Support NeoGAF

[element]

if games are too achieve the level of detail in the Killzone video, I think we are going to have a nasty fall in the number of quality games.

That video was insane in detail, and I highly doubt a team as small as GG could do a game like that with a scale gamers will find acceptable.

We are either going to see huge development cycles, or shorter games because there just isn't time to build the content.

 

[gamergirly]

Aww poor baby

 

[galeninjapan]

But I hear that next-gen games give you head.

 

[Kifimbo]

That's why we need a Revolution !!!

Seriously, I agree 100% with you.

 

[Drensch]

I can't see how dev cycles and costs aren't going to be completely out of control.

 

[siege]

Yep. Less games, shorter games, and bigger prices. $70 next-gen games here we come.

 

[Saki]

We are either going to see huge development cycles, or shorter games because there just isn't time to build the content.

You haven't noticed this already with current gen titles?

 

[element]

Don't get me wrong, I'm exctied as the next gamer. But looking at these and knowing how long and difficult developing games can be, I'm scared of what the future holds.

....as i go into a never ending line of overtime...

 

[CabbageRed]

If the big three reach out to a larger market, shouldn't larger user base help offset development costs? Of course, Epic and other engine developers are about to become much larger players I assume.

 

[Tellaerin]

Considering how many of us here have huge backlogs of games (many of which end up getting eBayed or traded in unplayed or half-finished), longer development cycles might not be such a bad thing. A slow(er) but steady flow of high-quality titles would just mean that most of us would end up being able to play through most of the quality stuff that gets released, instead of only a fraction.

 

[Razoric]

People say this every generation.

Middleware / Pre-Built Engines will help with a lot of what you are saying. Plus less games is a GOOD thing IMO.

 

[seismologist]

big games like Killzone will probably cost $60

 

[Kifimbo]

Considering how many of us here have huge backlogs of games (many of which end up getting eBayed or traded in unplayed or half-finished), longer development cycles might not be such a bad thing. A slow(er) but steady flow of high-quality titles would just mean that most of us would end up being able to play through most of the quality stuff that gets released, instead of only a fraction.

It doesn't change the fact that small studios will have a hard time competing.

 

[DJ_Tet]

If the big three reach out to a larger market, shouldn't larger user base help offset development costs? Of course, Epic and other engine developers are about to become much larger players I assume.

Am I alone in thinking the market won't get much bigger than it is now?

 

[Malakhov]

If we ever get a next gen game running like that killzone 2 video color me impressed. But I doubt we'll see it anytime soon. In a few years maybe.

 

[djm19]

I forsee demise of many devs who cant keep up with the cost and just opt for gameplay (as if that sells anything anymore)

 

[element]

Middleware / Pre-Built Engines will help with a lot of what you are saying. Plus less games is a GOOD thing IMO.

Middleware only makes it easier to get code running. You still need to make the art, that is the actual time consuming process right now. Especially if you plan on working to that level of detail.

Not many developers can afford to have 100 artists.
Not many developers can trust outsourcing houses.

Art is the bottleneck this generation.

 

[newsguy]

Shorter games... Longer cycles... Higher prices...

 

[Fatghost]

Bring me games with the quality of that Killzone demo and quality gameplay and I'll glady fork over 70 per title.

 

[LittleTokyo]

I agree with you guys. Will the little guys survive?

EDIT: Almost forgot about the handheld market. That and the PS2 market will still be active for a long time.

 

[Mac the KNife]

Am I alone in thinking the market won't get much bigger than it is now?

Actually it will probably continue to expand. Young gamers become older gamers. People are picking up controllers for the first time, etc.


Higher development costs=better product=higher software prices=fewer purchases per gamer and fewer individual games (all in theory of course).

Smaller studios will undoubtably get eaten up by larger ones (like EA *shutter*) but there will probably be more to replace those.

If gametime is shorter but the experience grows i'm all for it. The older I get (i'm 20 now), the less time I have to spend on games, so I would prefer and incredible experience condensed in a 10-20 hour game (for some genres)

God of War is a perfect example of what I mean.

 

[xabre]

People say this every generation.

