5 ms·

If the AAA practices had been so bad then, by now, we had Agile-TDD-etc shops taking their lunch and driving them out of business. As of now there is just one s

If the AAA practices had been so bad then, by now, we had Agile-TDD-etc shops taking their lunch and driving them out of business. As of now there is just one studio practicing Agile, Blizzard. If it is not known, Blizzard is also famous for incredibly long projects and missing deadlines. I had personally observed collapse of two Agile AAA studios, who, while doing pretty well by the industry standards, did not have the super-profitable titles to hold them up during 5+ years of development cycle. So I believe we have the AAA practices not because game programmers are stupid but because studios that don't use them are not around for long.

ryanobjc 12y ago
The answer is fairly simple here, is that software quality is not everything in this space. The systems are not mission critical, and PR, marketing, money and a good "property" (eg: star wars) can pave over quality issues. For example, look at Assassin's Creed - will the bad launch cause people to avoid AC in the future? Maybe, but probably not.
NeverEnough 12y ago
there isn't any reason to suspect that a small company doing one thing better will walk all over AAA, that's hyperbole. AAA's culture is good enough and their other large advantages give them their market share.
- pandaman 12y ago
  What are the advantages AAA studios have? There are no patents or secret know-hows, there is only reputation they have built themselves. If you have a superior process why cannot you do the same? For example, a small company id Software started developing games in C when everyone else had been doing Assembler and pretty soon not just established itself as a AAA studio but effected everyone else to switch to C as well. This is how a superior process works in the games industry.
  - eropple 12y ago
    > What are the advantages AAA studios have? Shitloads of money. Massive institutional knowledge of public relations and marketing. Direct lines to Sony and Microsoft. Every kind of benefit of economy of scale you could want.
    - pandaman 12y ago
      You seem to be confusing publishers and studios. If you are so good with development practices you can sign the same contract other AAA studios do and get the same access to the benefits of economy of scale you attributed to studios.
      - eropple 12y ago
        Um. Publishers own the majority of these studios (or they self-publish, generally after a spinoff or long working relationship under a publisher). That's why those advantages apply to them. Otherwise, how exactly do you propose to "sign the same contract" without having money in the first place to build the infrastructure and already having spent a shitload of money to be in a position to be considered for it? It's not like the idea of a barrier to entry is a new concept.
        pandaman 12y ago
        Some studios are owned by publishers, some are not. The statement I argued was made about every AAA studio, BTW. But if you cannot compete with a publisher owned studio then go after ones that are independant like Epic or Bungie or Insomniac or Arena or Telltale or Riot etc. etc. If you want how it's done look no further than Respawn. The studio was just founded in 2010 , signed a publishing contract without long relationship with the publisher and infrastructure, shipped a game already. It is how almost every AAA studio started (there are few studios that had been seeded by publishers, but as far as I know, none if them exist now). It's pure meritocracy here, if you are good then getting a publishing deal is not a problem.
        12y ago
SimpleMinds 12y ago
I was not implying that game programmers are stupid, sorry. I meant that they way it was told in the company how AAA do it sounded similar to what I learned about how big companies done it 10 or something years ago. Coming from agile workplace, I think there were things that could have been kept in place to improve quality of life for developers and art teams. I'm not sure if I can express what I mean correctly. For example, why the dreaded "crunch time" in gaming is treated as norm, while in modern web/mobile shops its believed that something like this is going to result in worse quality over time? I could see arguing here with myself that AAA games are usually "ship and forget", with some bugfixes only. Maybe because company I was working in was not AAA, but small (by industry standards) f2p mobile shop, where applying AAA ideas is not that great (in my opinion). I mean that's where your product is more along lines of web apps - you are going to constantly add content, update code base, refine features, so focusing on quality in long term is better. This, thought, I was not able to articulate clearly and properly to AAA veterans. I feel like not all ideas from current practises can be applied to big gaming studios, but saying that I believe it can be improved. This may need time and risk that companies that are big enough to be called AAA are not willing to take. Why two companies you mentioned failed? I think we can assume there might be more reasons to that than only being Agile, maybe their games were just not that good, or IP was boring? Still you sound like you have more experience than me here, I'm trying to wrap my head around whole AAA industry thing. I'm ranting about it so much because making games was way more entertaining than web/mobile, but the industry is so poisonous for pure developers that I had to quit to regain my sanity :)
- pandaman 12y ago
  I am not sure people outside game industry do not crunch. A brief search shows that the term existed long before the modern game industry or any game industry at all. Same goes for "overtime" - the term is even codified in laws. I assure you nobody treats crunch as a normal mode: even people who are forcing unnecessary crunch understand that it's something unordinary and often do it just because it is not something normal (to show how good they are at management, to extort a bigger budget, to undermine their political rivals etc). >This may need time and risk that companies that are big enough to be called AAA are not willing to take. Infinity Ward, the original home of $1B+ games, had about 100 people at the time of the split from ATVI and founding Respawn. It's about the same size now as well as the Respawn. Media Molecule is just a few dozens. Size does not make a AAA studio. And you don't even need to show the best practices right at the AAA level - start small and if it's any good people will copy you or, at least, you should be able to grow yourself. >Why two companies you mentioned failed? >I think we can assume there might be more reasons to that than only being Agile Indeed, it would be naive to blame Agile on destroying multi-million businesses. Agile seems to be just a symptom. It could be that the management sees that the development process is failing and tries to improve it with a well advertised technique, for example. Or that some Agile enthusiast gets too much power due to the weakened culture. What I was trying to say is that very few AAA studios practice it now and the ones that did in the past are not in the business any more. Also, there is no single AAA development way. For example, Valve's practices are very different from Bungie's, which are different from the R*, which are different from ATVI's COD teams etc.

ryanobjc 12y ago

The answer is fairly simple here, is that software quality is not everything in this space. The systems are not mission critical, and PR, marketing, money and a good "property" (eg: star wars) can pave over quality issues. For example, look at Assassin's Creed - will the bad launch cause people to avoid AC in the future? Maybe, but probably not.

