A 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

A 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...