The cost of making games ...

[txa1265]

We talk about it everywhere because of how few RPG's come along, but this article (http://gamepolitics.com/2007/01/04/bully-2-industry-analyst-says-no/) gave me pause:

Those estimates total 800,000 units at an average wholesale price of around $30, so it will likely generate around $24 million in revenues. Since the game took three years to develop, it likely cost Take-Two close to $15 million in R&D, and my guess is that the company did no better than to break even. I would NOT expect a sequel.

Wow ... 800,000 units is a 'break even' game?!?! I know it is a console game, but still!

[Gorath]

Console games have higher fixed costs: a tax of ~10$ per unit has to be paid to the console manufacturer - upfront & non-refundable. Marketing is more expensive because console gamers aren´t as fixated on print mags as PC gamers. (Multi-platform offers synergies though). The game needs approximately 2-3 months to get approved by the console manufacturer´s QA (for each console!).
The risk situation is also different. Nowadays more console games are released, but the number of potential customers is gigantic. Furthermore the bigger Greatest Hits budget lines are controlled by the manufacturers. Only hits are allowed in, which makes budget sales more complicated.

PC-only games can´t have such a big budget. I guess Oblivion for all platforms costs 15 Mio. Maybe even a bit more. Dragon Age is an exception because Bioware has a proven track record.
Gothic 3 had a budget in the 4-6 Mio EUR range. That was obviously not enough. The 350k it sold so far should be enough to get over the break even, but it´s surely not enough yet to earn big bucks.
This example shows the problems smaller devs and pubs have. Could they really take the risk to allocate a bigger budget to an RPG for hardcore gamers? JoWooD has great distribution in Germany (through Deep Silver), okay market access in Europe and problems in the rest of the world. Can they really sell more than the numbers they´ve based their calculations on? Increasing the budget means also increasing your sales expectations. Making the wrong decision can ruin both companies. Combine this with a developer who refuses to scale the project down or is incapable of seeing its true size and you´re left left with the choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Delaying the game would have made it miss the Christmas business (-> lost sales!) and would have increased the budget. Releasing now damaged the brand. They took the wrong decision, IMHO. At least if they could have afforded the other one.

Small studios should go for compact games with great content. A 40 hours kick-ass RPG should be attractive enough for RPG fans to decide for a purchase. The other possible 100 hours of average content should be seen as an opportunity to keep the costs down.

[chamr]

Small studios should go for compact games with great content. A 40 hours kick-ass RPG should be attractive enough for RPG fans to decide for a purchase. The other possible 100 hours of average content should be seen as an opportunity to keep the costs down.

A-freakin'-men on that. RPG development seems especially prone to obsession with eye-candy and sheer content volume to the detrement of quality gameplay and true, meaningful advancement of the cRPG genre. (I don't consider life-like facial expressions on NPC's and five-gazzilion fed-ex quests true and meaninful advances for cRPG's) Just think what could have been done for monster AI and NPC interaction if the massive world and ridiculously long list of quests had been cut in half and those man-hours had been freed up. Geez.

And aren't the publishers and develolper missing the boat? Isn't the gaming market in general, and especially the PC-RPG market continuing to trend toward older gamers with more money but less time to game? Given that trend, it seems clear to me that world size, a prodigious but mostly duplicative list of quests and maybe the latest and greatest bloom-shader-crazy polygon-we-have-the-most-realistic-facial-hair-swaying-in-the-wind-of-any-cRPG-ever! graphics should be trimmed in favor of high quality and true innovation that can command a premium price.

[txa1265]

I think that what surprised me was the fact that this is a PS2 game ... and that reports I read indicated that *next gen* games would require 500,000 copies to break even!

But I agree with you guys - I look at my own gaming habits, and the balance has definitely tipped towards short-burst gaming (ergo my infatuation with handhelds). I would be happy with a game that offers a tight 40 hour experience with plenty of quest variety and interesting characters.

I just loaded up Icewind Dale II again after some discussion in other threads ... I'd never gotten into it much after not finishing IWD I. But playing it now reminds me of how little I care about advanced graphics and eye-candy ...

