6 réponses à ce sujet

[mdigs150]

So I've seen devs use the umbrella term resources to cover a lot of different points, and I was just wanting clarification. An example would be when they say that choosing whether to implement a design idea they take into account the benefit of having it versus the resources required to add it. What I assume this means is that what they are able to do is limited by the "budget" for the game as given by EA. But I don't really understand how this budget works.

I can see that hiring actors for VO and composers/musicians for the score will require a budget, but I don't see why internal elements such as gameplay, story, art or level design which (as far as I know) aren't outsourced can cost anything? Surely these parts are covered by the wages of the employees who are already working on them?

I suppose what I'm essentially saying is that I have no real understanding of the video game industry! 
So if anyone could enlighten me then that would be great! And sorry for rambling.

[Kidd]

Basically, when you get enough money to hire three persons for a project's length, you have to choose what these three people will be working on. If A is working on the engine, B is writing and scripting the story while C is making all the graphics, then no level design is being done.

So let's say A can work on level design once most of the engine work is finished, though not all of it. This leads to levels being designed but now the engine isn't as powerful and flexible as it was meant to be - many previously planned features get scrapped because of this.

There are still missing things though. We have beautiful 3D models, an engine, designed levels and written scenes. How about the user interface? Let's make person C work on that as well. But that means less time to work on the 3D graphics, and suddenly there are no dragons in the final game.

At this point, somebody on the official forums come up with an amazing idea the entire fanbase stands behind. The company loves the idea too! But if they are to implement it - and they sure want to - then B will have to write less text than planned to make room for this new feature. Or, perhaps the amazing idea that was not planned in the beginning will simply have to wait until the sequel.

The only solution to this problem with cut features seems to be getting more time to work on the project, no? Well that would mean even more months of wages that require money spent on them. Alternatively you could also foresee the issues and hire more people before the project starts, but those people need wages too. A company has a finite amount of money that is only replenished once a game is released, and running out completely is not an option since everybody need safety margins.

This is an incredibly simplified model that doesn't take into account what skills the different employees have, the publisher/developer relationship and probably a thousand other things. I don't know how all the intricate parts work, but I believe my simplified version explains things nonetheless =)

Modifié par KiddDaBeauty, 19 novembre 2012 - 02:08 .

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

Time, disk space and memory can also be considered resources.

[Pzykozis]

mdigs150 wrote...

So I've seen devs use the umbrella term resources to cover a lot of different points, and I was just wanting clarification. An example would be when they say that choosing whether to implement a design idea they take into account the benefit of having it versus the resources required to add it. What I assume this means is that what they are able to do is limited by the "budget" for the game as given by EA. But I don't really understand how this budget works.

I can see that hiring actors for VO and composers/musicians for the score will require a budget, but I don't see why internal elements such as gameplay, story, art or level design which (as far as I know) aren't outsourced can cost anything? Surely these parts are covered by the wages of the employees who are already working on them?

I suppose what I'm essentially saying is that I have no real understanding of the video game industry! 
So if anyone could enlighten me then that would be great! And sorry for rambling.

But the staff's wages are part of the budget. Studios don't generally recieve a huge amount of money passively, largest chunks go to retail and to the publisher, which means each project is reliant on the money they get given by the publisher (unless they're an indie and are carrying their own warchest).

Essentially if you're hiring 100 aritsts / coders etc, then you're paying A LOT for wages and they come directy out of the budget you have for the project because you're not exaclty making money otherwise. So you are heavily constrained time wise becaue you can only afford to pay your staff for so long, and really everyone hates crunch even though it happens so much that its pretty much considered part and parcel (which is a bit of a joke really but alas, if the baby needs it you'll help your baby look beautiful)

Alongside that are some hefty energy bills them 100 aritsts, coders and all the other disciplines (not forgetting then general staff like finance, legal etc.) that predominantly work on computer all day... yeah, and then tax etc.

[grregg]

Well, you have to think backwards.

You have an idea for a game. Your market research/experience/etc tells you that it can sell X million copies. Given the deals that you have with publishers, X million copies will result in Y million dollars of revenue. This is the amount of money that you can spend on game development without taking losses. Actually, considering that companies have to turn a profit, usually you get some Z amount of dollars to play with, where Z < Y.

So that's your development budget.

Now everything that a company does to develop a game is charged against that budget. If an employee works full time on the project, his wages/benefits/whatever come out of the project's budget. So given that Z is a finite number, you can only assign so many people to the project for only so much time.

Plus there are other costs like voice actors and what not.

One thing that people oftentimes don't realize that most problems that you have to solve in software development are not the likes of "how do we do that", but rather "how do we do that given our budget and deadlines."

[Doctoglethorpe]

Money.

Its a gas.

[Kail Ashton]

I'd say lazy, incompitent programers, time budgets (as opposed to financial ones) incompitent direction from above, EA executive mandates for making the game more marketible and crappy engines that can only handle so much are proooobarly up there more than signing paychecks & covering costs

Most of which seeeeeeeems to get picked up from the pool of money receaved after the game sells (aka the more it sells, the more money everyone involved walks away with, thus why "crunch time" is apparantly ok with the slave labor aka programmers)