Slashdot Mirror
Video-Game Publishers Outsource Development
randomErr writes "According to a San Jose Mercury News article reprinted at the Miami Herald: 'Mark Vange is in the vanguard of globalizing the video-game industry. He employs 30 game developers in St. Petersburg, Russia, who have worked on everything from flight simulators to dragon-fighting games. 'We can get the work done for half the cost that it takes in the U.S.,' said Vange, president of Ketsujin Studios. Similar outsourcing of video-game production is being done in places like China, India, Vietnam and parts of Eastern Europe. California game developers, who are the creative force behind a $10 billion industry in the U.S. market, view the trend with a combination of fear and anticipation'."
Games outsourced to Russia are known for their quality
Worried you might not keep your virginity forever? Try new Linux(TM), guaranteed twice as effective as LARPing
1)Cultural differences. A culture founded on Confuscian ideals has few reference points with one founded on Hellenistic ones, for example. This pretty much ensures you can't outsource design. It also introduces communication difficulties between designers and coders.
2)Work ethic. Missed deadlines, shoddy work etc are mentioned in the article. What isn't mentioned is the shit approach to aftersales-Eastern European games are notorious for never being patched.
Essentially, the only real part that can be outsourced well is the art. This has already been going on for years, and it's only a logical step now to use the company in Saigon rather than the one in London-right up till Kinetix questions how the people you hired could afford the site licenses.
Worried you might not keep your virginity forever? Try new Linux(TM), guaranteed twice as effective as LARPing
Simpson's animation has been outsourced more or less since the beginning. Its only that you've just noticed now. http://kn.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/200 1/08/27/200108270029.asp
Thing is outsourcing has been an issue since before you were born. Its not going to get a quick fix or go away in a hurry. Its just that its impacting you for the first time. The rest of American industry has had its turn(s) before.
The game you're referencing was SimCity 3000, which was ported by a group called Software MacKiev. SimCity 4 was ported stateside, I think, but it was still dog-slow.
As a student of animation, I can tell you that this is nothing new. Almost ALL animation viewed in the US has been produced overseas since mid-eighties, corresponding closely to the ill-fated animators strike (they were striking against overseas production...) It's not all bad, however - although the scenes are animated overseas, you're right - there are certain actions and idioms that must be carried through precisely as indicated, or else jokes won't work.
Whose job is it to set up all the timing, thumbnails, and notes so the overseas animator doesn't screw up? Layout artists and timers, working here in the US. Although they succeeded in exporting the actual animation jobs, they made the remaining jobs here much more valuable. There's not too much room for screwing up when getting a reshoot of a bad scene takes weeks - hence, timing* is a very important position.
*timing is literally someone timing out actions with a stopwatch, notating them on an exposure sheet to dictate precisely how, when, and where keyframes and inbetweens fall. The timer has the most control over how a show looks in terms of the actual animation.
Most likely they're just doing in-between frames, basically making sure that the animation flows consistently between what the original artists actually drew. It doesn't leave much work for creativity, they just need to ensure that things look good. If you liked the Simpsons in the past then you don't have much to worry about, as they've been doing this for years.
GPL: Free as in will
Actually, yes we are.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I presume then that you will be voting for George W. Bush, the first president with an MBA (Harvard, 1975).
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.