[JDR13]

"I just loaded up Icewind Dale II again after some discussion in other threads ... I'd never gotten into it much after not finishing IWD I. But playing it now reminds me of how little I care about advanced graphics and eye-candy ..."


Hallelujah brother! I replayed Baldurs Gate last year and enjoyed it just as much as I did 6 years ago. Looking forward to replaying BG2 later this year, and I'll definitely play the IWD series again in the future as well.

Hell, I just played System Shock 1 for the first time in November. That game was released in what year? 1992? I was blown away by how great it was.

*edit* SS was released in 1994. It takes a fair bit of tweaking, but you can run it on Windows XP.

[Gorath]

Decent graphics are a must nowadays. The potential customer at the shop only sees a box with a few pictures. He can´t know if an ugly game is more fun than the colorful one next to it.

[Corwin]

I replayed SS early last year too and I agree. I have yet to finish either G3, or NWN2 (though I am enjoying them despite many flaws). However, discussions about Wiz 8 in a different thread, lead me to re-install it, then I just had to make sure everything worked, then I decided to just do the Monastery, and of course the Arnika Road beckoned, and I've been playing it for 4 days straight!! There's a lesson in that somewhere!! :)

[chamr]

Decent graphics are a must nowadays. The potential customer at the shop only sees a box with a few pictures. He can´t know if an ugly game is more fun than the colorful one next to it.

Granted. I'm certainly aware of the appeal of pleasing graphics and, to some extent, the role they play in immersion. However, my beef is with the extent to which graphics dominate so many PR blurbs on and reviews of games. It's disproportionate to their value. I think everyone will agree that fantastic graphics won't save a boring, derivative, low-quality game and, conversely, OK-ish graphics won't sink a great game.

Obviously, a good deal of effort and talent must be spent on keeping your graphics good enough not to put off potential customers. But I would argue that developers/publishers tend to go way too far in that department at the expense of more significant aspects of the game that would, IMHO, actually pay greater dividends in the long run.

Part of the probelm, I think, is that content volume and graphics are just plain easier targets for improvement, so to speak, than other, trickier aspects of a game, such as AI, player impact on the world, and the dynamicism of NPC interaction. I think RPG development has been stagnating for quite some time, content with "more hours" and "prettier" which has led to the proliferation of indy RPG titles trying to recapture some of that old magic.

Of course, the optimist's take would be that the genre is now very ripe for true innovation...

[GothicGothicness]

decided to just do the Monastery, and of course the Arnika Road beckoned, and I've been playing it for 4 days straight!! There's a lesson in that somewhere!!
Yes, the lesson is Wiz 8 rules.

As for the cost, to put it simple CRPGs are the worst genre to try and develop! However such a "RPG" as pokemon is the most profitable game ever! the franchise sold around 20 million copies or more only in Japan... and I could program and draw that game by myself in one year! With a budget of $1000 a month for foods and internet!

The horror of CRPG's are so many for a developer ( I know since I worked at a game company developing one ) It has to have good enough graphics a good engine and sound... because everyone expect it these years. For a FPS having all of this is enough... after it is done it is just a matter of tweaking the gameplay a bit and thinking up a fairly crappy story and go! Besides people accept a small scale game that takes about 13 hours to play through or less for a good player, and it lives on the multiplayer after that.

For a RPG people expect it to be huge... which means even more graphics work, more map work than the FPS, more sounds... more of everything mentioned above! On top of that it needs tons of dialogue and NOW it must even be spoken... people expect no less... this in itself is a huge cost. When there's the balancing and combat system that takes forever.... when there are choices and quests which just is assured to give bugs!

On top of that you need a good story... which is also really hard to think up.

After having done all of this enormous work, and you feel you are about done... you realise everything you did is getting outdated since it took so long to complete it... time to update everything! It is a nightmare! To put salt in the wounds the FPS sells better anyway. To sum up, if you are in the industry for the money these days you don't develop CRPG's at least not of the wizardry kind.