Middleware / Pre-Built Engines will help with a lot of what you are saying. Plus less games is a GOOD thing IMO.

Exactly.

It doesn't seem to sink in though, as hardware improves so do the development tools to exploit that new hardware. If this logic, that a new game console is soooo powerful that it cannot be exploited and that the tools used to create new game worlds never evolved with the hardware, then we'd be stuck playing an ultra fast, 100,000 sprite mario game on PS3 hardware because the tools would never have been created to take advantage of its 3D capabilities in the first place.

Another point is that developers like Epic and Valve spend years and millions designing highly advanced engines like Unreal Engine and Source and these engines are then licensed out to third parties who cannot afford the time and expense to develop their own. I'm sick of hearing the same shit every generation also, remember 'only five developers can take advantage of the power of PS3', 'only the Nintendo 64 dream team can take advantage of the Nintendo 64 hardware'. How many times is this going to be said, be proved totally wrong and still have the gullible say the same shit again and again.

Really people, get over it.

 

[element]

Middleware targets the code, not the assets.

Give me a tool that 'makes' a model. Then you can say it is easy.

 

[Tellaerin]

It doesn't change the fact that small studios will have a hard time competing.

Sad to say, there's really not much to be done about that. Consumers aren't going to scale back their expectations now that they've seen what's possible, and the little guys aren't going to have the resources to compete on the same level as the bigger studios--the divide between the two is going to be that much greater. You can still produce your own film with just a script, a handful of actors and a camera, but in 99.9% of cases, that's not going to get you into theatres across the country anymore. The videogame industry seems to have reached the same point.

 

[DJ_Tet]

Actually it will probably continue to expand. Young gamers become older gamers. People are picking up controllers for the first time, etc.

I can only speak for myself, and I never thought I'd say this when I was 20 (29 now), but the older I get the less inclined I am to play games.

I don't see this generation drawing any more new players than the last generation, not counting children obviously. I think the gaming audience is about at it's saturation point. It's just never gonna be in there with movies and music as something everyone enjoys, imo.

 

[xabre]

Middleware targets the code, not the assets.

Give me a tool that 'makes' a model. Then you can say it is easy.

No tool is going to make your games for you, who said otherwise? Improving development tools will cut down significantly on lengthy development times and costs and as these naturally evolve with new hardware the rhetoric that only the best of the best and the richest of the richest will be able to make games in the future is very wrong.

 

[element]

No tool is going to make your games for you, who said otherwise? Improving development tools will cut down significantly on lengthy development times and costs and as these naturally evolve with new hardware the rhetoric that only the best of the best and the richest of the richest will be able to make games in the future is very wrong.

no tool is going to cut down the time to model a character, texture map it, build the normal maps, the alpha maps, the reflective maps, and about every other map there is.

art isn't like code, it takes time. Even bad art takes time.

From a code perspective, development is becoming easier and easier. But from an art level, it is getting more difficult without anything to take the pressure off. Outside of more bodies and more time.

 

[Mrbob]

Stick with PC and get on NOLF 3 plz! Though I know it won't happen.

 

[Bizarro Sun Yat-sen]

I'm sick of hearing the same shit every generation also, remember 'only five developers can take advantage of the power of PS3', 'only the Nintendo 64 dream team can take advantage of the Nintendo 64 hardware'. How many times is this going to be said, be proved totally wrong and still have the gullible say the same shit again and again.

?

It's already been proven mostly RIGHT again and again. We did get a little taste of it on PS1 and N64 with some developers like the Mother 3 team having trouble dealing with 3D game production, and other developers like Square becoming increasingly dependent on single franchises. We've gotten a much bigger taste on PS2 et al. with the current wave of consolidation and franchisitis. What makes you think the problems won't intensify on PS3 et al.?

 

[dorio]

Middleware targets the code, not the assets.

Give me a tool that 'makes' a model. Then you can say it is easy.

Exactly. I don't know who but the biggest of companies will be able to afford the artists to create that type of content. Remember there was a time when the programmers would make their own art, now it looks like it would take ILM to create assets for next gen games.

 

[Spectral Glider]

Get ready for infinitely more "games cause violence" cries along with the lawsuits.

