Reducing crunch - is there any market research to suggest improved graphics matters at all?
grand marshal polycounter
In this video these guys share some quotes from Naughty Dog workers who are having a terrible time developing TLOU2. Some question whether all the extra time spent on extreme polish like stubble on characters chin is really worth the effort.
Here's a hypothesis: If ND did nothing to improve the graphics of TLOU2 over the original, but only iterated on gameplay, characters/story, would it make a difference in sales? In market feedback (reviews, etc)?
And lets suppose that, yes, it wouldn't sell as many copies because a lot of consumers might say, "but da grafix ain't as good as COD". Would the money saved by simplifying production balance out with reduced sales?
There must be a point of diminishing returns when it comes to production and quality. If all your experienced veterans are quitting, I think that's an indicator you might be at that point.
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I don't appreciate it but it makes total sense to me that this exists on earth.
What you need is
Production duration => smart management's time planing => More Time = More Money => cool management aiming for less profit => Even More Money = A Lot Less Pressure => smart management smartly directing pressure => So Much Less Crunch
But being smart and cool is not that easy if you have to pay around 300 people per month (to be fair it's more difficult to be cool and overall difficult to be smart)
https://kotaku.com/as-naughty-dog-crunches-on-the-last-of-us-ii-developer-1842289962
It seems like they don't have a production department, and its basically too many cooks?
I mean I felt bad reading the article...
Ugh, feeling like as fellow developers we ought to boycott the game when it comes out and be vocal about it?
That will beat some sense into the dead zone in their heads of the people that can do something about this.
I really don't believe the fans would really care if ND took more time to get the game out.
Its a dedicated fan base so they will break even and profit, so unless they are working with considerable debt they don't stand to really lose much.
Maybe some of the crazier ones might send threatening letters, but honestly it comes down to deadlines and lot of the top tier folk there voluntarily putting themselves through hell likely because their lifestyle isn't balanced, so this is probably all they have?
Or its a mental health issue that fixates them on the achievement of a task?
Ultimately its upto the company to tell them to go home, even if they do go home and play Last of Us part 1 all night only to show up in the morning and work on Last of Us part 2.
And honestly the stubble on the chin mentality is nuts, but maybe for some people it is really critical towards gaining satisfaction in their job? They've done remarkable work graphically, but that is not all the company is known for, so maybe they are just horrible at managing their work.
Good of them to speak up though.
In the indie scene and with approaches like "early access" its a pretty proven model but many of these companies are too entrenched in the corporate process to change I feel.
Like add another year and absolutely stick to the development plan, I doubt the studio would belly up and liquidate given Sony's financial muscle.
This article on the God of War 4 team gives a fair bit of insight from the developer perspective
https://kotaku.com/why-god-of-war-took-five-years-to-make-1825653009
, maybe its just an internal thing with developers being blinded by their passion.
On a personal note, I've pushed myself over long hours but this is on personal projects and experimental stuff that is close to me.
In Naughty Dog's case the developers don't own any thing, its not like they get a dollar everytime a sack of grain deflates when a player shoot its, so not entirely sure why they get trapped in it.
Like in many ways by joining the studio you are now a top tier ninja samurai rockstar, so why would you subject yourself to a lifestyle that is so far from the title.
Actually when you think about it, its something a ninja samurai might do for a daimyo, maybe thats the relationship here?
Rockstar would probably f* off though.
Sometimes I wonder if by telling artists here to become top tier we're doing them a disservice without actually informing them about what they are getting into.
Its important for everyone to do their due diligence.
But I have met artists who really can't stop themselves, they are like automated tools, so get treated as such.
If crunch is an issue and the environment borderline hostile, I think the best thing to do is get together with fellow like minded people (connections you made, friends, other artists you would trust) and start an indie, especially if you are beyond talented.
(I've done my time, as they say) seriously put myself at some dangerous risks and drank some concoctions to remain awake, (3 expresso shots inside a tall redbull for an example) going home from the city to meet all the lovely night people, to low pay at some state i had no idea bout, driving around emptiness in the dark.
Your mind has to rest it doesn't matter how long how hard you go, the brain needs rest, you might make more mistakes staying up past 9/12(where you get your best sleep btw.) So if you are staying up later than that, i got bad news for you, i know because I've done it and had to learn the hard-way like most. Which is the reason for my concern when people say i have been sick..
