Out-sourcing and game art development. The Future?
polycounter lvl 6
Hello all.
I have been working as a professional graphic designer in Canada for 10 years. During that time I have watched my industry take some terrible turns.
I have been working for the same large media company that handles magazines, newspapers, ad design etc. Lately there has been a trend to outsource lot's of graphical work including ad design (some ads worth many thousands of dollars) to India where they pay their graphic artists $10 an hour. I was lucky to not lose my job during the transition as I am in a more coordinator role at the moment and not pure design. However I have witnessed hundreds of people lose their jobs here.
Lately I have been learning 3D and am highly interested in transitioning into the game industry. However I see that game artists make a lot of money and consequently big game projects cost boat loads of money. As any corporation needs to make more and more money could outsourcing be in the future for game artists? Restricting opportunities to North Americans?
I know out-sourcing is happening right now...but not necessarily to poor countries.
What do you people think?
Is the industry suited to face that trend?
I have been working as a professional graphic designer in Canada for 10 years. During that time I have watched my industry take some terrible turns.
I have been working for the same large media company that handles magazines, newspapers, ad design etc. Lately there has been a trend to outsource lot's of graphical work including ad design (some ads worth many thousands of dollars) to India where they pay their graphic artists $10 an hour. I was lucky to not lose my job during the transition as I am in a more coordinator role at the moment and not pure design. However I have witnessed hundreds of people lose their jobs here.
Lately I have been learning 3D and am highly interested in transitioning into the game industry. However I see that game artists make a lot of money and consequently big game projects cost boat loads of money. As any corporation needs to make more and more money could outsourcing be in the future for game artists? Restricting opportunities to North Americans?
I know out-sourcing is happening right now...but not necessarily to poor countries.
What do you people think?
Is the industry suited to face that trend?
Replies
I could imagine the company would always need a small group of artists that are really good to be physically working for them. But I guess my issue is. If a large part of game art can be our-sourced. Why wouldn't it? Saving money is the name of the game.
Many millions must go to pay the salaries of the artists for sure.
People either outsource because it's cheaper, or because they don't have the knowledge/tech to do certain things, they run out of time or their scheduling requires outsourcing, or it's more flexible rather than hiring-and-firing (and training!) people for on site for a single project or sometimes it's just better quality.
There's many reasons but yes, in the end it comes down to money.
Artist salary surely comes into play at some point, especially with Asian outsourcers, but it's also all the other costs. E.g. if a client wants to ramp up, they have to hire artists, buy computers, licenses, etc. We have all this ready for them. Even with our profit share factored in this is often cheaper than just ramping up from scratch.
Also it's cheaper to let the team idle. i.e. the client has work for us for 3 months. Then 5 months later he comes back and wants more. What do you do with a local on-site team? You have to keep them busy somehow the 5 months. You cannot let them idle or fire them, and just hiring an entire team, which works together well, in a matter of days (artists + coders + leads + ADs) isn't possible by posting job ads on the local newpaper. With an outsourcer you can just book the team when you need it and it's easy to add and remove artists from the team and adjust it's size without a big financial overhead.
Outsourcing is just another tool in the arsenal to make games. What's commonly called "outsourcing" is just a bigger scale than hiring single contractors or freelancers. It's really quite similar.
The thing that worries me is that if this trend can be done in some other country for peanuts. Than that will effect your companies ability to compete.
It's actually funny I was checking out Virtous' website the other day! Weird.
This will probably change, eventually; but for now, overseas outsourcing isn't really a threat to western game artists, as long as you're competent.
I think we pay an okay salary for China. Seriously, I've seen worse work environments in the west. For my team I see that we get our work done and that everyone is out after their 8h work day if possible. I prefer sharp people who can think clearly over office zombies. We offer training for the staff (English and software), we have modern hardware, company dinners and trips... ain't too different from the west (although we don't have an EA style campus with a Gym and Basketball court
Another thing to consider is that without outsourcing many games may not have the scope you expect (or may not exist at all). Outsourcing is often a fixed part of the budget of a title.
There's also the fact that one studio just cannot do everything. Think of all the Flash companion games, facebook games, XBLA and PSN Home items that accompany big titles nowadays with marketing effort. Not every studio has the knowledge and resources to make them - this gets outsourced.
Also, many studios already outsource internally....who's here in China already? EA, Ubi, Blizzard, Funcom, 2K, Eidos, Gameloft, Popcap and probably some more... Lucas and ILM are in Singapore. Epic has a studio in Poland. Crytek in Hungary. All countries where you can get talent and cheaper operating costs. (Not sure how it compares to Canada with it's government fueled games fund though). But certainly cheaper than UK, US, Germany.
