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Tachikoma on 07 January 2015
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mine said:


Oh yeah. Those budgets. Well - nobody forces them to increase their budgets that big - other than being able to attract more gamers with some "expensive tricks".

First time i've seen anyone refer to textures, sound, music, modelling, animation, ai, engine development, optimization and marketing as "expensive tricks" though.

Some as hollywood blockbuster movies. Most of them are action titles and those need to "add more and more" to satisfy.

Game development and movies are entirely different, dont make the error of trying to draw comparisons.

Developers who bet on gameplay first hand are free to suit the graphical representation within budget.

They are free to "make do" within their budget, gameplay is entirely down to the individual, some people see mario kart as amazing, others see it as boring and dull, thats the same for all games, the assumption that because a developer isnt focusing on insane graphics, somehow meaning theyre "focusing on gameplay first", is a poor one, even games that dont focus on graphics can be awful, conversely, games that do focus on graphics can gave awesome gameplay too.

Of course you'll still need more people compared to the 8- or 16-bit era. But it's something like 10 times.

Studios i worked in during the early 90s were at most, 20-30, and these were major studios across Japan, which at the time was the powerhouse for games, studios of today have that many people employed in a single branch of a single department alone, it doesnt mean you NEED thousands, and some great games can indeed be made by a small group, but small groups are far more likely to be indie studios, releasing indie-priced games, not large studios releasing full retail, disk based games, demanding full price.

The studios of the 8 and 16 bit era that are still around, have all expanded massively, the tiny studios of today are the indies and kickstarters.

Those AAA need 40-100 times more people and its short of a miracle they can handle them and still get something playable out of it. What a luck god gave us patches...

have you sat through a AAA games credits recently? the latest blockbuster titles can number in the tens of thousands of people involved in the production, not just hundreds.