The Big Cost of Small Places

[snave]

snipped for space

Here's another idea - how about furniture manufacturers letting the game developers use the 3D models/textures/normal maps of their furniture (I'm pretty sure they have those during the conceptual/manufacturing phase)? The developers won't have to spend time on creating these assets and potentially not pay for them either, as they work as in-game advertisement.

In fact, stretch this idea to other facets of asset development as well. It's a win-win situation for everybody!

No, it doesn't work that way. Furniture makers are gonna have blueprints, but they're not gonna hire a freaking 3D modeler for something that can be done on paper.

If they have automated manufacturing facilities, wouldn't they have 3D models to fees into their computers?

Quite possibly. And an interesting train of thought!

I suspect some of the fancier arteur-type designers would have things 3d modelled first. I think any 3d models designed for manufacturing would be in pieces though and only the frame; although likely easily recombobulated, if a bit polygon heavy in results (then you get into the time cost of micromanaging components vs. building from scratch). The point about encouraging manufacturers to release models is interesting, although I wonder if any form of advertising discounts (where would the branding go?) would offset the level of micromanaging asset "purchases" from a plethora of companies. I suspect if things ever went this way, it'd be games developers subcontracting (rather purchasing) models to a monopoly or duopoly of catalogue-spewing virtual-life warehouses, which in turn may independently procure or reconstruct designs from legitimate physical design companies.

 

[Lemmibl]

Welcome back Seamus! I've missed your insightful articles. Will we be seeing more Stolen Pixels as well?

@snave That's a really, really intresting idea.

You could probably do the same for character models/clothes, faces etc, too. And vegetation. I mean, there's already companies that only create really high quality textures for everything, so why not models as well.

 

[boban]

I'll admit, I squealed a bit when I saw this.

As did I. It's good to have you back, Shamus. Please don't disappear again.

He doesn't "disappear". He just writes when they pay him.
Awesome column, by the way. Shamus has always been my favourite writer on The Escapist and I was disappointed when he stopped writing.

 

[Tiamat666]

All you say may be true, but that doesn't explain why companies like Bethesda CAN make a huge RPG while others struggle with an FPS which should be much simpler to make logic-wise.

Perhaps in the end it all comes down to tooling. If games are much shorter now than they were before, the tools to make them have not been keeping pace with the quality of the games. It is well known that Bethesda have excellent tools with which they fill their worlds.

Either that or companies don't care about making long games anymore. Since Steam and achievements it has become common knowledge that barely a third of people actually finish the games they own.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Modern games are expensive because of the increase in money spent no marketing, not gameplay.

Full voice, famous voice actors, realistic grass, game themed slurpee flavors. All of these cost money, and none of them make the game a better experience. But a famous actor puts an attention getting name in the ads, the realistic grass makes for pretty trailers.

Take Skyrim, the full voice must have cost a ton of money but it doesn't add a thing to the game. Or even better, Mass Effect. Does it help the player one bit to hear Shepard say "Tell me about your culture?"

Then as a contrast look at EYE Divine Cybermancy. Unpolished, baffling, ugly, but also completely original and a ton of fun. Nothing is voiced, all of the characters talk gibberish and it works great. Remember the aliens in KoToR? They talked a few sentences of mumbo jumbo that sounded like a star wars language and that was enough to establish them to the player. Wonder how much that cost to set up? Not nearly as much as it cost to voice out every line of every minor character in skyrim (with the same 5 actors making the whole thing facepalmingly comical).

To go back to your Deus Ex HR example (disclaimer, I havent played it) apparently the boss fights were outsourced, and implemented poorly, in order to save money. You would think that the freaking BOSS FIGHTS would take a much higher priority than realistic furniture but apparently that wasn't the case.

While the whole detail issue might explain why modern games are more expensive it isn't an excuse for them to be less interesting. It is up to the game designer(s) to figure out the correct level of detail and features to support the desired gameplay within the budget.

And if you haven't played it yet check out Kings Bounty: Armored Princess. That is the prime example of a single minded focus of the designers on gameplay. Once that was ironed out a the story to support the gameplay and the world to tell the story was built out to be exactly what was needed.

I've had more fun in that game than either skyrim or mass effect 2 and I bet the budget was less than 1/20th.

 

[RA92]

No, it doesn't work that way. Furniture makers are gonna have blueprints, but they're not gonna hire a freaking 3D modeler for something that can be done on paper.