[Corwin]

Exactly, which is a shame, a pity and a lot of other things. Who remembers most of the FPS games they've played several years on, but we still discuss the Wizardries, the Ultimas etc and we still play them all years later!! That's what a good CRPG has over all other games. PS-T, will live forever, as will Wiz 8 and U7 among others. Who will be playing many of the current crop in 10 years time?

[Jaz]

Who remembers most of the FPS games they've played several years onI do. Every single one of them. And I still love to discuss and play* them, just as the RTSes/fighting games/platformers/adventures/CRPGs I played - for me, quality has nothing to do with genre. And no, an FPS doesn't need good graphics, sounds and a nice engine only to succeed. Blood 2, for example, had all that, but it lacked atmosphere and was difficult enough to fail on a grand scale. And is 'save the world/the princess from the evil wizard/the dark god' really a great story per se? Is it any different from 'save the world/the princess from the Nazis/Bowser'? No, it's not. In both cases, the details count. The story details and the way they - and NPCs - are presented are (among other things) what can make or break a game, at least for me, and this goes for most gaming genres (except perhaps puzzle games ;)). I enjoy a mean story twist in a CRPG just as I enjoy a mean story twist in an FPS game.

That folks on our forums generally remember CRPGs best (and replay them the most) might be a consequence of the fact that this site was made for fans of CRPGs. That CRPGs are more often economical failures than other games may be a result of the fact that everybody wants something else out of them. While customers' expectations for FPSes usually are pretty straightforward and I need about two questions to be able to satisfy them, the Q&A session with a potential CRPG buyer usually is much longer.

_________________
*My current list of games to replay includes LoL 2, Wiz Nemesis, Cyberstorm, Catacomb Apocalypse and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Only one of them is a CRPG.

[Danicek]

This thread is quite an insteresting thing to read. I'm really wondering where this 'cost of making games' problem will lead the gaming industry. But overall I'm quite optimistic. I believe film industry went through same history and look at it now. You may find tons of bad commercial titles, a lot of good commercial titles and a lot of what we could call indies.

[GothicGothicness]

And no, an FPS doesn't need good graphics, sounds and a nice engine only to succeed.

You supply a game who had it and failed, however could you name me one FPS game who didn't have it and succeded? I doubt it. However I can supply many FPS games who had only that and succeeded. Well they do need multiplayer too... but I haven't seen a single player FPS in a very long time.

As far as I know there is two FPS series on the PC who has a story with decent NPC's that is Half-Life and the wounderful NOLF ( I love these games, but it is not exactly an FPS I guess ), yet I've played a lot of FPS's. Doom... it has a story? Far Cry... soap opera has a great story compared to that :D Prey? hmmm story? Quake.... nope. Heretic? not really.. I can go on, FPS's does not need NPC's nor a story to succeed. Maybe you want atmosphere for them to enjoy them.. that is all good. But the truth is all it needs is good multiplayer, see CS or quake 3 as good examples. Of course people discuss counterstrike tactics and quake 3 tactics and things like that! But I think you are a rare breed if you still discuss such an old classics as doom with your friends often... what exactly is there to discuss? If the rocket launcher better than the chaingun, can you play through the game without using any other weapon than the shootgun? who is the meanest enemy?

[Corwin]

GG, you and I think a lot alike; you should consider joining our online weekly NWN sessions, you'd like the people who play!! :)

[GothicGothicness]

GG, you and I think a lot alike

Maybe it is called being smart? I hope it has nothing to do with getting old!

hmm NWN sessions..... perhaps been a long long long time since I touched NWN. I will think about it.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

There had been last year an *very* interesting article on the blog of the "grumpy gamer" Ron Gilbert about that ! (Or was it the year before that ?)

[abbaon]

To sum up, if you are in the industry for the money these days you don't develop CRPG's at least not of the wizardry kind.
If you're not in the industry for the money then you're out of the industry. Only a third of games make money (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/ea.html?pg=2&topic=ea&topic_set=)*. Publishers need investments that won't just pay for themselves, but will pick up the shortfall of their other projects. They need hits to survive, and real RPGs don't deliver enough of them.

