Sakurai: modern game development is too time consuming and unsustainable. AI is the solution.
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Felessan
Member
It's funny how some on the forums so sure that they are smarter than company management.
Those are 10$ games and even though unit numbers are big, revenue numbers are relatively small.
And there are also "survival bias" for 10$ games - everyone know success stories, but no one know or care about failures (and there are a lot of them). Unlike AAA games where whole slate is widely known and every success and failure discussed.
Normies play live service games on mobile, this is why mobile gaming is half of the market.
KenaiPhoenix
Member
It is common logic and bussiness experience, or do you think budgets like whats rumored to be GTA seems reasonable to you? And many companies are not even using their own engines, that also cheapen dev costs and maintenance. Now thing like consulship are the typical shit you see, and they dont do it for free, like 4 million Baby Inc demanded to Wukong, and other bonus for the big management. And with what they spent in marketing campaign, the Hollywood actors (that also dont need to be) it is bloated.
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If the manage their budget a little more wisely that how AAA companies does, they might be margin more, even if it terms of net numbers it is less (it is technically more 1% margin of 1billion bucks than 50% of 100 bucks. But technically one if more efficient that the other. Just and example ofc).
And yes there is ofc a case of indies relying too much "4 players coop, rogue like, crafting survival, pixel art multiplayer game". But honestly that not even only them, now everything is a multiplayer game, again, trying to be the next sensation between streamers so they can sell more.
That exactly my point: normies are starting to play less. The market that had record numbers after record numbers and could never spent too much on something is slowing down and shrinking, and it i starting on the mobile market and "classic" market as well. You just need to go outside and see that most people and kids are now hooked to social media, to record themselves as influences and similar activities. Yes, when there is a huge popular release like HellDivers 2, Monster Hunter, something on MiHoyo for the phones, a popular mobile game of a series, people run to get it, but then drop it.
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Arachnid
Member
No way in hell a 12 hour experience should launch for 80 dollars. There has to be a medium between those extremes.
rofif
Can’t Git Gud
Resident evil 4 (or even remake) are 8-15h long games.
Infinite replayability. Even all those years later.
Full priced games
That's because the games are great and have good length. Too long games are too scary to replay
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ReBurn
Gold Member
Indeed. And when it comes to generative AI the tools can create the tools that speed up development. It's insane what can be scaffolded by gen AI.
Just yesterday I needed a bash script to get a list of logged in users, end their processes, and close all of their connections to some app servers. A two sentence prompt into github copilot generated a script with documentation that worked perfectly the first time, and it took less than 5 seconds to generate. Could I have written it by hand? Sure. But why? The time I saved allowed me to do this and three other things on my list in the time it would have taken me to create one script.
Arachnid
Member
Both RE4s are 16-20 hours, 20+ if you do the sides. It took me 24 hours for my first playthrough, which was perfect. Same with The Last of Us 2 and Alien Isolation. 20-24 is exactly where I'd like those games to be.
On the other hand, RE7 and 8 both took me 11-12 hours first playthrough and I felt cheated. RE2make was 12 hours both runs, and I felt cheated (though they gave a solid amount of free content after that extended time somewhat). RE3make was 4 hours, and I was livid.
So yeah, speaking from the RE experience, 20-24 hours is the sweet spot. Anything else isn't justifiable IMO
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Felessan
Member
It's common delusion, yes. All these consultancy etc are pennies in total budget and a lot of it recuperated from target grants and ESG linked (cheaper) financing. Companies and their management are not idiots.
And lol about management compensation whining.
You of course know it better how to manage budget "wiser"
Efficiency only interesting compared to scale. Almost no one care about even 70% margin on 100$, there are millions of such opportunities left on the table as it's too much bother. 30% margin on 1bn is another story, such opportunities are rare and highly coveted.
Moreover, one game efficiency is not particularly interesting, total average return is what matters. And if out of 10 games only 1 is successful (that is pretty normal in 10$ games space), so called "50% efficiency" go down to 5% real result, not really something to brag about.
WTF? what bs is in your head.