NeverEnough 12y ago

there isn't any reason to suspect that a small company doing one thing better will walk all over AAA, that's hyperbole. AAA's culture is good enough and their other large advantages give them their market share.

pandaman 12y ago
What are the advantages AAA studios have? There are no patents or secret know-hows, there is only reputation they have built themselves. If you have a superior process why cannot you do the same? For example, a small company id Software started developing games in C when everyone else had been doing Assembler and pretty soon not just established itself as a AAA studio but effected everyone else to switch to C as well. This is how a superior process works in the games industry.
- eropple 12y ago
  > What are the advantages AAA studios have? Shitloads of money. Massive institutional knowledge of public relations and marketing. Direct lines to Sony and Microsoft. Every kind of benefit of economy of scale you could want.
  - pandaman 12y ago
    You seem to be confusing publishers and studios. If you are so good with development practices you can sign the same contract other AAA studios do and get the same access to the benefits of economy of scale you attributed to studios.
    - eropple 12y ago
      Um. Publishers own the majority of these studios (or they self-publish, generally after a spinoff or long working relationship under a publisher). That's why those advantages apply to them. Otherwise, how exactly do you propose to "sign the same contract" without having money in the first place to build the infrastructure and already having spent a shitload of money to be in a position to be considered for it? It's not like the idea of a barrier to entry is a new concept.
      - pandaman 12y ago
        Some studios are owned by publishers, some are not. The statement I argued was made about every AAA studio, BTW. But if you cannot compete with a publisher owned studio then go after ones that are independant like Epic or Bungie or Insomniac or Arena or Telltale or Riot etc. etc. If you want how it's done look no further than Respawn. The studio was just founded in 2010 , signed a publishing contract without long relationship with the publisher and infrastructure, shipped a game already. It is how almost every AAA studio started (there are few studios that had been seeded by publishers, but as far as I know, none if them exist now). It's pure meritocracy here, if you are good then getting a publishing deal is not a problem.
        12y ago

SimpleMinds 12y ago

I was not implying that game programmers are stupid, sorry. I meant that they way it was told in the company how AAA do it sounded similar to what I learned about how big companies done it 10 or something years ago. Coming from agile workplace, I think there were things that could have been kept in place to improve quality of life for developers and art teams. I'm not sure if I can express what I mean correctly. For example, why the dreaded "crunch time" in gaming is treated as norm, while in modern web/mobile shops its believed that something like this is going to result in worse quality over time? I could see arguing here with myself that AAA games are usually "ship and forget", with some bugfixes only. Maybe because company I was working in was not AAA, but small (by industry standards) f2p mobile shop, where applying AAA ideas is not that great (in my opinion). I mean that's where your product is more along lines of web apps - you are going to constantly add content, update code base, refine features, so focusing on quality in long term is better. This, thought, I was not able to articulate clearly and properly to AAA veterans. I feel like not all ideas from current practises can be applied to big gaming studios, but saying that I believe it can be improved. This may need time and risk that companies that are big enough to be called AAA are not willing to take. Why two companies you mentioned failed? I think we can assume there might be more reasons to that than only being Agile, maybe their games were just not that good, or IP was boring? Still you sound like you have more experience than me here, I'm trying to wrap my head around whole AAA industry thing. I'm ranting about it so much because making games was way more entertaining than web/mobile, but the industry is so poisonous for pure developers that I had to quit to regain my sanity :)

pandaman 12y ago
I am not sure people outside game industry do not crunch. A brief search shows that the term existed long before the modern game industry or any game industry at all. Same goes for "overtime" - the term is even codified in laws. I assure you nobody treats crunch as a normal mode: even people who are forcing unnecessary crunch understand that it's something unordinary and often do it just because it is not something normal (to show how good they are at management, to extort a bigger budget, to undermine their political rivals etc). >This may need time and risk that companies that are big enough to be called AAA are not willing to take. Infinity Ward, the original home of $1B+ games, had about 100 people at the time of the split from ATVI and founding Respawn. It's about the same size now as well as the Respawn. Media Molecule is just a few dozens. Size does not make a AAA studio. And you don't even need to show the best practices right at the AAA level - start small and if it's any good people will copy you or, at least, you should be able to grow yourself. >Why two companies you mentioned failed? >I think we can assume there might be more reasons to that than only being Agile Indeed, it would be naive to blame Agile on destroying multi-million businesses. Agile seems to be just a symptom. It could be that the management sees that the development process is failing and tries to improve it with a well advertised technique, for example. Or that some Agile enthusiast gets too much power due to the weakened culture. What I was trying to say is that very few AAA studios practice it now and the ones that did in the past are not in the business any more. Also, there is no single AAA development way. For example, Valve's practices are very different from Bungie's, which are different from the R*, which are different from ATVI's COD teams etc.