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twesterm on 01 November 2011
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zarx said:
twesterm said:
zarx said:


First Naughty Dog use the same business model as Valve, use an outside source of income to support game development until it's perfect.

 


Absolutely wrong there.

Naughty Dog gets paid to work from their publisher, Sony.  They have a set budget that can only be increased by Sony so they have to work within that budget or ask Sony for more money.  If there's any money used not from Sony, it's likely only from their own reserve.  This is the model almost every studio out there uses because making a game costs A LOT of money.  The publishers eat the risk, but it's less money for the developer.  Because the publisher is the one footing the bill, you cannot iterate until it's perfect unless the publisher says so.

Valve on the other hand publishes their own games because they get their money from their past games, Steams, and licensing.  Since it's their money, they can take as long as they please.  They get all the money in this case but assume all the risk and they have to have the revenue.  Not many developers for major games can even come close to this (not even an amazing developer like Naughty Dog).

From everything I have read they are a show peice developer they get as much money as they need to perfect their games, just like Team Ico the only difference is that they are very good at keeping a schedual. They work on one project until it's perfect and do it faster than everyone else itereation is their moto and unlike games like Battlefield 3 that are not gold until a week before release they go gold a month before release.


You're confusing a lot of things here.

First off, they are not like Team Ico.  The money for Team Ico games comes from Sony, the publisher.  They have room to wait until it's perfect because Sony lets them.  With Valve, they supply their own money so they can take as long as they want, it's their choice, not a publishers.  It has nothing to do with keeping a schedule.

As for speed, I don't know what you're talking.  The Last Guardian has been in developer for a *long* time, at least five years.  So yeah...

When you say iteration, I don't think you really know what the term means in context to schedules.  You're talking about milestones, and major milestones at that.  Alpha, beta, and gold are milestones, not interations.  When people talk iterative development, they're generally talking about quick 2 week turnaround things.  They team finds a set of features, works on it, and makes iterations at various points until it's where they want it. 

For going gold, that is the point it is released to the manufacter.  That's what the term means so unless it's a download only game, going gold only a week before release is pretty impossible.  What you're talking about is working on the game up until release, which even Team Ico will probably be doing (there's always more bugs).

Finally, none of that has much to do with the real issue-- not all developers has the luxury of infinite budgets that Valve has.  Any studio that isn't using its own money, and that's nearly all of them, must stick to a schedule.  Yes, some are better than the others but that has zero to do with the business plan.