I thought "we" were making tools that would've removed the need for crunch? isn't that why they are made, to make things, faster, easier..what happen? idk because i am not apart of a team, sounds like a bad time and here i thought the image painted was sunshine and rainbows.
Now i see why that union poll started up, besides the walk out that happen that probably triggered it.
If you can't get the mission accomplished with it, you planned bad. Here's some advice for people working for a boss who planned bad: don't fix his mistakes for him. He'll never learn.
Starting as a "junior", and mentioned because of the students and freelance workers, non-registered people, basically to prevent it by bringing it up, glad you filled in the rest.
What is the issue with just hiring a night staff... people are there already late night, but they would be "refreshed and ready to go", i don't get studio's ways of thinking, yes its probably more $ but you put out more content which means more $.
If people are willing to do crunch there got to be people willing to work night shifts at a game company. Idk all the situations around that.
Not going to lie sorry for you all without a choice i am glad i am not in that mess.
Like you cannot hand off remote responsibilities to a freshly graduated hire regardless of how top tier their portfolio is, there needs to be a mandatory period of training for the purpose.
with the corona virus many studios are being forced to consider it so this should be a good way to test if that is viable.
- Graphics do NOT matter as much when it comes to selling a game now because of the above. Macro details matter the most, as when we released our own game the artwork was mediocre but 99% of the million players didn't seem to care. They noticed the non-mocap animations more than anything.
- Coinciding with the above; artists spend way too long on tiny details players will NEVER care about. EVER. They could push the artwork to 80% (80/20 rule should be standard in games) and players would still be happy. As Mike Pavlovich once said, noone's gonna care about some high poly baked vent in the corner of a room once lighting and vfx are in..
I've seen some wicked weapons made by the best weapon artists, but when you view them ingame from FPS view all that detail is lost. The difference between an amateur and a professional with microdetails once the asset is ingame is negligible. I'll say it again MACRO DETAILS lol
Personally I think programming is the pitfall in the games industry. More often than not games release with bugs, unfinished features or just don't feel good from a mechanic standpoint. Players will overlook bad art if the game actually plays good, and that's a fact. Plenty of examples already out there on Steam that has far outsold even some AAA titles.
Ironically looking at the topic of this thread and the 2 biggest games the guys mentioned for 2020 are Last of Us 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 - I guess there is maybe an answer, but again it would over simplify complex topics.
For me personally the quality of a game is not reflected in its graphics. If the game is shit I won't care how much polish you put on the turd. But no one can deny that there is something special about the Witcher 3 and the Uncharted 4 - the second which I actually only watched as an uncommented playthrough and still was highly entertained and astonished - presentation played a big part for both games' successes.
Macro details refers to large overall forms in terms of shape, colors, and detail. When you zoom out of the picture or step 5ft away how readable is any of the detail? Does it look excellent like a painting? This is what most players will see when viewing games from their monitor or TV. Great and well-known cinematographers are always framing each scene as a painting and stepping back looking at the big picture.
Even things like scratches and wear and tear, sculpted stuff in will never be readable once it's actually seen from the player. Weapons that have high levels of detailing on parts of it that are NEVER seen by the ingame camera...
There is absolutely NO need to be doing a high poly and baking down a prop/environment piece if it takes up a tiny portion of the screen or will only ever get seen a few times. A recent AAA PS4 game known for its graphics, had artists making bakes and sculpting wood on a jewellery box. It was never seen in a cutscene and was viewed from third person view. That's completely ridiculous and wastes time for the artist when they could be focusing on more important things.
Yeah, it looks beautiful when you look at it up close, but players aren't artists. They look at the overall scene and how readable things are to them. There is a whole subreddit called moviedetails where theres tons of stuff that directors put in that viewers never notice. It's the same deal but for game art we spend thousands of hours more on these details.
I will say though this is all in terms of production and delivering a product to players. What are they going to remember, that a game had a screw or greeble on a weapons scope, or that the gameplay was actually good?
The only time graphics matters if it is if the overall presentation looks good, seen in a cutscene up close, or in your portfolio.
