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They Quite Literally Don't Make Games the Way They Used To (theguardian.com)
The days of two developers making games in a shed are over, an article on The Guardian says. Spend any time with your grandparents and at some stage the age-old phase "they don't make them like they use to" will pop up as nostalgia gets the better of them. Usually it's just the rose-tinted glasses talking, but for video games it's a fact: they quite literally don't make them like they used to. Back in the 1980s, when the industry was in its infancy, games were often created by two-person teams consisting of one programmer and one artist. In the 1990s, sprites gave way to 3D modelling, and development teams mushroomed in size, hoovering up specialists in disciplines across animation, level design, character modelling and artificial intelligence. Today, creating the most advanced, triple-A games has become too big a task for a single developer leading to the rise of what is best described as a modular approach, where different developers work on different parts of a single game. The article adds: One developer that is pioneering the modern modular approach is no spring chicken. Set up in 1984, Newcastle-based Reflections swiftly established a reputation for bringing cutting-edge graphics to side-scrollers such as Shadow of the Beast and the gloriously named Brian the Lion. It then morphed into a driving-game specialist, thanks primarily to the Destruction Derby and Driver franchises. French publisher Ubisoft acquired the studio in 2006, expanding its remit way beyond its previous practice of churning out a new Driver game every three years or so. Reflections is crafting the vehicle components of the upcoming Watch Dogs 2 and Ghost Recon Wildlands and has just finished the Underground downloadable content (DLC) pack for The Division. It's finishing Grow Up, the sequel to 2015's Grow Home -- ironically, a small, innovative download game made by a 90s-style 10-person team.
Unless you count games like Downwell...
They used to be made for DOS, Commodore64
Now they are made for things other than DOS, Commodore64
Are we forgetting that indie game developers are still frequently one programmer and one artist? Fez, Terraria, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Shovel Knight and Undertale are all games made by unbelievably tiny teams.
I call hyperbole.
Unity has allowed me to develop games on my own just fine. Easily portable across multiple platforms.
What about the indie studios releasing indie games with teams of 1-4?
I've never heard of any games being developed inside a shed. A garage I can understand as that is part of the Silicon Valley mythos. But a shed?!
Our studio uses a contemporary coding process thats actually quite simple.
1. check out the code in git.
2. make your changes
3. screw something up, or not, delete the entire directory and copy it from a friends laptop at a bar
4. sacrifice an intern to the code goblin that now unaccountably lives in the ceiling.
5. did that copy thing fail? okay, uh, do 'man git' and let your eyes just glaze right over...bill in design says thats how he gets it to work.
6. no worries, probably just a very minor thing, im told the goblin is gone and the second story window near the parking lot is completely blown out.
7. have a stand up scrum down burn through meeting with a swimming pool lane change and a shift merge from your branch goal. Does GIT do that? did it ever?
8. check the microwave in the breakroom...donnies had that hot pocket in there for like 8 minutes and its causing a lot of anxiety...
9. management said the software is done, so uh, tidy up what you were working on and stop dicking around in GIT.
10. there ya go, codes out and the software is a huge success. the next upgrade should OH CHRIST ITS THE GOBLIN SOMEONE GET THE AMULET!!
Good people go to bed earlier.
Maybe it's because of my age but I kind of like the simplicity of the games of the 80's and early 90's. No big learning curve, no really big back story just jump in and play without a huge investment of time. But to make a game like that today with the consoles we have would just feel like a ripoff. There's a charm to having to have pixel perfect precision to making a jump or simple space shoot em ups, or even flying your weird ostrich around in Joust and don't even forget Tapper.
...is still considered pretty modern, right?
About a dozen years ago, my friend and I made an award-winning 2D children's software game that was picked up by a publisher and nationally distributed in major retail chains. The problem with being one programmer and one artist is one of time: it took us several years of free time to complete.
And more often than not, those AAA games turn out to be fast-food McVideo games with all the bullshit that comes with prioritizing revenues over gameplay.
There's plenty of examples of indie hits not made by AAA studios, this article is just a Ubisoft puff piece for that abhorred thing called a Watch Dogs sequel and their other less than exciting franchises.
Seriously, what happened to Ubisoft after Assassin's Creed 2?
I'll grant that the small team is no longer the industry norm, but suggesting they don't make them like that any more is just preposterous. The biggest game launching this month, No Man's Sky, was originally developed by a team of just five developers. It wasn't until a year or two into development (well after the game was announced and the first trailer shown) that they brought in five more developers. And I was just looking at Prey For the Gods the other day. It's being made by three guys working out of a basement or garage, as I recall. Braid was a two-person job (programmer + artist) with music that was licensed from others. And how could I forget mentioning Cave Story, which was entirely developed by a one-man "team" who did all of the artwork, programming, and music himself?
Pick an indie game, and it's likely built by a small team. They may not all stay small (e.g. Minecraft), but you can only suggest they don't make games like that any more if you start by ignoring the entire indie scene which is doing quite well for itself.
