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The Importance of Procedural Content Generation In Games
Gamasutra reports on a talk by Far Cry 2 developer Dominic Guay in which he discussed why procedural content generation is becoming more and more important as games get bigger and more complex. He also talks about some of the related difficulties, such as the amount of work required for the tools and the times when it's hard to retain control of the art direction. Quoting:
"Initially, the team created a procedural sky rendering approach based on algorithms — which led to a totally unconvincing skybox that was clearly inferior to what a hand-authored skybox would be. 'We considered it to be a total failure,' he said. He explained that a great deal of focus must be put on the tools that surround the algorithms, to allow the systems to be properly harnessed. In the end, the game shipped with a revamped procedural sky system that ended up much more effective than the first attempt."
"If you've never made a game yourself, you'd be amazed at how much work it is to create content."
And it's so much work because of the art, animation and effects, lets face this fact. Back in the 8-bit days the amount of work required was a lot but managable, you could put a lot more content into a 2D game in a lot less time then you can in a modern 3D rendered game in which the resolution is much higher and the more artists and designers you need just to get the most basic and mundane things done that existed in the 2D area. The same content in 2D that was easy, takes infinitely more time in the 3rd dimension just to get anywhere near the artistic quality of a good team of 2D artists. But this is something companies brought on themselves with their technolust, as we've seen with MegaMan 9 there are still people out there that like games for more then just their looks.