Hi all,
One of the interesting things that people talk about concerning video games, this gen, is the rampant price increase of HD-based games for the X360 and Playstation 3. Some aruge that costs have increased from $5 million dollars for a 'typical' Playstation 2 game, up to $10-20 million for a PS3/X360 game. Because of that, we argue a lot about how HD is hurting the industry due to an 'arms race'.
A major fallacy of HD gaming is that it always costs more to make a game for the X360/PS3. The fact is, it does not. It's a developer's choice to spend as much, or as little money on a game. Take the Shenmue series - it cost around $70 million to develop, with approximately $29.5 million USD for the first game (or 3 billion yen, at the time). Given inflation, that was a massive chunk of cash in the mid-90s for a game.
So why are budgets so high? HD games *can* cost more, because more *can* go in them. An 8-bit game was much cheaper because you didn't have to pay as many developers/animators to produce a good game. Studios have to spend hundreds of developer-hours to make a game. And with each developer costing around $100,000 a year to support...You can do the math and understand why it costs a lot of money to make a game like MGS4, or Killzone 2.
At any rate; I've always been a big proponent of middleware engines as a reasonable solution to the rising costs of development. When you work with a new system, you have to learn to utilize it's power in such a way that the engine can work with it....Which can be not only tricky, but expensive. In-house engines may be very flexible, but they're not always guarenteed to give good results (think Two Worlds on 360), and do take tons of time to build (Killzone 2, anyone?)
So then there's the most popular one out there - Unreal Engine 3, which was used on games such as Gears of War, Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, Rainbow Six Vegas, The Last Remnant, and a littany of 3-4 dozen other games.
Why use it? It's a pretty good engine, as it was used in Gears of War 2 which won quite a few positive nods from critics, and game reviewers as well. Gears (visually) looks on-par with the best games of today. So what's the advantage? Gears 2 cost a fraction of comparible high-end games such as Metal Gear Solid ($50 million), weighing in at under $20 million to complete (it sold more than MGS4 did on it's opening week, BTW).
Unfortunately, despite the fact that Gears of War has had great success with using Unreal Engine 3 (the first Gears cost $10 million to develop - which is pretty small given some other games' budgets) is that few companies have seen the kind of technical success with the UE3 engine. Mass Effect had plenty of frame & technical issues, The Last Remnant has been butchered by reviewers for loading/tech issues, Lost Odyssey was good, but had more problems than Blue Dragon (which had an in-house engine) and so on.
But the thing I've come to realize about Unreal Engine 3 is....
One of the biggest arguments that non-Gears fans would lobby at it is that Gears' budget had the fortunate advantage of being developed by the engine maker, Epic....Which led to reduced costs, and increased familiarity with the engine. Even Halo 3 wound up with a budget 3 times the size of Gears of War 1 (approximately $30 million USD).
So guess what the tie that binds every technical-suckfest UE3 developed game, that Gears 1 & 2 never have had? Only 2 developers have made more than 1 game using Unreal Engine 3. Of the 50+ games that use UE3, only Epic and Ubisoft Montreal have used the engine more than once.
And lets look at the list of what they made with UE3:
- Gears of War 1
- Gears of War 2
- Rainbow Six Vegas 1
- Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Guess what else? The lowest score for any of the 4 games is still above 85% (RSV2) and had very few, if any, technical issues.
I find this very interesting. Maybe it's just me, but could it be that studios aren't giving UE3 enough time to work with - instead churning out 1 product and assuming that since it's visually OK, that it means UE3 sucks? I think that could be a very interesting argument to lobby against a lot of the UE3 developers. Just like consoles, the more time you work on them, the better you get at making a game better for the said console - Even Gears 1 & 2 had major differences in visual quality, because Epic learned to utilize what the X360 had available. So why can't we assume the same for game engines 2?
I think the major test of this theory (that the more a developer uses UE3, the more awesome the games get) is going to be when Mass Effect 2 releases, hopefully in 2009. It will only be the 3rd franchise to have it's series driven by UE3. If my theory holds true (and it looks like it is, since ME2's development time is much shorter than ME1's), then Mass Effect 2 will have major visual upgrades - not only eye candy, but in the stability department.
Going forward, I hope developers realize that engines such as Source, Torque, UE3, Crystal Tools, and others' should become staples of how they make games, and not just one-off projects. Oblivion/Fallout 3 follow the same logical line - as Fallout 3 used a modified Oblivion engine. And guess what? The development time for FO3 was only a fraction of Morrowind or Oblivion. That meant less cost for Bethsada, and a better experience than if they used a different engine.
Thoughs? Comments? I thought it was a good arugment to make for UE3.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