Gems such as Stardew Valley, Banished, Factorio, and even less successful games such as Castle Story, Rimworld, Gnomoria, are all created by either a single person or a small team. AAA-Games need a big team, but they are all soulless pieces of designed by committee shit, a bit like Hollywood.
Now if you'll excuse, I've gotta play.
...They do make them like they used to ... then they become larger, then they sell out to a large company
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
For most games, that's a exaggeration. It was half that many people. The programmer had to draw the 8x8 pixel image of the rocket, and if didn't look all that great: fuck you, I never claimed to be a graphic artist. You can tell it's a rocket, so quit complaining.
We don't manufacture cars the way we used to. We don't build houses the way we used to. That and a million other things. Time marches on, methodologies and scale changes, sometimes for the better. Sometimes not.
Silence is a state of mime.
Don't count me out yet. I'm half of a two-man team. Okay, plus some short-term contract work to help us with this or that.
In the late 70's to early 80's, video games played by pinball rules: get the high score to win. In the mid 80's to mid 90's the pinball mechanic was adapted and games had a story structure with a clear beginning and end. In the mid-late 90's games graduated in a big way to be able to tell a cohesive story in a way few games before had done. By the mid 00's the pinball mechanics were being phased out with more of an emphasis on story (but achievements took the place of a score) with some "choose your own adventure" type sand-box play. Gaming today is just an evolution of that. But I absolutely love the classic take on the modern ideas like Stardew Valley. I also loathe the "free" games that ship with a broken core gameplay mechanic that can be fixed via in-game purchases.
Disclaimer: The dates I specified are in no way hard dates. Just the general trend as I remember it.
Gaming is growing so big and complex, the next version of Solitaire will require government funding, just like Hoover Dam.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When I first read the title, I assume they would be complaining about how games have changed over time.
Pay to Win taking over, especially in the mobile market.
Games that only let you play so much at a time before you are cut off - unless you pay. Half the reason for cutting you off is that there isn't much depth to the game and you could finish in an hour.
Puzzle games that are too easy and over way too fast because people have a short attention span - and even those you can pay to skip levels.
Inability to fail / lose a game. You die and you simply pick up where you left off with no penalty.
No one makes games like Mario Bros. No save. You die - Start from the beginning. If you want to win, you must be perfect.
I'm not saying Mario Bros is the greatest game ever, but it's better than most games today with their awesome graphics.
Several of my favorites from the past few years were made by one guy.
The game voted best of all time on GameFAQs last time was released last year by one guy.
Just stop.
That was supposed to say "without knowing anything about them."
:/
The title box usually stops you when you're out of room, why isn't this behavior consistent?
...they don't manufacture cars in wooden sheds, use non safety glass for the windshield, or fill them with leaded gasoline anymore.
An Open Source FPS is still being built in people bedrooms by a small team. http://www.xonotic.org/ There's also a MOD that lets you mke massive changes to the game and physics to basically create crazy game play. https://github.com/MarioSMB/mo...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Two words: Dwarf Fortress.
Nobody makes them like that, except Tarn Adams.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07...
How many devs made Minecraft? Last I checked it sold for 2.5 billion. Now for these triple a titles that have multiple devs.....no shit we all knew that. There are also many single dev teams too. THIS IS NOTHING NEW, well not since the 80's.
Now I'm building a seamless open world massively multiplayer real time strategy game in the style of Command & Conquer BY MYSELF. How could one guy do that? Dedication and licensed art and sound effects. Big team or little the job is no different. Yes, I should have picked something easier - but what fun would that be?
The Imperial Realm::Miranda: [theimperialrealm.com]
They quite literally don't make anything the way they used to. Do you think a single person these days can create a spreadsheet program that's of any good in terms of feature parity with the other offerings?
I used to pay attention to the big coding houses like EA & Rockstar.
Now, you couldnt pay me to play a game by EA or Rockstar. I'm tired of the same cookie-cutter crap year after year. I only buy indie titles, theyre the only ones doing something new.
I know that I'm hearing a lot of "I can't figure out this stuff" from both of you. I play console games because there are good games that aren't on a PC, or that controller support is better or the console is simply cheaper hardware than PC. I've bought a lot of rereleases of old PS1 games on the PS3 Bought most of the Final Fantasies available. Don't know what else. Know what I'm not doing? Insisting that if my playing environment isn't on a PC I'm going to have a bad time or that I can't find something plenty enough good to do with my time.
The game voted best of all time on GameFAQs last time was released last year by one guy.
Why should we care what 'Sephiroth is the best vg character EVAR' thinks about games? Especially about THE BEST GAME EVAR (that I can guarantee was made within a year of that poll, and is probably on its way to being largely forgotten except by a few insane-fandom places like tumblr or gamefaqs.)
My first demos were also written in hand-compiled Z80. Some of the later ones used polymorphic self-generating code (although I was using an assembler for the most part by then). You tell kids that these days and (as parent demonstrates) they don't believe you.
No, you just fail at reading comprehension.
I am older and far more experienced than you are, junior.