* I don't know whether Executive VP Bing meant at EA, or in the industry as a whole. EA has, after all, retired the risk of game development by releasing the same game every year (http://www.easports.com/).

[txa1265]

Shooters are an interesting breed ... because the only 'low tech' commercial games I can think of are the 'World War II Combat' games from Groove Games , 'Iwo Jima' and 'Road to Berlin' ... I played Iwo Jima and it was truly awful!

The thing that is problematic with FPS is that the graphical quality is considered to be directly proportional to the product quality. Look at Jedi Academy - a pretty good game, but what do people complain about most? Not the immature story or characters, or the awkward mission / level structure, or the flawed RPG-lite attempt at skill building ala-the original Jedi Knight ...no, it is because the game used the same Quake III engine as Jedi Knight II! Serious people actually asserted that using the Source or Unreal engines would have made the game *better*!

I know that there is a 'reasonable lower limit' - I mean, how many people would seriously consider buying Avernum 4 based on the screens without knowing about the gameplay (or even *with* knowing the gameplay!). I don't think many would look at GeneForge 4 and say 'cool new graphics in this version' ... I know I am a rarity in that regard ...

But I was in one of the electronics stores the other day watching someone play a racing game on a PS2 and thinking ... what is the *real value* of spending $15 million on Ridge Racer 7 that is the same but prettier than the $5 million Ridge Racer 6? (swags)

[VPeric]

What we need is more RPGFTS'! The abovementioned NOLF is precisely that; also, the [i]beyond awesome[i] Deus Ex would be here. This should, in theory, get the best of both worlds: high sales due to FPS elements, RPG elemends due to, well... RPG elements. :P

---

But yeah, a big part of cost is the graphic, which is usually not so necessary; a lot money goes into marketing too, which RPGs shouldn't need so much (due to communities like this, I guess...).

[chamr]

To sum up, if you are in the industry for the money these days you don't develop CRPG's at least not of the wizardry kind.

A-ha! And this is where, ideally, a smart, risk-tolerant entrepreneur/publisher/developer smells an opportunity!

Obviously, the big budget publishers and developers are contributing to the slow death of the cRPG by continuing to take the safe route of better graphics, more of the same quests and larger worlds as their only targets for growing the genre. If the success of Oblivion is any indication, cRPG's will degenerate to the point of gaming's version of a theme park where the player is asked to do nothing more than enjoy the ride, rather than be challenged to best the game and feel as if they are truly playing a part in making the story with their avatar. The cRPG of the future will actually tout on the game box that the player can create any of 120 highly customized and beautiful, but ultimately irrelevant, avatars and just sit back and watch the story go by from the comfy armchair provided by the "go-here-and-do-it-exactly-this-way-the-monster-will-be-just-waiting-around-to-die-so-don't-worry-about-it-you-can't-possibly-fail-in-any-way" quest design.

As with any business, the typical way out of product stagnation and slumping sales is true innovation. It takes somebody with the balls, smarts and a more than a little good luck to buck the trend and do what everybody says can’t be done: innovate. Ironically, I’ll use Oblivion’s Radiant AI as an example. The way I understood it before the game came out, it was a real cRPG innovation that was going to rock the player’s world. In fact, Oblivion themselves spent a lot of PR space hyping it. And for good reason. It really was a great idea that could take the cRPG to places it hadn’t been before. Of course, as I understand it since I haven’t bothered to play Oblivion (ok, I can’t resist…. I already have Morrowind. Why would I pay $50 more for the privilege of playing almost exactly the same game with better graphics and dumbed-down gameplay? Anybody? Bueller?) it was a flop. But at least on paper, it’s the kind of innovation the cRPG genre is going to have to succeed at to remain a vibrant, evolving game type that sells well.

