Fallout 4 How many people is needed for openworld?

joxer

joxer

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Not only Fallout 4, but what do you think how many people are needed to make an openworld game that's considered a success.
First please take a guess, then open and read.

Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was the third best-selling game in the United States in 2011, topped only by Call of Duty and Just Dance. For so monumentally successful a developer, Bethesda has grown incredibly slowly. The 2002 release Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind featured a team of about 40 people. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the company’s first Xbox 360 game, saw a big leap to about 70. But then, after its biggest mainstream success, Bethesda added only about 10 more heads for Fallout 3. Skyrim was another “big” jump, to just 100 people. For the leap to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Bethesda told GameSpot that it only added 8 more people.

Compare this to the 450 people who worked on Assassin’s Creed 2, and the 900 who worked on Assassin’s Creed IV a few years later. Or perhaps the 1,000 people who worked on Grand Theft Auto V.

From: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/fallout-4-bugs/
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It blew my brains out. Especially the numbers behind the 2 year old overrated driving simulator.

The rest of the article I quoted… Is IMO horrible so take this as a friendly warning if you'll read it all. :D
 
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I think some of those numbers are inflated.

The GTAV number would mean that the game cost over 300 millions to make just in salaries, but analysts says it cost around 137 millions (or 267 millions if we add marketing).

Also, I remember a video where Todd Howard mention that Morrowind had only 8 people until the team grew to ~35 in the final year of production… It take a while to ramp up a dev team, took 2.5 years for Star Citizen to go from 10 to over 200 people for example.
 
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My guess was: 1. Well, about 5 if you count in people who helped partially.
Don't forget that Avernum is an open world game as well. :D

Nothing really new though regarding the high numbers. But it's not just because it's open world. It's mainly because it's AAA. And it's not like 10 people do 10 times the work of one person. At a certain size you need to add one additional guy who manages the work of the other 10 people. And then at some point you need people managing those. And then you end up with a HR department, tons of management positions, analysts and so on. Oh, and then there is customer support.

I mean look at King, makers of Candy Crush. They got 1400 employees.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 isn't exactly an open world game either. 500 people worked on that one.
 
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Let's see when that one releases though. As he ran out of money it will take a while as he is doing some side projects to finance it. But yeah, it's already impressive from what I have seen. Didn't play yet due to old pc+performance problems+Early Access ^^
 
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It doesn't surprise me, the majority of people are used for content, like ( mostly ) graphics and other such a things. Most Bethesda games have mostly auto-generated content and simple / outdated graphics, so they don't need so many people.
 
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JDR13 said:
Frontiers is made almost entirely by a single person. :)

It's no Elder Scrolls, but that's still impressive.
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"Is made" is the wrong tense. "Is being made" would be better. That particular project is running into some serious snags, so might not be the best example here. Just have a look at this last update.
Basically, he won't be able to fully complete his original vision for the game, so he's cutting features left and right. There's no saying what he will deliver.
 
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You can have as many people as you'd like working on something, doesn't matter if nobody has the brains and guts to make it good ;)
 
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wiretripped said:
"Is made" is the wrong tense. "Is being made" would be better. That particular project is running into some serious snags, so might not be the best example here. Just have a look at this last update.
Basically, he won't be able to fully complete his original vision for the game, so he's cutting features left and right. There's no saying what he will deliver.
Click to expand...

You have a better example? ;)

Serious though, he did accomplish a lot for one guy. I thought it was obvious from the beginning that he was probably biting off more than he could chew.
 
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