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Why do games require so many developers to work 20 hour days? Aren't most of games built on commercial engines that do most of the heavy lifting? I've been fol
by Aloisius 14y ago
Why do games require so many developers to work 20 hour days? Aren't most of games built on commercial engines that do most of the heavy lifting?
I've been following the Doublefine guys and a lot of their development was put into making developer tools. I suppose I understand that, but when I hear of these 400 person teams building a game that takes 4 years to make, I'm honestly a little bewildered.
- ijk 14y agoA huge chunk of that team size is artists, level designers, testing, audio, and studio overhead. Not that there aren't lots of programmers too, especially in a game with lots of scripted levels and separate systems. But it isn't like it's a team of 400 programmers. Also, while the engines do most of the visual stuff, which was what a lot of the '90s-era tech-talk revolved around, they do nothing to implement your gameplay. Here's the credits for one of those big-team games, as an example (81 or so engineers/scripters, but only a fraction of the total team size): http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox360/call-of-duty-black-ops/credits http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox360/call-of-duty-black-ops...
- pasquinelli 14y agoi can tell you the reason this happens at shitty, small developers making low budget games: designers. i wouldn't presume to comment beyond that though.