 

[Phoenix]

The independents will survive so long as gamers don't become complete graphics whores... hmmm....well then I guess the little independents are doomed.

The one thing you didn't mention is more of the 'same' type of game. Huge investments mean taking fewer chances on games that might not make money. I still think that there will be people around willing to make more casual games that aren't tech demos, but I think this generation and its price compared to the price of upgrading a graphics card on a PC will drive the PC gamer into an even smaller niche than it already is.

Its hard to justify spending millions of dollars if you may only sell 150-300k units (which is actually very very good for the average PC title).

 

[RX178]

revolution should be my final hope that a real 'next gen' games to be played.
yes, ps3 should be great to have both video game and hdtv movie function for me but it's so close to today's top end pc games. my pj only support native 720p resolution, i really don't think it's a huge advantage to have 1080P support (don't think it will be so common in the near future).

 

[rastex]

no tool is going to cut down the time to model a character, texture map it, build the normal maps, the alpha maps, the reflective maps, and about every other map there is.

I'm not so sure about this. Unfortunately, the current artistic trend (at least in the West) is towards photorealistm, and we're getting kind of close. What this means, is that since real people look the same, well people in games are going to start to look the same. The implication of this similarity is that you can abstract things out, make them algorithmic and procedural. I can see some breakthrough tools that are more like the way movies work. You have an "actor" and can give him/her a costume, and apply makeup. The actual modelling of the character will already be done and some minimal time will be spent on making the key characters look unique. As for animation, we'll start seeing more physics-based procedural animations, IK solutions, etc that'll take a lot of bitch-work off the animators.


Essentially, with more processing power the need for prebaked assets falls, so the time saved in creating less assets offline will be put to increasing the quality of the remaining assets. Now, the curves probably don't cancel each other out, with procedural techniques lagging, but by the middle of the generation they should start to emerge. Console launches have NEVER been viable ground for independent developers, hell launches can, and have killed many large houses.

 

[element]

rastexm that sounds great, and I'd be all for it. I just don't see it happening right now.

 

[B'z-chan]

I think we need to take a look at games a little differently for next gen. If the little guys, and big wigs cant get out product fast enough were looking at some either great games or.... Episodic Content. You get the base engine and all the tolls that the developer needs for you to play the game. Then they continue development of the game with smaller expansions. Yeah it sucks ass, but i think it might be the only way to get anything worth wild out in a short amount of time.

I was really hoping that steam would show this out at first, but HL2 didnt come out like that. It was planed like that for a short while. But i hear that the expansion will be handled like this. Its the future.

Game companies want to focus more on the gamer and what they care about. This might give them the chance to do that, by creating "ENDINGS" for people that want a game to end. And or extensions or story archs. It might give us all what we've really been looking for in games.

 

[rastex]

rastexm that sounds great, and I'd be all for it. I just don't see it happening right now.

I totally appreciate the concern, and considering my gaming tastes I'd be one of the gamers hit hardest by such a thing. I mean looking at the games that Sony and MS showcased, what was the ratio of sequels to original titles? To me it seemed pretty friggin low. With the launch of the original Xbox there were a ton of new franchises demonstrated, I really liked that a lot.

 

[Tellaerin]

I think we need to take a look at games a little differently for next gen. If the little guys, and big wigs cant get out product fast enough were looking at some either great games or.... Episodic Content. You get the base engine and all the tolls that the developer needs for you to play the game. Then they continue development of the game with smaller expansions. Yeah it sucks ass, but i think it might be the only way to get anything worth wild out in a short amount of time.

I think that approach is a huge step backward. To me, it's like going from full length movies to fifteen-minute weekly serials at a Saturday matinee.

Besides, why the huge emphasis on getting things out 'in a short amount of time'? If this generation's proven anything, it's that developers are capable of cranking out top-tier titles a lot faster than most of us can finish them. Why is it so vital for them to do the same thing next gen? I'd rather have developers take twice as long (or more) to develop their games (and yes, I'd even swallow a price increase if necessary, loath as I am to say it) if that's what it takes to make them into full-length, high-quality titles.