Ironically (again) I’ll use an FPS as a great example of the kind of thinking I believe could lead to great cRPG design: Hitman 2. When I played the first mission, I was blown away at how many great ways you could go about accomplishing the single objective, which was to get a key from this Don at his highly guarded villa and release the priest in the basement. Here’s a few ways it could be done:

- Hide your guns in a box of groceries that were being delivered at the time. Then, knock out the flower delivery guy that happened to be waltzing into the compound. Steal his clothes, and then walk right through the front door, surviving the frisk because you had no weapons on you. As soon as the coast was clear, sneak into the kitchen and get your guns from the box that had just been brought in by the grocery guy. Now, you’re good to go.
- Observe that the Don waltzed out onto his 2nd floor balcony from time to time to enjoy the view and take a few golf swings. Find a good place in the hills outside his villa and snipe him at just the right time so that he falls off his balcony and into some bushes below. By this time, you’ve observed that a guard likes to slip outside the walls using a side door to take a leak every now and then. Wait for him to do it again, sneak up behind him and strangle him, take his clothes and then carefully walk over to where the Don’s body is. Hide his body better and take the key.
- Sneak around the compound until you can find a way in and then on the roof. Sneak over the roof and down to the Don’s private office. Wait for the right time to cut his throat quietly and take the key.
- And, of course, the most fun way: lock and load your two .45’s and just walk through the front gates, guns-a-blazin’ and dare them to stop you.
- And so on…

Now that's what I call open-ended gameplay!

Of course, I understand that FPS’s have advantages in taking this design approach over cRPG’s (i.e. much fewer missions/quests to develop, set-piece maps that are very small, contained, and easy to script/control environments, no character development system or deep and long storylines to worry about, etc.). My point is, I wish someone would take this kind of design philosophy into cRPG quest design and adapt it accordingly. That would be innovation that a publisher could trumpet to the press and gamers. I’d take 20 of these kinds of quests over 100 of “the usual” any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Can you imagine the gameplay depth that would result when combined with a solid character development system, great NPC & world interactivity and significant evolution in monster AI? It begins to boggle the mind.

Here’s hoping someone takes it on and pulls it off. It would be a great day for cRPG gamers, that’s for sure….

[Jaz]

You supply a game who had it and failed, however could you name me one FPS game who didn't have it and succeded? Dark Forces. The game was not good-looking by any standards, not even then. It did have a powerful franchise behind it, of course. Another example would be Rainbow Six. Not pretty, but an addictive game.As far as I know there is two FPS series on the PC who has a story with decent NPC's that is Half-Life and the wounderful NOLFStrife struck me as a truly decent FPS with good NPCs and plot twists. The story behind most games (unless you count sports games) is 'save the world from this or that evil', anyway. But I think you are a rare breed if you still discuss such an old classics as doom with your friends often... what exactly is there to discuss? If the rocket launcher better than the chaingun, can you play through the game without using any other weapon than the shootgun? who is the meanest enemy?...for example. And how the D3 monsters compare to those of the original Doom... where the plot lines of the novels and the games separate... if the SNES version was any good, and if people enjoyed the N64 version end boss or not... which Doom emulator is the best, and why... which game was better, Doom or Duke3D... if the secret place in Hexen's first level is reachable in SP or MP only... why Redneck Rampage Rides Again failed... about the C&C FMVs... which Street Fighter alpha character was the best (we're not just FPS geeks), and so on. I could also talk about Ken's Labyrinth for hours, but I'm probably the only person in the world who ever played it, with the exception of Ken Silverman ;).

[elkston]

This reminds me of a post I made a while back in the Gothic 3 forum (of this site). I pretty much came to the conclusion that the best companies right now who could make a complete, robust, CRPG are ID or Valve. They are pretty much the only people who have the funds and resources to write their own ticket and take as long as they want to perfect things.

I was so hoping that Gothic 3 would deliver, but it failed to meet its promise mostly because it seriously needed another year of development.

What we need is to beg Oprah to fund a huge, massive CRPG game. State of the art graphics, 1st or 3rd person mode, full spoken dialogue, lots of freedom, no load-zone 3d World ....

[curious]

no thanks! i don't shop at candy stores or gun stores. i prefer book stores and music stores. so my gaming choices parallel that. the only large american game company i have any faith in is irrational, though obsidian is proving their worth.

[Jaz]

(I shop at clothes stores. A lot. And one of my favorite CRPGs was Daggerfall.. a coincidence?)