Your own posted links shows increased revenue and increased number of players across all regions. Gaming is growing as a whole, it's just heavily diversify from this forum favorite pc/console SP games into "hate" territory of live service mobile-first games. And social media is fueling this growth. 20 years ago gaming was "for kids and nerds" and selling 10 mil copies was a huge fit. Now top games selling 30, 50 or even 100 mil copies and information about games seeps into mass market by the same social media you are trying to blame.
You should really go outside and see that the number of people playing on mobile increased several orders of magnitude in last 10 years (literally no one played mobile 10 years ago). And number of people who are aware and have some interest in gaming as a leisure activity also increased a lot.
SkylineRKR
Member
Yeah and I don't get it. Maybe if I had no life or something, but I crave shorter games nowadays. There are some exceptions but an RPG doesn't have to go beyond 30 hours, and an action game doesn't have to go above 10 hours. Not always. FFXVI and FFVII Remake were better games if their runtime was cut in half.
I am wrapping up Silent Hill 2 right now and while I think its an exceptional remake I wished it was over already after approaching 20 hours. I went through the motions in the Labyrinth section. They could've shrunk that part and the game would've been better off in terms of pacing.
RE4 is a slight bit too long for me. Though when I beat OG after Village, I clocked the exact same hours in both. But I remembered some parts of RE4. RE4 really drags at the island, especially the original.
RE3R wasn't worth its full price, but it was a very good bargain bin game. I beat it 4 times over, sometimes twice in one evening. RE3R was lacking in content, that was next to the cut locations my main issue. If it had Mercs, or some RE2 side stories I would've been cool with it. RE3R ultimately was a shorter game and has less content than RE2R yet was sold at the same price, that was its biggest issue.
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Walliwallipaloo
Member
The solution is to step back to Xbox 360 quality visuals and actually try some innovation.
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
What is the technological difference between procedural generation used in game development, and AI? Honestly asking.
Angry_Megalodon
Member
Authority fallacy. It's wrong for actual brains like scientists, imagine how wrong it is for suits whose only merit is to climb up the corporate ladder. These people are driven by greed and many of them are morons, no matter how many diplomas they hang in their office walls.
The whole Western entertainment collapse is due to bad management, nothing else. You can't say what a straight face that execs at XBOX, Disney, EA, Ubisoft and a long etc. have the slightest clue of what they are doing.
The true pioneers, the company founders, those were the smart ones. The current management is just ruining the legacy of people much better than them.
So no, a magic trick like AI is not going to help them in solving a problem they have created.
Felessan
Member
It's a fallacy and stupidity to think measured against how efficient they are to operate a very complex structure are morons.
Of course there are different people, but to my experience there are much easier to encounter smart and capable person in higher management than on a street or a forum.
Like 90% prioritize immediate gains even though it will be their loss on 5 year horizon and no amount of argument will persuade them overwise. It is very not smart, but they don't care, they want freebies now and don't care about long-term consequences.
Xbox for sure know what they are trying to do.
Management is a complex task with lots of conflicting priorities and math chaos involved. And there are other players on the market that can and sometimes will sabotage your efforts.
You think that xbox should take console business as selling good console with good games. It's not their priority (it's not even Sony priority, only Nintendo stick to old path). MS lost interest to run limited-scale console business long time ago, it doesn't synergize well with the rest of the company. So they want gaming either on much bigger scale that would justify management resources allocated or something that goes well with other business, complementing it - so is a focus - subscription, cloud etc. And those are "new" areas of gaming, not really well explored, so they hold a lot of uncertainty and prone to errors in decisions.
Like for example - Sony and MS bet on the future of gaming roughly at the same time. MS bet on subscription model and it was initially highly praised and welcomed by players. Sony bet on live services and it hated by old-school players to this day. Both were quite uncharted waters as gaming market was experiencing paradigm shift and there was a lot of uncertainty were exactly it will go. As a result - Sony won and actually Sony's win was a huge part in MS loss as it's hard to justify paid subscription, especially in mass market, when there is a huge layer of games of relatively the same quality that can be played for free.