92 réponses à ce sujet

[AkiKishi]

Atakuma wrote...

What hoorayforicecream said is exactly the reason a game like TW2 costs significantly less to make than a game like ME3 while being technologically superior and having pretty much the same amount of voice acting. It's simply because the cost of living in Poland, where TW2 was made, is significantly less than it is in Canada, where ME3 was made.

Well, that and only needing to do 50% of the work.

Even something like allowing gender choice doubles the workload.

[Zexiv]

BobSmith101 wrote...

While players would want more of everything , to paraphrase Dave. It's not a reasonable expectation. The purpose of this is to see where the balance lies, between quality and quantity.

On the one extreme of the scale you have a fixed party. PC plus 3 characters covering classes.

On the flip side. A large party.

Unfortunately I don't think it's quite that easy if the plot really managed to pull me into the game like DAO did then I'd care more about the plot line and losing some of the party dynamics could be acceptable if you got more details and or opertunities to explore after the epilog to see how your actions impacted the region.

On the other hand I wasn't drawn into the DA2 plot all that much and don't really care what happened to Hawke. As such I'd be,and was, much more interested in companions in that game. So in the case of DA2 companions would have been my priority.

Until we have a better feel for what DA3 will bring to the table it's hard to say which would be more important.  Right now I'm inclined to think it would be party since I don't really feel I have much of an interest or stake in a mage vs. templers plot line.

Take it easy

Modifié par Zexiv, 26 avril 2012 - 05:37 .

[bleetman]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Dakota Strider wrote...
Compare the original Star Wars trilogy, that came out in the mid-1970's, to the prequel trilogy that came out in the late 1990's. All the flash and technology that the latter effort had available, did not make them better movies than the original, that drew you into the story.

Lightsaber battles. That's all I have to say.

Lightsaber battles in more recent star wars material have been the very definition of "all style, no substence".

Modifié par bleetman, 26 avril 2012 - 05:16 .

[John Epler]

Multiple origins has a non-trivial VO cost, yes - something like 40% of the game's dialogue is player dialogue. Having said that, the reasons behind not having multiple origins in DA2 have a lot less to do with it being more expensive in terms of voice acting as it simply not being a route we wanted to take. The specific reasons for that decision are various and many-faceted, and cover a whole lot of disciplines and departments beyond just VO/Loc.

Really, VO is expensive on its own, but compared to the rest of the project's costs it is a minor drop in the bucket. As for the argument that 'cinematics are where all the resources go', there are only... fourteen cinematic designers across both ME and DA? Or something like that - it's not a significant number, particularly compared to art and other disciplines. Is it still a non-zero cost? Yes, certainly, and if you don't see their value I suppose any number other than 'zero' is too many. But one of our ongoing projects is to find ways to ensure that cinematics are significantly cheaper and easier to make. Resource savings are good for the developers (it means we can spend more time focusing on the key moments and less on the 'run of the mill' cinematics), and good for the consumer (it means that the important cinematics will look and feel better, and if we have a good procedural solution it means that even smaller moments will look and feel better.)

[the_one_54321]

bleetman wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

Dakota Strider wrote...
Compare the original Star Wars trilogy, that came out in the mid-1970's, to the prequel trilogy that came out in the late 1990's. All the flash and technology that the latter effort had available, did not make them better movies than the original, that drew you into the story.

Lightsaber battles. That's all I have to say.

Lightsaber battles in more recent star wars material have been the very definition of "all style, no substence".

You mean like all that Clone Wars crap? Yeah, not what I'm referring to.

[Atakuma]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Atakuma wrote...

What hoorayforicecream said is exactly the reason a game like TW2 costs significantly less to make than a game like ME3 while being technologically superior and having pretty much the same amount of voice acting. It's simply because the cost of living in Poland, where TW2 was made, is significantly less than it is in Canada, where ME3 was made.

Well, that and only needing to do 50% of the work.

Even something like allowing gender choice doubles the workload.

Having two genders certainly adds to it, but it's hardly double the work since the female isn't much more than a model swap and some different dialogue.

Modifié par Atakuma, 26 avril 2012 - 05:23 .

[John Epler]

Atakuma wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

Atakuma wrote...