[GothicGothicness]

Dark Forces. The game was not good-looking by any standards, not even then. It did have a powerful franchise behind it, of course.
Good example, this game was great, I agree! However this was a long time ago..... at those days you could slip by without the top notch graphics. Rainbow 6... 98 if I am not mistaken another old one. The new rainbow six's really has top notch graphics... they were even nominated for best graphics of the year.

Strife struck me as a truly decent FPS with good NPCs and plot twists.
Played it and enjoyed it a bit... but it is also a bit like an RPG/FPS hybrid like System shock and Deus Ex etc, it is also another old game.

...for example. And how the D3 monsters compare to those of the original Doom... where the plot lines of the novels and the games separate... if the SNES version was any good, and if people enjoyed the N64 version end boss or not... which Doom emulator is the best, and why... which game was better, Doom or Duke3D... if the secret place in Hexen's first level is reachable in SP or MP only... why Redneck Rampage Rides Again failed...

Okay, on this point I give up :D I bet you could discuss Barbie's big adventure forever too....... I guess we have different requirements for a memorable game!

[chamr]

What we need is to beg Oprah to fund a huge, massive CRPG game. State of the art graphics, 1st or 3rd person mode, full spoken dialogue, lots of freedom, no load-zone 3d World ....

No, no, no! This is the road to cRPG doom! With all due respect, elk, this is exactly the problem I was trying to get at in post #20 in this thread. Every one of the aspects you ask for above, with the exception of the subjective "lots of freedom", is a dead end. IMO, it's pretty much all publishers and developers have been devoting the lion's share of their creative resources towards for much too long rather than real innovation. Sigh...

Not to mention the horror of Oprah as your only choice of avatar. You know if she were putting up the money, her ego would demand it...

;)

[abbaon]

I had an idea the other day. It was Will Wright's, but I'm claiming credit for the application.

Widely accepted as fact:

The games industry is locked in a graphics arms race. You can sell big numbers if you've got the best graphics, but each new advance in visual fidelity raises the consumer's expectations. Games need more and higher quality content every year. As this pushes the price of development up, as the price of failure continues to rise, publishers grow more conservative. They won't try unproven concepts and won't endorse decisions which could restrict a game's appeal. The former doesn't bother RPG fans - the RPG achieved perfection in 1997 - but they don't care for the latter at all.

A reasonable but unsubstantiated prediction:

I expect diminishing returns to impose soft ceilings on the price of game development. For a given artistic style, developers will reach a point beyond which more detail and special effects will no longer pay for themselves, as they won't make enough of an impact to sell enough additional copies. (A soft ceiling, because other forces like the skill base of a company would still drive graphical development.) The folks chasing photorealism, and realistic human expression in particular, have a long road ahead of them, but I believe that some of the simple and cartoony styles could finish up in this generation. Playing the new Sam & Max from Telltale, a 2D game in 3D, I found myself thinking that a few more polys on those curved surfaces would make it look as good as I could want it to. In general, I think we have lower expectations, or fewer expectations of games which don't try to mimic reality.

I love you, Will!:

At GDC05, Will Wright revealed (http://www.pqhp.com/cmp/gdctv/) his solution to the content problem, that players would create it for him. His team of rockstar programmers made this possible by constructing editors which automate away over 99% of the work in modeling and animating a character. The user snaps together body parts, molds them with simple controls, and picks colors and textures for the final product. Procedural animation brings it to life. The programmers sacrificed the flexibility of a modeling package for extreme ease of use.

Wholly baseless speculation:

I believe that untold thousands of artists would make the same trade, flexibility for convenience, right now. Games which would never compete on their graphics could use modularly modeled and procedurally animated characters as a basis for further customisation. The limitations of such a toolset would suit it to simple, cartoonish styles, but as the technology matured, when developers could buy royalty-free licenses for parts and animation routines as easily as ad companies buy Poser models, the variety of uses could expand until only the reality fetishists could afford to do it the old-fashioned way. And it would have terrific benefits for the productivity of a small team. I've followed the FPS modding scene from the beginning, and for years modeler/animators have been THE limiting resource. When models make themselves, all things become possible. Even real RPGs.

