Warning Signs. What would it take for you to know?

Yeah I guess it'll differ from studio to studio Tom, but I'd have thought that for D3 to go after a job these days (or in a few years as he seems to be implying) he's going to need as much ability in the whole area as possible.

I mean I'm not a fortune teller so I dunno what things'll be like in five years or whatever, but I'm guessing that studios will at least want some rudimentary skills in each art area just so they can interact with others in their department better. It might not be a job requirement, but if other workplaces are anything to go by then they'll go for those guys who can first. I imagine the games industry will get busier and more demand on people to get their foot in too.

Meh the way things are going I might even change my mind about the industry, I mean it takes so much longer to make a game than it did 5 years ago now. Hell, these days more than one person is responsible for a single level, God knows how many people It'll take to make a game another 5 years from now... 100? 160??

I really don't have any interest in modelling at all, it looks so complicated and I have no idea how on Earth you make a square into something as detailed as the stuff you see in next-gen engines. I'm a level designer really who dabbles in making textures and skins as well, I should be leaving the modelling to those that know their stuff.

Quote from D3ads

God knows how many people It'll take to make a game another 5 years from now... 100? 160??

That's already happening. FYI Splinter Cell 3 had about 300-400 people working on all the platforms. My project right now (RbSix: Vegas) is at about 170

Dear God

The days of a small studio of jack-of-all-trades style workers, is pretty much over.

To follow up on what TWTW was talking about, I read an interview with some of the level designers from Turtle Rock about the design process for CS:S, and they all said they had little to no modeling or texturing input on their levels. They simple requested certain resources while the art team worked to feel the overall "feel" the same across textures, skins, and models.

While it's nice to have those skills, they're not really needed to put good quality out. A lot of people still subscribe to the "cult of the new" where they expect every single project to be 100% new content, but all that really does is set the bar unreasonably high and kill off a lot of projects that were fine to begin with.

I hope to god I never have to work in an environment that big. :-\

I don't see how that can stay profitable, either. I mean, if you've got everyone working at $30k per year out of those 400, that's an instant $12 million budget for a 1-year title. That's probably a low-end estimate when you start figuring in varying experience levels, leads, producers (all of whom you have to have a shitload of to manage that many people). Not counting any technology licensing (if applicable), marketing, distribution, shelf space, platform fees, etc. etc. And hell, wasn't SC3 technically a 2 year project with another team filling in Pandora Tomorrow in the middle? So you could double that low estimate in that case. Isn't there a point where fewer people for a little more time actually costs less and leaves you more likely to ship a product that'll let you make the next one?

Hell, id managed Doom3 pretty well with a 25-30 man team. Sure the game wasn't that great (well, ok, a chore in punishment at best), but that could have been remedied with a few simple decisions; their content was fantastic. They probably won't have much more than that on their next project. My understanding is Gears of War hasn't topped 45 people, with a core team of ~25. Isn't Epic at something like 75 people right now, split between Gears and 2K7? Lot of those guys are core engine team, too. Valve is probably a little bigger than the ~90 of yore, but splits across multiple projects and after the initial investment into HL2 is turning out content and profits like mad.

I still don't believe that the days of jack-of-all trades is over, either. Unreal's current pipeline lets anyone do just about anything. D3 may be crude, but id has done a great job of leaving ridiculous amounts of the game exposed either in script or def files to anyone who takes a little time to learn it. Gameplay prototyping in either engine can be done so quickly between speedy roughed out layouts (either by just going to town with subtraction volumes in unreal or just playing to radiant's strength of ridiculously speedy geometry building) that you could easily have functional levels built before a single asset is even started. Why not split some of that time afterward building what you need if you can? Top artists shouldn't be wasting their time on building structural detail that doesn't need top artist talent. A designer with intermediate modeling ability could easily piece together girders, chimneys, sidewalks, roads, etc. that meet their exact specifications while the core art team moves forward with characters, weapons, key set pieces, etc. The more that can run parallel, the faster you can get your game done - and the fewer people it takes to run things parallel, the less it's going to cost.

Big budget movies are being axed right now because even a successful one can't even be guaranteed to make its money back anymore. For as much as people in games like to emulate that field, that's probably not a good omen of things to come. There's got to be hope for a games industry built around smaller teams and cheaper games.

How dare you, I am not crude