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Mother posted:See where this is going? Starflight was almost certainly less than a million to make (adjusted). Take a wild stab at what Destiny 2 cost. Yet, the sticker price…. Doesn't this buy into the idea that AAA devs were somehow forced into spending many many millions of dollars in creating games in an unsustainable way? It was their choice, they choose to operate this way, they knew what the outcome would be for the bottom line, and they pushed that cost onto the consumer by adding manipulative practices (see Destiny 2's exp scaling or the repugnancy of loot boxes). Disclaimer: I am one of those people utterly disgusted by loot boxes, and since they absolutely take advantage of gambling addiction and laws playing catch-up I think they are scummy as gently caress.
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Nov 27, 2017 06:13
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mutata posted:While game devs are absolutely not absolved of the responsibility of their budgets, the situation is not as simple as you state. Yeah, I can see how you might be able to push the idea that this is down to things that are "demanded by general mass audiences", although I would like to see the data to back this up. What I can't see is how this justifies the use of manipulative practices and taking advantage of gambling addiction. If that is what you do, if you need to harm the consumer in such a way to continue business then I am convinced the video game industry would be better off without you.
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Nov 27, 2017 07:09
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mutata posted:I don't disagree with you, but man, you're being super abrasive so I doubt very many people who aren't already of your mindset are going to consider your viewpoint, if I'm honest. On a less abrasive note, I am genuinely interested in the data on how AAA publishers determined that such costly development cycles were "demanded by general mass audiences". I've heard this a few times, but I've also heard people say that this is just a way for publishers to justify their own runaway pursuit of being the best looking. Can you point me in the direction of any studies or resources which show some sort of causal link? No worries if not, I'm sure someone in this thread can point me in the right direction. e: mutata posted:Now if your question is "Where's the data that the masses want AAA-looking games?" then I can only offer you colloquial data, but I think expecting the industry to stop pushing the boundaries of graphical fidelity is probably against the whole industry's DNA. This was what I was asking. If this is the case then it ties back to it being their choice, does it not? Them choosing to create their own burden and then shifting the weight? I should wait for others to chime in, there are probably some basic stats or studies which actually show people won't buy games that play well if they don't look amazing. Bushmaori fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Nov 27, 2017 07:35
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CodfishCartographer posted:I don't know if there's any hard data on it, but there's plenty of examples of gamers going WOW LOOK HOW UGLY THIS NEW GAME IS that encourage devs to make every game look like The Best-Looking Game Ever. Mentioned above, but the Mass Effect Andromeda drama is a perfect example. Almost none of the drama was about about how fun the game was, it was all about how ugly the animations were and how someone was holding a space gun backwards. That's the thing. Without data, saying this is directly responsible for anything approaching forcing unsustainable practices (and therefore manipulative scumbaggery) is not really a connection we can draw. There are an enormous amount of gamers™ who will throw a huge and visible tantrum at how a game looks, regardless of whether or not they are going to buy it and regardless of how the game actually looks. This will absolutely affect the buying rates of a few, but a significant enough proportion to classify the game as a failure? On top of this, we also have to factor in that ME:A had a very rocky production and was (correct me if I'm wrong) a little mismanaged and lacking anything approaching a strong cohesive vision, driving up production cost and contributing to less impressive areas. If we are using anecdotes: I know three people who bought ME:A, including myself, and the graphics being occasionally hilarious and bad did nothing to stop us from purchasing it. To Tricky Ed - I appreciate the great post, you obviously know more about the actual environment that I do, but it leaves me with another couple of questions. You frame this as if AAA game development has approached a sort of tipping point where traditional funding through sales alone can no longer keep up. Does this mean that the industry as a whole is approaching this problem? I know that there are still many AAA developers outside of the scumosphere who do not use these manipulative practices. Is the evolving nature of the industry meaning we are ripe for another crash or other such disaster among all AAA developers who strive to overpush the envelope? In case I was unclear - the issue I take is not with the natural evolution and capitalist competition which will inherently drive us towards to more complicated games, that is always a given. The issue is that developers are seemingly increasingly eager to cross the threshold of sustainability. Many developers don't do this and see no need to do this, so I find the idea that the AAA developers who engage in this behavior shouldn't shoulder all of the blame genuinely confusing. Bushmaori fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Nov 28, 2017 |
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Nov 28, 2017 00:03
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I mean I want to continue, but I'm betting people are already tired of me making GBS threads up the thread.
