Game Development Cost

Yes, I have similar experiences with running projects without any real interaction from non developers (read managers), and usually it works out well. It depends largely on the team of developers though, how well they know each other and if they are all share a similar view, but it could work really well.

So that brings us back to my first question: Do you really need 50 milion to make a game and pay a 100 managers and all kinds of similar people? Do you really need 50 milion because your tools are so unoptimized that it takes a month to do even the simplest task?

Seriously, games cost too much. The whole process of creating a game is still too unoptimized and a lot of manhours go lost in a project by constantly redesigning and redoing things, thats the reason why a lot of games take so long and therefore cost so much, not because they were so terrible complex to create.

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The whole process of creating a game is still too unoptimized and a lot of manhours go lost in a project by constantly redesigning and redoing things, thats the reason why a lot of games take so long and therefore cost so much, not because they were so terrible complex to create.

Bingo!

Games are prone to prototyping and early testing, spending many time in features that end user may not see. It can be optimized but not avoided at all, at least if the game is minimally interesting I think Valve did like 1000 levels for HL2 and only a minor part of those went into retail.

Not really, leaked hl2 maps were most likely their sketches and e3-only content. Remember that they had to build technology and wide interesting game from the ground up, its not your typical fps game.

Well, maybe because it's like.no.other

Quote from Hourences

Seriously, games cost too much. The whole process of creating a game is still too unoptimized and a lot of manhours go lost in a project by constantly redesigning and redoing things, thats the reason why a lot of games take so long and therefore cost so much, not because they were so terrible complex to create.

Quote of the year. Amen

But well if you'd make a whole game in one run it would end up being shitty, you need to design, test and redesign if needed.

No. Wait until youre in this industry for a few years. There is a difference between carefully thinking things over and redesigning parts, and redesigning half the game every year because you did a horrible job at it the first time.

If there would be more communication so every department gets what it wants right from the start, with more experienced developers who think ahead A LOT, the unneccy redoing thing can be reduced a lot.

Redoing half a game IS NOT a symbol of quality. It means you did an awfull job the first time around, thats the opposite!

I guess the truth is somewhere in between, no matter how much you think ahead and how experienced you are, there can always something unexpected happen, something going wrong or nut turning out to be quite as you had hoped it would be.

Especially when you try to do new things, nobody has been done before - how can you know if it will work?

I guess the key is to waste as little ressources as possible on unsafe things and prototype everything in small teams, before the whole team is doing something, that gets scrapped later on. You can save a lot of cash when you do things right during pre-production and test your ideas, before you give orders.

It's also a matter of how well your project manager(s) handle(s) the ideas and decision process, while keeping an eye on the schedule and available ressources. On the other hand, some really good ideas pop up, when the project is in full production - so each time it's a struggle to decide whether the feature is worth implementing, or has to be cut. It's frustrating when it's your idea and you know the game would be better if it was realized, but if this process wasn't controlled, everybody would be tinkering on his pet project and the release date gets pushed out even further.

Companies handle this differently, depending on their ethic and liquidity - Valve can afford to spend 6 years on a game to "get it right" (according to their vision and high quality bar), while other companies have to play on the safe side and get their game out the door on time.

Basically, there’s a difference between an iterative process and a balls up.

Valve described their creative process, the cabal, in an article on gamasutra (I think) a while back, it sounds like a really awesome way to work and probably gets the best results out of the team. If you’re Valve. Otherwise it sounds like a really awesome way to bankrupt your company.

I doubt that development without managers and/or Producers would work for the most companies. Seriously do you think artists in a 100+ people company should be bothered with stuff like dealing with publishers, management, PR etc.?

And lets be honest here: valve pretty much fucked up somewhere during the development of HL 2. No game on earth needs 6 years development time if the ressources and goals are managed properly. They must have lost shitloads of money.

Not so much fucked up, more like never happy with their product I think it was?

Quote from dux

Not so much fucked up, more like never happy with their product I think it was?

I would count that under fucked up. Something must have been wrong with the vision for the final product then if that was the case.

I read that they just weren't happy with how it was so remade pretty much 90% of it.

Half Life success was enormous, they wanted to push so much in every direction that it wasn't about making a game anymore, but a worth successor to the most successful first person shooter ever. I guess something similar happened with DNF.

I remember reading something about how they had the physic gun for the last levels, and after some testing in the middle of the development process they decided it had to be a basic weapon from the beginning. Things like that settles the line between industrial and artistic/creative game development process. I'm really glad there exist people with that mentality.

Im not. They should have figured out that you need to introduce such a cool game early on in the game BEFORE they started production!

It is called planning and thinking ahead.

This is exactly why this industry burns so much money.

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I read that they just weren't happy with how it was so remade pretty much 90% of it.

And that is exactly what Steppenwolf said. Fucked up. Their initial vision of the game must have been wrong if they had redo 90 percent of it.

So do we have a word or term for 3d Realms and DNF?

Yes. Very fucked up.