Outsourcing is happening more often and in a bigger scale than most people think! (certainly bigger than I thought before I came here)
You'd be surprised. I'm outsourcing a large part of my indie project artwork from an outsourcer in South Asia. My lower-end UK salary is enough to pay several people an above-average salary out there since the cost of living is simply that much lower.
The issue with outsourcing comes from a lack of control however - it's not like it's a perfect solution for obtaining cheap assets.
^ true. The Thing about outsourcing is that assets come back and they need some form of tweaking to get it into your game. It doesn't matter what it is. There's always something that needs to be modified. Secondary tasks tend to be outsourced. Primary tasks are usually in-house. It's rare that a critical task is outsourced. This way you minimize risk.
As one that handles outsourcing for my team I can tell you it would be difficult to keep an entire project outsourced. It could be done but there's a point where it would become less productive/cost effective.
On the other hand, i do agree that the scope of projects sometimes call for outsourcing. I would say support students that are about to graduate and pay them a competitive contract rate and you get more people working for shorts amounts of time on things you might not have time, you are helping people train, the money stays here where we need it, and your community grows.
I don't think this is a problem for us as artists in the industry if you are talented, like some people said already. But why take away opportunities for people here? smaller studios that want to outsource here in the same country? To me it's like a plague...kinda like the car phenomena, where very little actual car companies produced american cars... and most foreign cars are being developed here since they used to be outsourced for parts and now they are rich and have the income to come do it in this country. Then the gov needs to bail out a car company so they don't go out of business since a lot of people would be out of a job. Its a little sickening when you look at most tags of anything and it says "MADE IN CHINA" or somewhere else. It's too bad nothing is made here anymore, we like to think we earn all this money, and spend it to make even more, when non of it stays. More people in charge really need to focus more on the people, their employees, their country and communities, and less in what do i have to do to make myself even richer and way to bail out when the time comes. To me its selfish and very unproductive, since it doesn't bring any edge or step up. I guess its just something i don't really agree on. But that is my opinion on the matter so far.
But wouldn't it make more sense to say hire for a 3 to 6 month period graduating artists that have a good portfolio? and i mean they are interviewed and you do take say a couple of days to look at their work, maybe an art test. I think there is a lot of potential in students that are graduating.
Here at 1p some temp work just finished for the summer (which is our busiest time) and most of them are students that are about to graduate or have just graduated. Some of them have the potential to get hired, but at least they have industry exp now, they got paid pretty well, and they did a really fantastic job. You just don't hire anybody. If people want to be worth it, then they have to work on their skills and portfolio. If there are no students, then go with a studio that is in the country at least... but if we keep sending all the money out of the country, then what are we left with?
Also, i think investing in the community will pay out in spades in the long run. What you give is what you get, and at least here the policies to be pro active in the community i think has great influences in the work area, people around work, and you actually feel proud of where you live and the things that you do. Example of this would be tutoring and taking the time to teach students. I have been doing a lot of mentoring to high school kids and college, so that they are better prepared, and its so rewarding to give a chance to them and other people around here to get a job. One that is not that easy to get when its so competitive.
I hate to say this also but the lack of regulation over piracy in China, there's nothing forcing outsourcing studios to actually buy any of their software, which reduces their costs somewhat.
The US economy is falling in a major way, and China is on a massive rise.
China is VERY quickly becoming an economic middle class, and within 2 year is predicated to usurp the mantle of 'World Economic Superpower' from the US.
I can soon see China transitioning into a similar situation as South Korea. Where they make enough salary where it's no longer a viable economic option to outsource to them, when you can keep it internal with far less headaches, communication breakdowns, and be in the same timezone.
Isn't this "The US economy is falling in a major way, and China is on a massive rise." partly because everything is made in China? because they earn all the money that we should be earning? well.. that and the fact that they work work work. Also, i watched a documentary on Chinas financial exponential growth by them build build building, creating jobs to build and bla bla, but there is no demand at all for that. I'll try to find it, because i think it rises a very interesting point.
Found it!
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I believe the trend of Chinese publishers investing in and opening studios in the west will continue. Right now Chinese games don't really appeal to westerners, so they will need the outside talent to expand to markets outside of Asia.
Right, I think some studios are leaning more towards outsourcing to specialized, experienced artists who can deliver top notch work, the cost is worth it when you consider that low end talent is just going to make more work for your inhouse team. To me, I don't necessarily equate outsourcing with low cost options. Some studios will outsource to get specific results that they can't get out of thier out onsite staff as well.
When you take into account problems with communication, lack of direction on the outsource studio side, and the fact that your onsite team will often have to tweak or redo large portions of the work, it makes a lot more sense to simply pay a more reliable, english-speaking studio to do the work. Often its even less expensive to sign on a team of experienced high end artists, as you can rely on them to do quality work and integrate into your pipeline without hand holding.
