| saicho said: since so many of you joined the discussion, let me ask my question again... How does third party ensure coming up with a high quality game? Also, how do you define AAA games? |
If you're talking about a "High Quality" game as in a game that is fun to play and has enough content to keep people interested I think I have something to say on that ...
If you did a comparison between studios that had a track record of producing good games and a studio that had a track record of producing mediocre games there are a few things that you would probably notice that was causing the quality difference. The thing that would (probably) surprise most people is that the higher quality studio didn’t really have more intelligent, creative or talented developers than the lower quality studio; and one of the primary reasons why games where lower quality was that the developers at the mediocre studio were always in a rush and could spend no time doing anything to their potential.
Now, there are a few reasons why the developers at the mediocre studio were always rushed ... In many cases it would be that the project was not well thought out ahead of time and developers were forced to do too much rework, the team fell far behind and were going over budget, and the company's hard deadline and strict budget left little room for movement. In other cases a game is simply not expected to sell all that well and the budget is set at a level where there really is no money to do things well.
A company like Nintendo can reliably produce a "AAA" Zelda or Mario game because the structure of the game is fairly well known, they have prototyped and tested most of the gameplay mechanics long before it hits a full production stage, management is competent and can handle the scope of these projects, the team is experienced, and the budget and development time is flexable enough to allow for everyone to do their best work.