It just seems so obvious to me. I mean, how many games have hunched-over green humanoids with tusks and pointy ears? Which the artists built one polygon at a time? And animated frame-by-frame? Stupid. Waste is stupid.

What do you think? What have I missed?

[Edit: One obvious objection is that I only talked about character generation, since modeler/animators are just nowhere, but there's an equivalent (and similarly hypothetical) procedural genesis tool for any other organic element of a game. The entire natural world was created procedurally, after all.]

[KasperFauerby]

I totally agree that this industry needs to start putting a lot of focus on doing great tools - and this is already the case in many game studios. The time when "brute force" could get you through the art creation phase is over, and the companies with great tools will be the companies that survive and makes the greatest profits. You can no longer solve the problem: "our art pipeline SUCKS" by applying the old response: "well, just hire a few more artists/slaves".

But I have a problem with a line in your post:
When models make themselves, all things become possible. Even real RPGs.

Sorry, it's just not that easy! Models and other types of content will *never* just make itself. Even with the greatest modular systems and the smoothest art pipelines it will never become "trivial" to create the amount of content that players already expects in their games! It is *hard* to use procedurally produced content. Right now some game studios are trying to use procedurally generated animation, and it is hard to get right. It can look cool, but I think they end up spending almost as much time tweaking the parameters of the tool as they would have if they had done the animations by hand.

On the code side more and more packages of third party tools also becomes available. We have packages for helping us do graphics, physics, ai, flash-movies, sound, lip-sync etc etc... all designed to make the lives of programmers easier. The problem is just that when you start adding many (or even just a few) of these packages together in the soup that is your game engine, then problems starts to arise when the different third party tools has to work together. Or you loose the ability to customize and therefore cannot do the stuff you want in your game. Again, much time is spent making all this work - and perhaps you end up having to do your own version anyway!

In closing: making a game is not a trivial thing - and it will never be as easy as clicking a few buttons. Those that thinks so has obviously never tried it themselves :) But the process can of course be improved and the industry can indeed learn to be better at using new tools and techniques to optimize the cost of doing a game.

It is unfortunate for us RPG-lovers that CRPGs are the most complex type of game to create of them all. And a logical conclusion to this is that they are also typically very expensive to develop - at least if they has to appear on par with the other genres production wise..

[abbaon]

Thank you for replying to that line of my post. Just to clarify for anyone else who's reading, I was talking about a generative system which designers could use to create and animate relatively simple models as a baseline for budget and indie titles, with the possibility of scaling up to more uses as the userbase expands. Obviously that one piece of technology, while of some value at the lower end of the market, would be a small part of game development and would not trivialize the process. I'd never suggest it.

Edit: I don't want to understate the impact that simpler modeling and animation could have on amateur work. Anyone who's ever worked on a TC for a modern engine will know what I mean.

[chamr]

Definitely a reasonable hope for the industry. Don't know if a world-class suite of modeling and animation tools with a library of assets would ever be cheap enough liscense-wise to really fling the doors open for all level of players to get into the act, but I think it's reasonable to expect that there will continue to be improvement to cheap tool sets to the point that in a few years the Jeff Vogels of the world can make an RPG graphically on par with Gothic 2, for instance, while focusing the lion's share of their energy on the gameplay on story.

[abbaon]

Well, for Spiderweb, almost anything would improve on its current arrangement, no matter how simple or inflexible. Jeff has to recycle a bunch of art from one project to another because he can't even get 60-pixel-high sprites at a reasonable price. It imposes that high a barrier to entry.

[GothicGothicness]

I don't see generic content as a solution all RPG's that has them has been pretty boring... "all dungeons look the same" Oblivion anyone?

The beauty of a game is given by the genius of the artists..... I see this more like a danger to the indsutry as generating graphics and art is probably thousands of times cheaper than making it all. However if it means they could afford to make some new decent games..... maybe it could be acceptable to a degree.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

and just sit back and watch the story go by from the comfy armchair provided by the "go-here-and-do-it-exactly-this-way-the-monster-will-be-just-waiting-around-to-die-so-don't-worry-about-it-you-can't-possibly-fail-in-any-way" quest design.