What hoorayforicecream said is exactly the reason a game like TW2 costs significantly less to make than a game like ME3 while being technologically superior and having pretty much the same amount of voice acting. It's simply because the cost of living in Poland, where TW2 was made, is significantly less than it is in Canada, where ME3 was made.

Well, that and only needing to do 50% of the work.

Even something like allowing gender choice doubles the workload.

Having two genders certainly adds to it, but it's hardly double the work since the female isn't much more than a model swap and some different dialogue.

Gender swap is usually not too big of a problem. The only time it does become an issue is when the PC is actually interacting with other characters, because the male and female models are slightly different sizes - so what looks good for one might end up with the other clipping horribly into whoever they're interacting with. Even when they're interacting with their own model - I had to do a -lot- of tweaking on the 'stung by a bee' scene in MoTA, because Female Hawke kept grabbing inside her own forearm.

There are, occasionally, camera issues that crop up - the female is slightly shorter than the male, so some shots can look a little strange, but we generally shoot with a long enough lens that it's not all that noticeable. It's not -zero- work, but it's not nearly as much work as a character who's a different height, or who needs significant dialogue changes.

[deuce985]

John Epler wrote...

Multiple origins has a non-trivial VO cost, yes - something like 40% of the game's dialogue is player dialogue. Having said that, the reasons behind not having multiple origins in DA2 have a lot less to do with it being more expensive in terms of voice acting as it simply not being a route we wanted to take. The specific reasons for that decision are various and many-faceted, and cover a whole lot of disciplines and departments beyond just VO/Loc.

Really, VO is expensive on its own, but compared to the rest of the project's costs it is a minor drop in the bucket. As for the argument that 'cinematics are where all the resources go', there are only... fourteen cinematic designers across both ME and DA? Or something like that - it's not a significant number, particularly compared to art and other disciplines. Is it still a non-zero cost? Yes, certainly, and if you don't see their value I suppose any number other than 'zero' is too many. But one of our ongoing projects is to find ways to ensure that cinematics are significantly cheaper and easier to make. Resource savings are good for the developers (it means we can spend more time focusing on the key moments and less on the 'run of the mill' cinematics), and good for the consumer (it means that the important cinematics will look and feel better, and if we have a good procedural solution it means that even smaller moments will look and feel better.)

One thing I'd like to see cleaned up in Bioware games(especially on companions) is animations in the cinematics. It's especially obvious in Epic's Unreal Engine. You see some really bizarre animations when you're suppose to be having emotional situations.

I might be in the minority on this...but when a game tries to tell a serious story and you have bad VO or just awkard animations...it's hard to take serious. Especially on a game like Bioware does where everything is close-up in the cinematics. I like seeing my companion emotions. I don't like seeing their eyes roll back in ther head like on Leliana's Song lol.

I shouldn't laughing in a moment like that. But I understand technical issues happen sometimes. You can't make everything perfect. I will be interested to see what engine Bioware goes with on the next-gen of consoles. I remember reading from a Bioware dev Unreal Engine is a nightmare to encode certain aspects in it. Hoping Bioware will make a really awesome facial animation system for their next engine that really shows emotions off. You want to relate to your compnaions and feel for them...I think making them more human(in the emotional sense) and less robotic is a good direction to go, IMO.

I'm not sure how much cleaning up animations would cost but hopefully we see some better emotion from the companions. It might be a little thing to some people but I find it big for me personally. So much of the game is showing off player expressions.

Modifié par deuce985, 26 avril 2012 - 05:45 .

[Atakuma]

John Epler wrote...

Atakuma wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

Atakuma wrote...

What hoorayforicecream said is exactly the reason a game like TW2 costs significantly less to make than a game like ME3 while being technologically superior and having pretty much the same amount of voice acting. It's simply because the cost of living in Poland, where TW2 was made, is significantly less than it is in Canada, where ME3 was made.

Well, that and only needing to do 50% of the work.

Even something like allowing gender choice doubles the workload.

Having two genders certainly adds to it, but it's hardly double the work since the female isn't much more than a model swap and some different dialogue.

Gender swap is usually not too big of a problem. The only time it does become an issue is when the PC is actually interacting with other characters, because the male and female models are slightly different sizes - so what looks good for one might end up with the other clipping horribly into whoever they're interacting with. Even when they're interacting with their own model - I had to do a -lot- of tweaking on the 'stung by a bee' scene in MoTA, because Female Hawke kept grabbing inside her own forearm.

