SonytendoAmiibo said: Lawlight said: No, all I'm seeing is the Chief Creative Officer of EA saying that based on what he thought he heard - that there was 125 game developers before and now there's 25 of them. That's makes no sense because we know 100 studios didn't get closed down during the PS3/360 era. Here is a very comprehensive list of bankrupt developers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_video_game_companies I will add this to the OP.

And here's the list of all video game developers ever - as you see, it's nowhere near 80%:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_developers

 

Lawlight said: SonytendoAmiibo said: Here is a very comprehensive list of bankrupt developers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_video_game_companies I will add this to the OP. And here's the list of all video game developers ever - as you see, it's nowhere near 80%: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_developers

Don't forget that it isn't even "80% of all game developers that ever existed closed up to 2016) it's more like from all the developers that existed on begin of gen 7, 80% closed doors... unless there were a lot of no-name devs at the time I can't say that more than 20% of the know developers closed forever in the gen. As you pointed out, they disolve and regroup.

Wow, still not locked? Just a bunch of baseless assumptions. You may as well assume that people are eating game developers because the shrinking number of game devs correlates with the rising number of fed people.

Also I'm pretty sure we currently have 10 fold more developers than we had in 1990.

DonFerrari said: Ljink96 said: Agreed. I guess 3D 'techniques' wasn't the best way to word it. They do improve speed but HD development in general is still rather costly, if you're going for a realistic look. I guess realism was the concept that I am wanting to avoid in game development.  I actually wasn't expecting people to catch on to photogrammetry here but I'm glad you know your stuff. I am aware that it isn't the be all end all for 3D realists but it is doing a lot of work that would take a single guy a week to do, withing a couple of days from start to finish. Cleanup, etc needs to be done of course but it's still some damn good tech. FFXV Kingsglaive used it a lot and though cleanup is extensive, it's amazing what it can do at such an early stage. Programmers, like you said also need to be able to code for animation techniques, etc, which is also starting to look appealing as 3D modelers lose their worth. Unless you focus on toon graphics or highly stylized graphics. But I digress. PC is of course something I will also focus on as Steam is pretty huge. Making games with minimum input, with great quality, and getting a return of some sort is the plan for me.  Man, avoid to be "ludist" with the fear of machines and automation taking out human jobs... that only means jobs will evolve. Most of the jobs you have today weren't possible at the start of industrial revolution (when the ludist born when the machines came), actually several of them didn't exist a decade ago. There will always be a place for good professionals, and if everything becames very easy the most that can happen is that any dev can be a one man dev company and do his game solo and sell.

Greed is greater than the need to make more jobs. If a company can spend as little as possible and make as much as possible, they will. That's what's really is destroying America as we speak. I know it's optimistic to think that new jobs will come of machines taking over jobs that others used to do, but often times that never happens. The retort is usually, "well the machines will create jobs for those who repair the machines" when reparing in this case is increasing RAM, GPU and software updates. So I guess there would be more jobs for software engineers but not for 3D modelers or not as many 3D modelers. Programmers, animators, those guys are still in high demand and those jobs are still there. I'm referring mostly to 3D artists who want to focus on realism. 

But as you said, it all comes down to the fact that there is always room for well seasoned professionals. I don't consider myself a Luddite necessarily, I just tend to be hard on myself so that I might be good enough to get into the market and know what the hell I'm doing. I'm seriously also considering going indie. I can do 3D art, I can do simple programming and there's helpful programs like unity and unreal that streamlines simple node based programming so that's the road I'm thinking of taking. Becoming a simple 1 man team or a team of no less than 5. Again, I'm just re evaluating my options as bigger companies are biting the bullet on costly HD development. 

better graphics don't destroy good devs, they only act as a catalyst for destroying bad devs. Without better graphics each gen, we'd see a lot of low budget shovel ware. These are the kinds of games and devs that we're destined to be doomed and the increased cost of making games speeds up the reaction.

Meanwhile, the truly good games (such as undertale, Pokémon, shovel knight) continue to do well despite low quality graphics when compared to Call of duty or driveclub.

Personally I'd rather have fewer games that are actually made well, than have a sea of low budget, low quality cash grabs.

Finally, to actually stimulate developer growth, it's better not to lower our standards of gaming, but to raise the standards of development tools. In other words, make it easier for devs to make games by giving them better tools. Better hardware is usually a great way to approach this and that's why having an underpowered console really hurts.

The 7th generation wiped out many, many mid-level developers. If you were to look at the industry 20 years ago, it was made up of mostly moderately wealthy companies and a few multibillion dollar companies. Most startup companies mostly had the intentions of becoming like Midway or Acclaim in a few short years rather than simply being an indie company. These days, you either have big publishing companies or indie developers. Most of the mid-level developers have closed their doors and most of the ones who remain are beholden to large publishers because they lack the finances to publish their own games.

What really happened is sort of nobody's fault and everyone's fault. The industry was not prepared for the HD era. Publishers years ago could afford to make a few mistakes before they stuck gold. When the 7th generation came along, one big mistake could put a company with a 20 year history out of business. Companies like EA, Activision, or Nintendo could survive one big bomb. However, companies like Midway or THQ could not.

It sucks for the consumers because it gives us less choice. For example, almost 15 years ago, You had popular games like GTA, but then you had a bunch of GTA clones. Metal Gear Solid was popular and that spawned a bunch of stealth action games. Most of these clones weren't as good as the original game, but at least consumers could decide what is best and other ideas could thrive. In today's environment, you either have GTA and not much else or Metal Gear Solid and not much else and many publishers would need a lot of convincing to green light anything that might be remotely risky.

Well, what I'd argue is that its not necessarily HD development and graphics that killed a lot of the studios but the coding necessary to support all the different architectures we had last gen.

PC - x86
360 - PowerPC
Ps3 - Cell
wii - 2 Gamecubs with motion controls

If a developer was making a game that even supported 3 out of the 4 platforms, they had to know how to code for fairly different architectures. Its not a simple, save as boobs.ps3 or ass.360, it was a lot harder. I think the learning curve, specially for the ps3 development was quite a big one which ultimately resulted in games taking longer to produce while not being as great as they should have been.

Vs this gen:

PC - x86
X1 - x86
Ps4 - x86
WiiU - PowerPC

Now of course, you have stuff like OpenGL/Direct X and Operating systems and etc that are still different but compared to the last gen, if a dev wants to make a game for even 3 of the platforms, it should be vastly simpler. Now I am not saying HD didn't have any affect, I am saying that it was the architectures along with new graphics technologies that really put the strain on devs which ultimatly lead to publishers closing down studios.

Sounds like Crytek closed down studios because it invested too much into VR which isn't making money because of a small user base.  Seems kind of obvious. They're going to re-focus on premium games they're known for.

Doesn't sound like it's the graphics race that put them out of business, at least not in this case.

Lawlight said: SonytendoAmiibo said: Here is a very comprehensive list of bankrupt developers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_video_game_companies I will add this to the OP. And here's the list of all video game developers ever - as you see, it's nowhere near 80%: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_developers

 

The link you posted is all developers. We are talking about AAA big developers. The first link in the OP is info from a knowledgeable EA executive. He knows way more about it than the average person does. If you have a problem with the 80% number feel free to contact him. I am just the messenger and thought this news was worth discussion. I have provided the link to that info only. Have a nice day.

Don't worry, as A.I. improves we should see the rise of A.I. artists.
A.I. artists will in time lower the demand for "real" artists and therefore reduce development costs.

We can only hope.