Reminds me of This one. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=872)

[Alrik Fassbauer]

but each new advance in visual fidelity raises the consumer's expectations.

One theotry of mine suggests that this is exactrly the reason why not-so-good-looking games don't receive good reviews in gaming magazines :

Editors are used to the best hardware one can get - for their work. In my theory, they just become oversaturated, like someone living in luxury his or her whole life.

So, games that aren't meeting their high demand, won't get any good reviews anymore. Especially when they are not good looking.

That's my theory.

I was playing "Siege of Avalong" a few months ago, and despite this game was looking relatively "simple", I was astonished by the high amount of fun I had while playing it !

The worst problem ist, that games are measured against their "visual fidelitity" (as I would pronounce it ;) ) , and NOT against the "fun factor" !


For a given artistic style, developers will reach a point beyond which more detail and special effects will no longer pay for themselves, as they won't make enough of an impact to sell enough additional copies.

I expect this, too.

At one point, a point will be reached when graphics cannot be made "better" anymore, so they'll naturally have to stick rather at story etc. again to make a game sell.

[abbaon]

I don't see generic content as a solution all RPG's that has them has been pretty boring... "all dungeons look the same" Oblivion anyone?
Now that's a fair criticism. The usefulness of the product I envision, a Spore-like editor which generates Maya models and anims, would depend on the variety of parts and animation routines available. The fewer an artist had to work with, the less likely he could get an approximation of what he needed from it. But the fewer artists using it, the smaller the market for parts. In its early days, everything created with it would tend to look the same (i.e. boring), and it would be a difficult project to get off the ground.

[Sorcha Ravenlock]

I don't see generic content as a solution all RPG's that has them has been pretty boring... "all dungeons look the same" Oblivion anyone?

The beauty of a game is given by the genius of the artists..... I see this more like a danger to the indsutry as generating graphics and art is probably thousands of times cheaper than making it all. However if it means they could afford to make some new decent games..... maybe it could be acceptable to a degree.

I think abbaon is more referring to a program similar to speedtree, but then for models and animations. Things like Speedtree, Facegen and Havoc have made life easier for developers because they don't have to reinvent the wheel, they can use an exsisting application to create certain content, allowing them to focus on other areas.

If there was a creature/people generator complete with animations, then that would cut out a lot of work for a developer, all they have to do is either order the creatures made to their art style, or use the generator to create models suitable for their game, depending how the application works.

Yes, you would have more generic models, but then again, most people look similar anyway (2 arms, to legs, 1 nose, same proportions) and most fantasy creatures do as well (goblins being small and greeinsh for example).
This would allow a developer to concentrate on more important things, like soryline and dialog.

I honestly do not think it would be a bad idea, however, these sort of programs (speedtree, Havoc, and so on) are quite often very expensive and only affordable for big companies.

There are products like that out there, like creature creator:
http://www.fxrealm.com/products/creaturecreator/maxdesc.htm

However, most of these don't do animations, since animations would most likely also depend on which engine you use...

[abbaon]

However, most of these don't do animations, since animations would most likely also depend on which engine you use...
Yeah. Canned animations don't go too far these days. To help anyone working on a halfway decent engine, you'd need to but really couldn't support engine features like segmented models or IK. Ragdolling, too, now that I think of it, would require you to rig the thing by hand. Nuts.

[GothicGothicness]

soryline and dialog.


That is a very good name for many of the stories in todays games, sorryline hehe good one :)

Facegen

It still amazes me how ugly most faces are in oblivion..... I hope this will not become a trend.

[Sorcha Ravenlock]

That is a very good name for many of the stories in todays games, sorryline hehe good one :)


hehe, that's what happens when I post under the influence of medication :p

[magerette]

Very illuminating discussion. I'll never be able to rant about money-grubbing game development again. ;)
Thank you all for educating me on the extremely complex tools that are out there, and the levels of expertise needed to produce a game. I really honestly had no idea--my picture of game development is a like a garage band compared to reality!:)