There are, occasionally, camera issues that crop up - the female is slightly shorter than the male, so some shots can look a little strange, but we generally shoot with a long enough lens that it's not all that noticeable. It's not -zero- work, but it's not nearly as much work as a character who's a different height, or who needs significant dialogue changes.

I'm sorry if I made it sound trivial, I am aware that it requires work on animations and such, I was just saying that the female would have to be her own seperate character for it to really be double the work.

[John Epler]

Atakuma wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Atakuma wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

Atakuma wrote...

What hoorayforicecream said is exactly the reason a game like TW2 costs significantly less to make than a game like ME3 while being technologically superior and having pretty much the same amount of voice acting. It's simply because the cost of living in Poland, where TW2 was made, is significantly less than it is in Canada, where ME3 was made.

Well, that and only needing to do 50% of the work.

Even something like allowing gender choice doubles the workload.

Having two genders certainly adds to it, but it's hardly double the work since the female isn't much more than a model swap and some different dialogue.

Gender swap is usually not too big of a problem. The only time it does become an issue is when the PC is actually interacting with other characters, because the male and female models are slightly different sizes - so what looks good for one might end up with the other clipping horribly into whoever they're interacting with. Even when they're interacting with their own model - I had to do a -lot- of tweaking on the 'stung by a bee' scene in MoTA, because Female Hawke kept grabbing inside her own forearm.

There are, occasionally, camera issues that crop up - the female is slightly shorter than the male, so some shots can look a little strange, but we generally shoot with a long enough lens that it's not all that noticeable. It's not -zero- work, but it's not nearly as much work as a character who's a different height, or who needs significant dialogue changes.

I'm sorry if I made it sound trivial, I am aware that it requires work on animations and such, I was just saying that the female would have to be her own seperate character for it to really be double the work.

Oh, I know. I'm actually reinforcing your point - it's not a -ton- of extra work. It's non-trivial, but it's not as if including a female protagonist blows all our estimates out of whack.

[AkiKishi]

John Epler wrote...

Oh, I know. I'm actually reinforcing your point - it's not a -ton- of extra work. It's non-trivial, but it's not as if including a female protagonist blows all our estimates out of whack.

What about voicing,female clothing etc ?

Geralt being a fixed character appears to carry with it a lot of savings.

Just out of curiosity. Which is easier a few NPCs with a lot of equipment customisation or a lot of NPCs with very little ? 

Modifié par BobSmith101, 26 avril 2012 - 06:04 .

[Dakota Strider]

hoorayforicecream wrote...  ((snipped to focus on just one point))

The cost comes from paying people to create content. Team sizes roughly double every console development cycle. When I started working in games back in 2002 (PS2 generation), the teams to put out a AAA PS2 game were roughly ~50 people each. My coworkers told me that it took about 25 people to make a AAA PS1 game back in the day. When I worked for the first time on a AAA PS3 title (2006), the team sizes had ballooned to around 100-125 people. Now that we're very late in the console lifespan and about to move on to the next generation, teams are approaching ~200 people.

If you were paying the average developer $50,000 annually to work on your game (design, art, programming, producing, etc.), you need more programmers, designers, artists and producers to make your game now than you did before. With a team of 25, you're looking at $1.25 million per year to keep your guys paid. With a team of 50, you're paying $2.5 million annually. With a team of 100, you're paying $5 million a year. And with a team of 200 (count the number of people in the Witcher 2 or Mass Effect 3's credits), you're paying $10 million annually. This is why the first thing EA or Activision does to appease stockholders when they have a bad quarter is lay people off. It's because they are cutting costs, and the vast majority of their costs (as well as practically any industry's costs) is paying the people who work in it.

Alright, granted that the amount of people (non voice actors) needed to create a proper game, is a very high cost in production.  And the game would suffer if corners were cut here.

