 month race to get all the things ticked off the list and first pass QA'ed before lock and final QA testing.
And of course as an artist I'm in the thick of it just trying to make sure I produce the best possible assets with the resources I am given. (resources being time and tech restrictions) If I am given 1 day per prop or a week for a POI I will make sure both get the most I am able to give artistically. Usually this results in a fair bit of overtime.
You also learn very quick how to manage you time and scope. I know in 1 week I can;t make epic mountain of doom, but I'll fucken try and end up with awesome mountain of doom, its not epic but its still awesome..

You can try to plan as best you like for this stuff but things will always fall through the cracks, especially with a new team and a new project. Saying that, it is much easier to manage with smaller teams and smaller games of scope which is why indi games seem to not have these problems as much. But also note that a team of 3 people making a game for the first time, their first attempt will usually be a massive learning curve. How to do things with new engine, how to work together, and by the last 1/4 of the project they will finally be at top production efficiency.
(also note indi cycles aren't usually 2-5 years long, a developer working on the same project for 5 years will have lost more energy at the end of the project than if he was only working for 1 year.)

Hawken is a great example of really experienced guys making something amazing looking with a small team and small scope and smart asset construction.

Every game will have a scope that far exceeds their resources at one point. So much stuff will be cut from a game just because they 'don;t have time' or it wasn't priority 1.

 

[PKrockin]

At least we still have a market for $40 games on handhelds, and I hope it stays that way.

 

[Reuenthal]

Rising dev costs are a threat to a part of the industry, yes.

 

[Jac_Solar]

Devs are normal human beings. Some are very creative, artistic people of course, but still relatively normal. Same with everyone else. The amount/reality/potential of ideas, creativity, output etc between creative/techs and an average joe aren't that noticeable in, for example, a finished product. The pipeline of all the software the devs use (And job structure/the way people are structured or placed in a corporation.) will (usually) decide the overall feel/big picture of the game, and the pipeline is put together and created by people as well. Also because of how people think (Bosses, etc.)

The issue won't change until people change.

Games haven't really changed that much, mechanically. But I think most of us, for some reason, expect new games to be considerably different. The publishers, perhaps developers, but media in general are constantly pushing/implying the next game to be something revolutionary. Human imagination takes over and shapes it into something it's not, every time.

If anything, human nature is to 'blame'. If the players switched places with developers/publishers, they'd be in the same/very similar situation in a few years.
Why only a few years? Because the standards, the expectations and the basic ideology of the world would be the same.

Just compare how different eastern and western games are. Once those standards have been defined, and they have, nothing short of a major revolution will change it. Ie: that changes the way people are raised. If the gaming industry breaks down, it'd be back in the same situation in a few years.

Some people are very special, though, and might bring something unique to our world, but the structure/setup of a game project basically prevents this -- imagine Mozart as a cello/piano/etc player in an orchestra.

 

[kruis]

No wonder very few developers come here and spend the time to give us some valuable insight into actual game development. No matter what Anuxinamoon said, people either didn't believe him or tried to offer some sort of simple solution without having a fundamental understanding of what the problem actually is.

You simply need to work within your limitations Anux. Go and give your next game director that handy piece of advice. I am sure that it will make all the difference with cutting down on those required man hours by 1/4 and save the publisher millions.

Why spend time animating a game to have realistic movement like Uncharted or RE5 when you can simply animate it to the standards of a PS2 or Xbox game? Why spend time making hires outdoor environmental assets when you can simply reproduce a bunch of identical blades of grass to deliver a similar "outdoorsy" effect? Why even spend time developing and perfecting new high res textures and normal maps when you can simply implement some more advanced lighting?

This is not about not wanting developers to do the absolute best they can, but about economic realities. Spending more time on better models, textures, effects, animation, etc costs more money and it doesn't look likely that the audience for core games will grow in the next gen to compensate for the higher development costs. If anything the audience will shrink when casual gamers will go to platforms like mobile phones and tablets.

The blockbuster model is simply unsustainable. There'll be less and less developers left every year when just one mega expensive AAA bomba can kill a developer or publisher.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Yes, it is a threat. That is why I think next generation will be the beginning of the end for a plethora of developers and even consumers. Between the rising development costs of hardware and software, next generation is probably going to be frightening. Games this generation actually reached the $100 million dollar+ mark for development. I dread to see what the future holds. Also, if the anti-used games rumor is legitimate, then many companies in general will be in trouble.

 

[Margalis]

Spending on production looks like a good strategy until everyone catches up and then you are all spending more to slice up the same pie.

My hope is that the market for FTP and $15- games will continue to solidify, "AAA" games will continue to rise in price with DLC, special editions, etc effectively pushing the cost of a new complete purchase to $70+, and that spread will allow for a new price point in the middle where games that don't check every back of the box feature or don't spend vast amounts on production but are still fully-realized, fully 3d-modelled games can exist.

So basically if you have a game like Bioshock instead of saying "guys to make this a $60 title we need multiplayer" you instead say "guys let's sell this for $35." Right now that price range exists for budget titles and bombas, but as prices continue to spread maybe it can become legitimized.

The vast majority if my gaming enjoyment comes from titles that would fit in that space. I personally don't care much for AAA mega blockbusters or $10 indie puzzle platformers.

 

[smuldegspaj]

the blockbuster model isnt unsustainable, its very sustainable. "aaa" games like bf, cod, ac sell more than ever, and rake in money. And the core market is growing. And will continue to grow, until core gamers reach retirement age. That is at least 20 years off.

The "aaa" publishers want budgets to grow. Its good for them if smaller publishers break bank and go belly up chasing the same thing..

what needs to happen is "aa" type of games, needs to budget according to realistic sales. Ie break even at 500k ww. And make games that dont directly compete with the cods of this world. Make games that stand out and work with what you have instead of taking out loans.


There are plenty of ways to achive "aaa" production values without brute forcing it with 300man teams.

nintendo are masters of this. Its not just for gameplay, mario galexy takes place in small galaxies or wind waker had great oceans or majoras mask had a timer that reset every 24h. This is cost cutting game design.

 

[Goldmund]

Some developers, the arsenals filled to the brim with what decimated their peers (we keep memories of their throes safe in picture postcard form), remain power hungry. They keep asking for more money, so they can procure something even deadlier, or else. And still, the threat rings hollow. After all, they're speaking to their moneylenders and are pointing the gun at their own heads.

 

[Slavik81]

Spending on production looks like a good strategy until everyone catches up and then you are all spending more to slice up the same pie.

Indeed. Spending on production is a bit of a prisoner's dilemma. It might be unsustainable, but it's difficult to avoid the arms race.