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Nov 28, 2017 06:50
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Awesome dude, thanks. e: I think I mixed up the concept of developers and publishers in my head, I'm not clever Bushmaori fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Nov 28, 2017 |
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Nov 28, 2017 07:27
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djkillingspree posted:I don't think it's necessary to assume that the direction that publishers have been moving in is inherently correct or data-driven, even though they are all doing it. You may remember when the entire industry lost a shitload of money deciding it was time to make MMOs when WoW made bank, or time to make MOBAs when LoL made bank. One problem with pointing to research is that the counterfactuals don't exist - because most companies tend to work off of the same playbook, it's hard to point to the publisher that isn't following it and how successful they were or weren't. This was also my thinking. We could take Apple as an example. This is just an assumption, but I am willing to bet that they spend many millions of dollars on research. Then they do something like release a phone without a traditional headphone jack. Or Microsoft tries to release the DRM machine which was the original Bone. In my simple type of thinking this leads me to one of two conclusions, or perhaps a combination of both: 1: Market research is not as accurate as is claimed 2: Market research is ultimately overruled by the opinions of those at the top This does not inspire confidence in the process, though I'm likely missing something. Granted, as long as it does not necessitate the use of manipulative practices such as taking advantage of addiction then I am fine with companies loving their own poo poo up, that's on them. Bushmaori fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Dec 13, 2017 |
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Dec 13, 2017 03:13
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Speaking of the cloud: What are the thoughts of you developers when it comes to cloud computing helping gaming? I remember reading a lot about it a few years ago but not so much since then.
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Dec 13, 2017 11:29
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Gerblyn posted:I'm not even certain it would be that useful, the only real thing I can imagine is running AIs in strategy games, since 1) they can use a truly ferocious amount of processing power and 2) strategy games aren't twitch based, so players will tolerate the delay while the process is offloaded to the cloud. That makes a lot of sense and is something I completely overlooked. You're saying that in this way it would be a case of send state, compute, receive state, which is a perfect fit for the technology? djkillingspree posted:The problem I'd see with that model of cloud computing is that the problem domain where it would be useful doesn't justify the potential risk. I could see potentially a cloud computing company developing a game that used it essentially as marketing for the idea of using cloud computing in games, but the use cases that I've heard described for it are either impractical or not worth the cost and risk. If you think about it, if you're using cloud computing to offload something that the client can't calculate in real-time, you need to be able to send the problem to the cloud, computer AND deliver the results in real-time, which is an extreme challenge. And, if you can afford NOT to deliver those results in real time, then why not just compute the results in non-real time on the client? Hard to imagine a really compelling use case. This here was what confused me so much about the idea. I remember seeing examples of huge scale physics simulations apparently only being possible through cloud-computing. In this case, I had to wonder exactly how viable this would be. In terms of computing, the cloud would be great. After that, you would have to factor in the transmission of potentially thousands of individual physics pieces, in a constantly delivered method which also would have to take into account data loss. Maybe forms of compression could reduce the overhead in terms of online bandwidth, but that would seem to bring its own issues of real-time decompression back on the home console? So for my next question, forgive me if this has already been asked, I would like to know where you guys see the next generation of consoles going? I'm especially interested when it comes to the areas of mobility, like the Switch, backward compatibility (apparently easier now that nobody is using weird-rear end cell-processor technology?), and whether you see an increase in CPU power to aid in reaching a more common 60fps frame-rate.
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Dec 19, 2017 01:38
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What are the favorite engines to work with for the devs here, and why? Which do you think are overrated or underrated?
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Jan 26, 2018 23:43
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