However, I am still curious as how much it costs a game company to create a 30 second commercial to be aired on television.  Regarding how much it costs to air the commercial once it is made,  I did a little research and found out that   "Commercials during less-watched programs are more affordable, but the cost of those commercials may still run in excess of $100,000 per 30-seconds."   www.gaebler.com/Television-Advertising-Costs.htm

If they run a commercial on national tv 10 times, that is how much it costs to pay 20 people to create the game, based on your numbers.  As I said before, I am not sure that type of marketing is what reaches gamers in the first place.  Perhaps it boosts the price of shares in the company, by enticing people to buy stocks in the company?  I think marketing through methods such as Youtube videos, Facebook and Twitter, would do much more to attract people to the game, then television.  And it would cost much less money. 

Modifié par Dakota Strider, 26 avril 2012 - 06:07 .

[MichaelStuart]

John Epler wrote...
There are, occasionally, camera issues that crop up - the female is slightly shorter than the male, so some shots can look a little strange, but we generally shoot with a long enough lens that it's not all that noticeable. It's not -zero- work, but it's not nearly as much work as a character who's a different height, or who needs significant dialogue changes.

Why does the female need to be different height?
most Woman I know are my height (I'm 5,10) or Taller.
Also why do woman have different run then men in Dragon age 2, it just seams like needless work and I mast say that the butt wiggle thing they do while moving is wired.

[the_one_54321]

Most women I know are shorter than me. I'm 5'9". It's a regional thing, but statistically women are shorter than men.

[hoorayforicecream]

I actually spoke with a coworker during lunch just now about the costs of voice acting. Generally, the costs of a single well-known voice actor (my coworker talked about working with John DiMaggio, voice of Bender) and studio time for a few weeks comes out to about the same as the cost of a single full-time employee for a year. If you're hiring more famous Hollywood actors (e.g. Kiefer Sutherland, Gary Oldman, etc. in the Call of Duty games), you can expect to pay triple that rate. However, most of the time such actors are only needed for a few days since they don't have that much dialogue in a video game. For small parts you can usually have the actor in and out of the studio in a day or two.

As for cutting the marketing budget to give to development... that's the publisher's call. The publishers usually decide on the budgets separately, since the budget allocations for marketing can be made much later than for the game itself. Remember that most games take around 2 years to make, while the marketing campaign lasts for the last few months of development, and the first few after launch. In order to bolster the budget of a game from marketing, you'd need to pull money from the marketing campaigns of other games rather than the future budget of a game in development. After all, not all game projects make it from green light to shelf. If the publisher decides to cancel the project before it's announced, they don't pay to market anything.

Edit: Just for sake of scale, you're looking at the cost of ~40% of the voice acting in the game to be around 0.5% of your total payroll for the year. The total amount of voice acting in the game, assuming a similar payment rate, would cost about 1.1% of your annual payroll. It's not trivial when you're considering costs in the millions, but neither is it a huge portion of the total.

Modifié par hoorayforicecream, 26 avril 2012 - 06:39 .

[the_one_54321]

hoorayforicecream wrote...
(my coworker talked about working with John DiMaggio, voice of Bender)

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(also, otherwise an excellent post)

[happy_daiz]

I'm female and 5'10, and I wish female PCs could be depicted as being as tall as the male version. We're not all delicate flowers, you know.

Modifié par happy_daiz, 26 avril 2012 - 06:39 .

[syllogi]

happy_daiz wrote...

I'm female and 5'10, and I wish female PCs could be depicted as being as tall as the male version. We're not all delicate flowers, you know.

Ha, I'm 5'2, and I've always wanted to be tall.  But I often imagine my female player characters to be shorties too.  Not that I roleplay them as delicate, just that if I have to suffer with asking for help with high shelves, they do too.  

[hoorayforicecream]

BobSmith101 wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Oh, I know. I'm actually reinforcing your point - it's not a -ton- of extra work. It's non-trivial, but it's not as if including a female protagonist blows all our estimates out of whack.

What about voicing,female clothing etc ?

Geralt being a fixed character appears to carry with it a lot of savings.

Just out of curiosity. Which is easier a few NPCs with a lot of equipment customisation or a lot of NPCs with very little ? 

Just from a visuals perspective (ignoring things like technical requirements for number of dudes on screen at once, etc.)

Number of different models = A
Average number of different customizations per model = B

Total number of models and customizations you have zots for: X

X = A x B. The bigger B is, the smaller A has to be, and vice versa.

[happy_daiz]

syllogi wrote...

happy_daiz wrote...

I'm female and 5'10, and I wish female PCs could be depicted as being as tall as the male version. We're not all delicate flowers, you know.