I suspect some of the fancier arteur-type designers would have things 3d modelled first. I think any 3d models designed for manufacturing would be in pieces though and only the frame; although likely easily recombobulated, if a bit polygon heavy in results (then you get into the time cost of micromanaging components vs. building from scratch).

I just found out about the <url=http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/rooms_ideas/splashplanners.html>IKEA splash planner, so yeah, IKEA definitely makes 3D models of their furniture. As for polygon-heavy meshes, well, asset developers usually have to make high-poly meshes anyway to create normal maps for low-poly models, and you always have tools like the subsurface function in Blender to easily control how poly-heavy your mesh is.

 

[RvLeshrac]

Funny how people will go back and play the original Deus Ex even now, but is anyone genuinely interested in picking up Deus Ex:NH again?

 

[snave]

Another

I just found out about the <url=http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/rooms_ideas/splashplanners.html>IKEA splash planner, so yeah, IKEA definitely makes 3D models of their furniture. As for polygon-heavy meshes, well, asset developers usually have to make high-poly meshes anyway to create normal maps for low-poly models, and you always have tools like the subsurface function in Blender to easily control how poly-heavy your mesh is.

Another point worth noting is that the customer base of such a service is more diverse than the gaming industry alone. Real estate agents now "virtually furnish" houses for online "tours" (no, seriously) which is an emerging customer. Same goes for interior design consultants who may feel pressured (oops) to use more realistic models in their public design concepts. These guys would also possibly be in the market for "standard" room layouts. Plus there are other formerly failed ideas that may come back. For example, back in the mid 90s when all this 3d modelling software first came about, police forensic squads were looking into it to map out entire crime scenes for long-standing cases (to model reflections); an idea that presumably got thrown out as too difficult, too crude or too expensive back then. Put blunty, the market is there.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

It seems to me development time could be saved for making the game longer, if for a month or so, their 3D departments just churned out random filler material like chairs and tables (with a few dozen palette swaps). This way game development times would be reduced allowing for larger games to be made in the same time.

 

[incal11]

The Big Cost of Small Places

There's just more to design in games today and that takes resources.

Read Full Article

Tricks like bump mapping and dynamic AI cleverly used can reduce the costs significantly for example, simple rules can work just as well on the new games as they did on the old ones (and the kinks can always be worked out with a large enough budget). Also a consistent art style is way better than trying to reach photo-realism, fail, and try to pass a yellowish-brown for "gold" in HR's case. The result is pleasing to the eyes but a lot of the details are really uninteresting or superfluous, and that means a waste of money.
I understand how time consuming all those textures and 3d models are but it still seems like a disproportionate part of the efforts goes toward them. If there's no way around that it means something has gone wrong in the way games are designed and programmed today on a methodological level.

On Human revolution, if I have to chose one nitpick it would be the music. It isn't bad, really, but bland. The contrast with the original Deus ex' musics is jarring when you hear them re-used throughout the games with the radios, and especially at the very end after the credits.
For me that ilustrates the difference between HR and the original very well.
No matter how big, the graphic design budget does not justify that difference. Especially when it still tries to hide behind a "gold" tinge.

 

[Dogstile]

snip

I do have one question for you that I haven't really seen. What about games that don't really focus on looking amazing. I mean skyrim (Always comes back to Skyrim, does it not?) looks brilliant, but the cities are so damn tiny because they simply don't have the memory to process everyone at once. Surely if a new console generation came out, wouldn't the people who can use the new power use it and everyone who doesn't have the funds stick to making the already rather impressive looking games that are already coming out?

Nice to see you back anyway

 

[FoolKiller]

This is one of the reasons I haven't been in a rush to play newer games, or have a newer generation of consoles. I have always been one to put graphics as the last thing I want in a game.

 

[cricket chirps]

I'm making a game right now with a team. Not professionals, just after school teenagers with skill on the subject. We have a time limit for when it must be done to enter in a competition and it is THIS very subject that is killing us. We cannot polish and finish the game at the same time. We have been forced into making an unpolished game and we know we are going to lose the competition because we didnt make something simpler. I understand major game developers far more now.

-Aka: It sucks that we gamers put our expectations so high on minor details.

OT: O_O everyone's avatar just became a picture of justin beiber. including mine....WHY AND WHAT HAPPENED??????? IT WONT GO AWAY WHEN I REFRESH OR CHANGE PAGES!!!

 

[Centrophy]

In this edition of Experienced Points, Shamus says what anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of videogames knows. On the other hand, good to see you again. I suppose we'll see you again in a couple of months, writing a book is hard.