I think for a time there was a trend to go with China/India, but too many developers have gotten burned going that route, and too many of these studios just aren't up to par as far as current-gen quality game assets. So I think we're seeing a trend against these "low cost" options now.
It's still viable for MMOs - but it seems like the MMO industry is a seperate beast from the rest of the industry. The art is still last gen, teams are in the 100s and up, dev cycles are 2-3 times longer than other genres with 4 times the assets. This is only going to grow with f2p when you need to create new content every 1-2 months not every 1-2 years.
Isn't that what all the game fans are complaining about?
I don't know :poly124: I just know I'm pro keep people employed supported. Rather than better quick to outsource and fire half a studio for cheap labor costs.
I've worked with bad, but I've also worked with great. A lot of it falls on the internal art staff and their ability to properly document what they want the outsourcers to create. you can't really blame them if they were given shoddy documentation.
Also, a lot of people think they can just send an asset list and get everything back without hitch. That's plain wrong. On Ghostbusters, I stayed up late and skyped with the team and the team lead in China. In return I got awesome art back that didn't need to get sent back.
I think this is the crux of the problem. With games taking more time, money and man power to create, developers are forced to outsource more as they cannot create these large blockbuster games in the same amount of time as the old PS2 era games.
Right now the tech studios like Epic and Dice are pushing tech that looks amazing but the issue is that it is only adding more and more work on top of what already must be done without speeding up the process of actually making art. There are still a lot of studios still wrapping there heads around this generations pixel shaders and pushing the consoles to there limit.
Yeah compare xbox 360 launch titles to RAGE or Battlefield 3
I wonder how long graphics would continue to improve if we stayed on the same hardware for 5-10 more years.
Yeah, I agree the best possible way for a developer to ensure smooth outsourcing is communication, and having clear and specific goals both from a technical and artistic level. This means clear concepts, blockouts, example assets to set the bar for quality and artistic style, technical documents clearly outlining specific workflows or engine specific requirements etc etc. The better your pre-production type documentation is, the easier it is going to be to get predictable work from outsourcers.
Too many studios just send off a basic concept and spec to a contractor, with little information more than the polygon and texture budget, and expect to get something back that is going to integrate seamlessly into their game. This is just unrealistic.
When communication is solid, and the goals are clear on a project it helps everyone. The client has to give out much less feedback, and do much less(or no) rework, the contractors can produce art more efficiently, and can charge lower rates as well as work at a faster pace. There is nothing that slows a contract job down more than poor communication or unclear artistic goals on a project.
Now, having been on both sides, both in a position of influence in regards to hiring and working with contractors onsite, and being a contractor myself not to mention reviewing applicants for a contracting house, I have to say that the quality of work I regularly see from applicants in Asia and India is consistently at a lower level than the work I see from guys in the US/Europe. I know this is a fairly big generalization, but its something that really sticks out over the past 5 years or so of reviewing applicants. Only recently(in the past year or so) am I starting to notice artists from Asia and India that are really impressing me with the quality of work they show, and even then its generally few and far between.
This is entirely dependent on the on what sort of work you're outsourcing, if its lower level props and such, its likely not a big deal, but if you're doing more hero type assets, I find it can be very difficult to find artists up to par outside of the US/Europe. This is just my personal experience of course.
Ok, I've got to ask. What is this "not a lot of money" that employed game artists make? What level of lifestyle does this salary provide? I've lived in Minnesota all of my life and I read articles that claim a game artist makes $40K-$80K a year. For me, $40K is more than enough for what I would need to live comfortably, but perhaps my lifestyle isn't that demanding?
$40k is the average teacher salary in the US which is considered pretty crappy - except by Fox news.
And that's 40k living in expensive cities.
There are actually some really good outsourcing studios out there. I've gotten models back where I doubt I could have made it better myself, although admittedly that's more of an exception than the rule.
The biggest problem with outsourcing is all of the overhead. You spend a lot longer on producing detailed concepts, spend time giving feedback/paintovers/tweaks on the progress, and then possibly still end up having to do a ton of rework to get it into the game. With all that extra overhead I sometimes wonder if I could have just built a better model myself in the same time, but obviously that isn't the case when you've got multiple assets being produced simultaneously.
When the outsourcing starts to get to the point where the internal artists feel like all their time is spent with quality control instead of being artists then that's a big problem. You need experienced artists to give good feedback, but there aren't a lot of experienced artists who are going to put up with that kind of work for long. It's funny because we end up feeling like we outsource all the fun stuff and end up with all the shit tasks ourselves when you'd think it would be the other way around.
Quality-wise, outsourcing work can be really good, but depending on the game, it can be really difficult to get artistic stylization and sometimes the models end up being technically correct, but artistically soulless. Kind of goes with the territory when you're dealing with artists who have no personal connection with the project they're contributing to.