Ha, I'm 5'2, and I've always wanted to be tall. But I often imagine my female player characters to be shorties too. Not that I roleplay them as delicate, just that if I have to suffer with asking for help with high shelves, they do too.

I like that.

This does bring up a good point, though. Could future BW games allow us to choose the height of our character?

Modifié par happy_daiz, 26 avril 2012 - 06:52 .

[Dakota Strider]

happy_daiz wrote...

syllogi wrote...

happy_daiz wrote...

I'm female and 5'10, and I wish female PCs could be depicted as being as tall as the male version. We're not all delicate flowers, you know.

Ha, I'm 5'2, and I've always wanted to be tall. But I often imagine my female player characters to be shorties too. Not that I roleplay them as delicate, just that if I have to suffer with asking for help with high shelves, they do too.

I like that.

This does bring up a good point, though. Could future BW games allow us to choose the height of our character?

Based on comments from Mr. Eplar, with the tweeking needed to be done with the variance in size of between males and females, a height/weight slider would be very difficult for them to incorporate, with the way they create games now.  I forget which game it was, but quite some time ago I played a game that allowed you to adjust height and weight for your individual.  However, it did not have all the cinematic cutscenes in it, that would be messed up, if your character did not match the size of the model in the cutscene.

Modifié par Dakota Strider, 26 avril 2012 - 07:08 .

[Maria Caliban]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

hoorayforicecream wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...
On the contrary, I recall being told that voicing the PC is so costly that it directly limits how much variation is available in the PC's spoken dialog.

Citation needed.

There's no way I could find that post, even if I tried. This was at least a year ago. Basically, one of the devs said that the reason there are no Origins in DAII is because then they'd have needed to pay an extra two voice actor for every extra race options and it was just too expensive.

It wasn't the only reason. Several parts of the game would have to be rewritten because certain things just wouldn't make sense for an elf or a dwarf, as well as having to sextuple the amount of voice data for the player character on disc for a game that has to go to console. Not to mention how it would affect other key NPCs, like Carver, Bethany, Leandra, or core story elements like becoming Champion in Kirkwall. It's doable, but it's expensive.

When DA:O was still Dragon Age, several people requested a voiced PC, and Georg (who moved on to The Old Republic) told us that if the PCs were voiced, the game would have to be half its length.

David has previously talked about the expense of voice actors, the union, and why he can't just call up a VA for another take.

Alternatively, what the_one said is an interpretation of a developer post. It was about the various costs associated with having different races, not 'the reason' why there are no origins in DA II.

[hoorayforicecream]

happy_daiz wrote...

This does bring up a good point, though. Could future BW games allow us to choose the height of our character?

To some extent. SWTOR handles it, but by giving you four different body types/heights to choose from. Since they have established heights, they can make set adjustments for their cinematic cameras, whereas dynamic adjustments would be much harder for a much more granular selection of character heights.

[Cultist]

That supports my position on Voiced Protagonist as a feature that harmed DA franchize.
But, low male voice could be applied to both Elf, Human and Dwarf. Adam from Deus Ex is a good example. Also - there are billions of options to implement various audio filters in the game to adjust a voice.

[Massakkolia]

Cultist wrote...

That supports my position on Voiced Protagonist as a feature that harmed DA franchize.
But, low male voice could be applied to both Elf, Human and Dwarf. Adam from Deus Ex is a good example. Also - there are billions of options to implement various audio filters in the game to adjust a voice.

Or any male voice really, and same for female voices. This is something I've often wondered whenever people point out that race options require multiple voice actors. Why is this necessary? The vocal range of the races isn't really that different. 

The significant differences are in accents and those can be defined by your background. Origins in DAO were so varied that yeah, perhaps British accent wouldn't have worked for all of them. But couldn't Bioware give us race options while limiting the background ("origin") options so that it would make sense to have the same accent for all character options. This seems like a reasonable compromise, unless a) it doesn't fit to the story they are planning or the cost of different models, animations and story alterations still makes multiple races too expensive. It may not be an ideal solution but it's better than being stuck with only humans.

Am I missing something or is this plausible?

That being said, I always prefer quality over quantity. I'll gladly take a smaller squad and, yes, even a fixed race, if it means meaningful choices with heavy consequences and great character development.