Check out this thread and video https://polycount.com/discussion/150007/gdc-2015-next-gen-pipelines-presentation/p1 The sooner art directors can get their concepts ingame the more time they can spend iterating on actually making sure the overall art direction and presentation look good.
I can still go play the original today and it remains as convincing as ever. So the only downside to not upgrading graphics is what? Company pride? Would there be any consumer backlash?
Which isn't a problem. Its killing yourself to achieving it and screwing everyone else in the process which is the problem.
If Last of Us 2 released next year, no one would be the worse for it.
Sure you'd have to pay people for longer, but once the game is released the amount you make on sales day 1 is more than enough to cover it with a lot extra left over for execs and share holders to pocket.
It would be good to get some perspective from any ND devs here on polycount, though from the article I linked it really seems like this is all because of a lack of production team that can force the lifers there to take in easy and go home to their families, so that everyone can take a breather.
Also adding sacks of grain that deflate when shot at does not matter, like it matters to the dev who suggested the idea and likely broke a lot of the game adding it in the process.
We see this happen a mad lot in 3rd party QA, one tiny mostly unnecessary change can screw up everything without warning and then you're stuck fixing it for the rest of the week.
And when this happens, everything else slows down and screams for crunch time.
A production team is absolutely necessary to tell devs whether their suggestion really matters in the long run, since they interface with marketing so have a better idea of what matters and how much time to put into it.
Of course if they are all useless (not the teams, rather their process of figuring out what matters) then you might get a situation like Ubisoft's Starlink Battle for Atlas.
In that game the addition of physical ships as a toy line, in addition to having DLC ships that could be bought online was absurd.
There was no need for any physical ships on top of a controller, with the massive failure that is the toys to life market, anyone a mile away could see the absurdness of including that feature, let alone compete against toy brands.
I do like the aspect of experimenting with ideas, though it is very important to understand how it fits in with market realities.
Explicitly relating a thought as a core gamer/consumer...an emphatic no, on both counts and usually afaik sales are typically driven by the entire AAA package, not so much hinging on just one part of the whole.
Can you elaborate? I had to google cognoscente (great word) but I'm still not sure I understand what you were getting at in this sentence.
It pains me to say it but the appreciation of graphic detail is minimal. Yes it needs to have a standard realism level (if we talk about realism),but people be passing through an area saying "wow that's nice" for 5 seconds.
So in the end, instead of 5 seconds of appreciation, get 3 and save $$
Even in my personal art I'm switching now to share uvs and base texture for my characters through re-using basemeshes to save hard disk space and time with things that don't matter as much so I can focus on the main parts. This results in quality gain without taking more time to do stuff.
Again every department is crunching so graphics can't be the reason for it. Players expectations and developers are rising (and rightfully so) which results in overall more ambitious projects. The only issue for crunch is bad planning, everything else are bs-excuses.
You can't even argue that graphics shouldn't be that important just because there are indi games with less polished/ambitious styles. Its like saying you don't need anime because there is soccer on TV. Each game requires its own individual efforts to make it work to the full extent and live up to its full potential. Uncharted 4 wouldn't have been as spectacular without all the effort put into the graphics, animations and vfx. Sure some people at Naughty Dog went overboard, but I promise you, as someone who is himself that way, there are people at those studios that will sit 12 hours each day and work even if the deadline isn't approaching fast or any producer demands it. Sometimes actually management has to step in and cut stuff we want to add because its already enough and time to move on.
All I'm saying is that the situation at these big studios is far more complex than people realise. We have people working 8-5 Monday to Friday next to people who work nearly twice as much in the same department (keep in mind our overtime is paid). So a part of the bad planning is driven by overly ambitious staff, not just management. This can easily get out of hand when it comes to planning. I for example noticed that I already plan my personal stuff for the month with a clear amount of overtime often forgetting to take into account that i could get sick or something else from normal life might interfere. On the other hand I do plan for dependencies and or other risks at work. Now my producer has to take into account where my deficiencies in planning are and same for all other people that give estimates at the beginning of the month. Then coordinate with all other departments/teams around. With things being as complex as they are in games and project being highly ambitious those little planning errors end up in huge timesinks and then its up to how much buffer you have.
So that arms race is a much smaller factor in every department compared to the nature of the beast when highly complex and big projects are planned and executed.